Dr Barry Dufour

Job: Visiting Professor of Education Studies

Faculty: Health and Life Sciences

School/department: School of Applied Social Sciences

Address: De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH

T: N/A

E: bdufour@dmu.ac.uk

W: http://dmu.ac.uk/hls

 

Personal profile

Dr Barry Dufour is a part-time visiting professor in the Education Studies Department. He has taught undergraduates and higher degree students at De Montfort since 2003 and previously taught on PGCE and general undergraduate and higher degree courses at the University of Leicester and Loughborough University. He has been a writer and researcher for many decades, with a Wikipedia profile running into 8 pages and his own 40-page website (both soon to go live, with updates).  

When joining De Montfort University, within a short time, he created several new courses: the first year undergraduate course, The History of Education, as a foundation introduction to education; the second year course, The Politics of Education; and a new MA course, Current and Emergent Issues in Education.

He has had a significant pioneering impact on UK education in several ways: by setting up in the late 1960s, the ATSS (The Association for the Teaching of the Social Sciences) with the late Professor Denis Lawton, an organisation to promote the then emerging presence of the social sciences in the school curriculum, while also conducting pioneering teaching, from 1966-1970, at the Cressex Community College, in High Wycombe, teaching 11-16 year old secondary modern pupils, basic ideas from sociology, anthropology, economics and political science. Committed to progressive education, he became a founder member/teacher in 1970, teaching for half the week at Countesthorpe College, a 14-19 upper school in the Leicestershire Plan for Comprehensive Education, seen as the most radical state school in the UK, for its teaching and organisation. With the other half the week, he ran a PGCE course at the University of Leicester School of Education, training teachers to teach the social sciences in schools. This was a joint appointment created by Professor Brian Simon, the eminent education historian and advocate of comprehensive education. He held these positions for 13 years, again a pioneer and possibly the only educationist in the UK who has ever undertaken this kind of dual role for an extended period.

He graduated from the University of Hull with a degree in the social sciences having been taught by outstanding academics, Professor Peter Worsley (sociology and anthropology) and Professor John Saville (history) before going on to a PGCE course at the University of Birmingham School of Education, where his tutor allowed him extra time to research 19th and 20th century civics and citizenship courses and devise pioneering proposals for school-based social sciences courses. He received a distinction for his teaching practice.

After years of teaching at three universities and publishing articles and books, the president of the ATSS and Vice Chancellor of the University of Leicester, Sir Robert Burgess, encouraged him to present himself for a doctorate by publication, which he did successfully at the University of Hull in 2012, with the chair of the viva committee saying that it was an honour to spend an hour talking with a true scholar.

From 1983 – 1993, he stepped outside the university sector to become, in succession, an adviser on multicultural education with Leicestershire local education authority (till 1989), county inspector for humanities in Dorset (1989-1991), and senior adviser in education for High Peak and Derbyshire Dales (1991 – 1993), in charge of a large team of advisory teachers and advisers. In 1993/94, Professor Ivan Reid of Loughborough University, invited him to return to the university world to run a PGCE History course at Loughborough and to lecture to hundreds of undergraduate students on the subject of disruptive behaviour in schools. While at Loughborough, he formed a close relationship with Beth Shalom (the National Holocaust Centre and Museum, in Laxton, Nottinghamshire) when it opened in 1995, and regularly took his History PGCE students there for lectures and to meet Survivors – and to meet the Smith family who had created the centre.

From 1983 to 2006, he combined local government advisory work and university teaching with running in-service courses on school management and excellent teaching. He was one of the first to train as an Ofsted inspector but after 36 inspections resigned over doubts about the theory and practice of Ofsted. He also became a consultant to a number of schools, in Leicester, Coventry and London, as a ‘friendly advisor’, helping them to prepare for forthcoming inspections. His most enjoyable role was in the year 2000, appointed by John Dunford, the then general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association (now ASCL), to run Ofsted-instigated courses for headteachers on how to evaluate their own schools, when Ofsted moved to a partnership model that he very much supported.

He has also had long-term involvement in two other main areas. During the Blair years, he became active in promoting the new course of Citizenship that entered the school National Curriculum in 2000 (although as non-statutory in primary schools) and he worked closely with the ATSS but especially the Citizenship Foundation in London whose chief executive was Dr Tony Breslin, an ex-PGCE student of Barry’s, a close friend and the chief executive of the Foundation. They edited together, Developing Citizens: An Introduction to Effective Citizenship Education in the Secondary School (Hodder, 2006) that included chapters by Tony and Barry but many chapters by eminent specialists in various curriculum areas. The book was praised in the House of Lords by Lord Andrew Adonis.  

The other area has been his continuing service on the Education Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) from 2004, with the committee set up and chaired by Hilary Callan, the director of the RAI, and now by Dr David Shankland, the current director of the RAI. After spending years developing the UK’s first Advanced Level GCE in Anthropology, it was accepted by AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance), taught for several years in many schools but then abolished by AQA on cost grounds arguing that insufficient candidates were entering to make it cost effective. This was a blow but the committee has now gone on to develop online courses, work closely with the International Baccalaureate (whose chief examiner for anthropology is on the committee) and to develop successful courses in Scotland. 

