William Hampton

Hearing ourselves learn: the development of a critical friendship group for professional development

Abstract This article was written collaboratively by a group of mid-career training managers from a wide range of industries and services, together with their tutor on a Masters degree in Training and Development. The authors reflect on the experience of working together in a critical friendship group. They explore the issues arising from the power differential between students and tutor, the tensions relating to the status of student, and the process that enabled them to build a critical friendship group. The paper makes a contribution to the growing interest both in self-managing learning groups and in reflection as an aid to continuing professional development. It addresses the concerns and stresses competent professionals experience when exposed to an academic environment as mature students. The authors hope that it may provide insights into the forms of induction and psychosocial support that are helpful in academic courses for adults.

THE ELECTORAL RESPONSE TO A MULTI‐VOTE BALLOT

rather than ‘sponsored’ mobility in thegammar-school.1 In other words the lower-class grammarschool child is much more dependant on his teachers and school for any upward social mobility, whereas the public-school boy is merely confirmed in his existing social position. The other important difference between the two groups was that the less-informed grammarschool boys placed a higher moral evaluation on politicians than did the public-school informants. In this the latter may either be more realistic or perhaps it is a disquieting comment that the sons of politicians and presumably some of our future leaders are far more cynical about political motivation and only two-fifths of them believe that ‘most politicians are in politics in order to serve the community’ as opposed to nearly two-thirds of the State-school informants. The results therefore tend to contradict the existing belief that in some mystical manner a public-school education trains political leaders and that the experience of super-hlite boarding education instils different values from the State system. This article has merely scratched the surface of our existing data and it is hoped to continue this line of research both using our own material and by further enlarging the scope of our enquiry in directions which this preliminary study has suggested. With Olympian detachment one of our public-school informants wrote: ‘I am intelligently disinterested and ignorant. I am aware of what it is about and have rejected it. . . . I see politics merely as a somewhat limitedly illuminating trait of La ComCdie Humaine’. This comment was both unsolicited and untypical; what is striking in our results is the very marginal extent to which views of this kind are represented in both socially dite groups.

A Tourist's Clichés: Impressions of urban policy after a tour of Australia and New Zealand

was standing on a street corner in a Perth suburb when I experienced a momentary feeling of agoraphobia. Fortunately, I could retreat to the security of a motor-car, but the low density, single-storey, suburban development remains as an abiding impression from my tour of Australia and New Zealand. Later I was to be surprised at the fragmented local government structure, horrified at the corridors of used car lots and

LOCAL AUTHORITIES AND THE MAKING OF SOCIAL POLICYa

can dominate their departments, even those handling complex technological and scientific issues, like Defence, as well as more traditional departments like Education where Lord Butler overruled official opposition to his plan for a new Education Bill, or the Board of Trade where Mr. Crosland overturned Stansted as London’s third airport. A striking omission by Mr. Wilson is any discussion of what he did between August 1967 and April 1968 as the head of the Department of Economic Affairs. He tells us only that he took over this responsibility. Mr. Macmillan relates that occasionally he acted on behalf of a minister if ill or on holiday, but never was he in charge for a long period. It would be interesting to know just what were the consequences of Mr. Wilson’s assuming responsibility for the D.E.A.-if any. The ways in which the ex-prime ministers have organized their books influences our perception of their activities. Mr. Macmillan takes a topic by topic approach which gives the impression of relatively ordered development of government policy and prime ministerial attitudes. Mr. Wilson is strictly chronological. He vividly shows the prime minister confronted by various and simultaneous crises, arising haphazardly and calling for his fleeting attention. He responds spasmodically to events which he can hardly control. Mr. Macmillan refers to the sudden squalls which batter a prime minister: some incident occurs which hits the headlines and arouses the public, the opposition and the party. Whereas Mr. Wilson felt compelled to be involved in them all. Mr. Macmillan seems more economical in the expenditure of his energies; in any case he admits that many of the problems of politics are insoluble, whereas Mr. Wilson is more optimistic that somewhere is an answer. The press of events, the sheer number of issues and their complexity, are beyond the capacity of one man, and his few advisers in the private office, to control. In one or two areas a prime minister may be able to make an impact with a personal policy, but while he devotes himself to a narrow field, other items are being settled by his colleagues, and even in his chosen area he has to carry his colleagues with him. The main lessons from these various books are that prime ministers are limited and that this country is governed by a genuinely collective executive, the cabinet. The statement that the prime minister is only as strong as the cabinet lets him be is not trite nor tautological, it is true.