CHAPTER 9 ‘POWER/KNOWLEDGE ’ AND THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCES AND EXPECTATIONS OF AUSTRALIAN SHOW PEOPLE

A Foucauldian perspective reveals how ‘knowledge ’ can be complicit with ‘power ’ in privileging some individuals and groups while marginalising others. This crucial point alerts educational researchers to the ethical and political implications of recording itinerant people’s reflections on their educational experiences and their expectations of alternative forms of schooling. Thus the Australian show people’s general dissatisfaction with the learning opportunities available in the past has fuelled their determined lobbying for a separate school for show children; here the demand for a specific form of knowledge provision articulates with the show people’s engagement with state and institutional power. The chapter illustrates this argument by drawing on the senior author’s semi-structured interviews with show children, parents, home tutors and teachers in five sites between 1992 and 1996