Between 2013 to 2016, he compiled a 155,000 word book on disruptive behaviour in schools for a major publisher but the publication was cancelled, after 6 months of editing, due to editorial differences. He then spent till 2020 researching music education in schools – and its decline – which was published as the first monograph for the new De Montfort University Press: B.Dufour, ‘Not Enough Music’: a critique of music education in schools in England, 2020, Leicester, DMU Press. 100 copies were sent to relevant people and organisations, with warm compliments received from HRH Prince Charles and Professor Julian Lloyd Webber. Also available online on the DMU website as a free download.

Conference contributions and research visits

He has spoken at and attended conferences all around the world while also visiting schools, around 500 schools so far, mainly in the UK, but some in Northern Ireland, various parts of the USA, France, Germany, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Finland and Japan. He has given lectures at Oulu University and the University of Lapland in Finland, and at universities in Denver and New York (Columbia University – speaking to the ph.d students of the famous American education philosopher, Maxine Greene).

From the late 1960s until its closure in 2012, he was active in the main organisation (that he set up) for school social science teachers, the Association for the Teaching of the Social Sciences (ATSS), attending and speaking at their annual conferences, serving on the national executive committee and occupying the role of vice president for many of these years. This organisation has now been subsumed into the British Sociological Association as the Sociology Teachers’ Group.

Awards and membership of distinguished organisations

1977 Elected a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute (FRAI) – he is still active on the RAI Education Committee (2004 - today)

1993 Elected a Member of the Institute of Management (1993).

1997 Designated Visiting Fellow by the University of Loughborough.

1998 Appointed a Fellow of the Keizai Koho Institute (Japan Institute for Social and Economic Affairs), Tokyo, that funded his two-week tour of Japan in 1998 visiting businesses, cultural institutions and schools.

2001 Designated Visiting Fellow at the University of Leicester

2006 Awarded the Vice Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award (De Montfort University)

2007 Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).

2010 Designated Visiting Senior Research Fellow (De Montfort University)

2010 Awarded an Erasmus scholarship to lecture at universities in Finland (Oulu University and the University of Lapland at Rovaniemi on the Arctic Circle) and to visit schools.

2012 Awarded a doctorate by published works at the University of Hull

2012 Designated De Montfort University’s first-ever Visiting Professor of Education Studies

2017 Designated an Associate of King’s College, Cambridge University

2019 Renewal of his Visiting Professor title by Professor Andy Collop, the Interim Vice Chancellor of De Montfort University.

2024 Invited to be a consultant and reviewer for the online international journal, Teaching Times

For several decades he was a Vice President of the Association for the Teaching of the Social Sciences (ATSS), an organisation that he helped to establish in the late 1960s.

References and publications list

Over 50 articles published (from 1969 to today) – too many to list, but his main publications are: 

Lawton, D. and Dufour, B. The New Social Studies, London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1973 (first edition) and 1976 (second edition)

Dufour, B., The World of Pop and Rock, London: Macdonald, 1977 (published in 5 languages)

Dufour, B., (ed), New Movements in the Social Sciences and Humanities, London: Temple Smith/Gower, 1982

Dufour, B., (ed), The New Social Curriculum: A Guide to Cross-Curricular Issues, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990

Breslin, T. and Dufour, B., (eds) Developing Citizens: A Comprehensive Introduction to Effective Citizenship Education in the Secondary School, London: Hodder Murray, 2006

Dufour, B. and Curtis, W., (eds) Studying Educationan Introduction to the Key Disciplines in Education Studies, Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2011

B.Dufour, ‘Not Enough Music’: a critique of music education in schools in England, 2020, Leicester, DMU Press. The first publication for the new university press. But available online as a free download

B.Dufour, A Report on a Visit to Baleares International College, Sa Porrassa, Mallorca, Spain: Part of an ongoing programme of visits to various countries and schools to assess the nature and characteristics of outstanding schools, (2021). Private copyright with Barry Dufour and Alison Colwell, Principal of Baleares International College. Copies available on request to Barry Dufour.

B.Dufour, Education in Estonia: Why is Estonia fast catching up to Finland in the quality of its education system? A research visit. Based on a research visit to Estonia and interviews in the summer of 2022. In preparation (2024).

Recent Journal Articles

FORUM journal: George Orwell is Watching You! School Behaviour Policies and Social Justice  Volume 64 – Number 3 - 2022

FORUM journal: Ofsted: Outstandingly Inadequate,  November, Volume  65 – Number 3 - 2023                  

Recent children’s books (publication pending):

What Can Grown-ups Learn From Children?

How to Be the World’s Worst Secretary

Currently working on a substantial academic volume entitled

The Study of Education: an introduction to the major academic disciplines in the study of education (2024/2025), with Barry Dufour as editor and part-contributor. Chapters being prepared by some of the UK’s top academics in the various fields. Under discussion with various publishers.

Barry Dufour