These experiences led to Richard becoming an accidental adult educator and writer producing books for teenagers on such topics as the Vietnam and Korean Wars and Terrorism. This combination made him an ideal academic in Education at the Open University, UK in 1989, where he spent 12 years writing course materials, articles and books, as well as editing course readers in adult education, and guidance.
Adult education, further education and lifelong learning have been the key contexts in which he has explored educational issues, drawing upon a range of theoretical perspectives, mostly influenced by post-structuralism and postmodernism. The bulk of his writing rather than editing might be considered a contribution to educational theory, where he considers the role of theory to be one of interrupting established ways of understanding education.
He has co-edited 10 Routledge published books and authored and co-authored 5 books. His first co-authored book, with Robin Usher, was Postmodernism and Education. Richard followed this with his own book, Changing Places?, published in 1997. This was followed in 2000 by Globalisation and Pedagogy and in 2004 by Rhetoric and Educational Discourse. Improving Learning in Colleges in 2009 with Roz Ivanic and colleagues drew upon the outcomes of the TLRP funded project on ways of drawing upon everyday literacy practices in curriculum and pedagogy in college contexts.
His latest attempt to push the envelope, co-authored with Tara Fenwick, is Actor-network Theory in Education, to be published by Routledge in July 2010. Actor-network theory is relatively unexplored and unused in educational theory and research. This book both surveys the existing work in education, but also explores the possibilities it opens up for addressing educational issues in different ways.
Although as Head of the Stirling Institute of Education, much of his time is spent in academic leadership, Richard still considers himself a writer. A number of other books have been co-authored and co-edited and published elsewhere. He has also published over 60 peer reviewed journal articles and is also on the Editorial Boards of a number of journals, including Pedagogy, Culture and Society, Studies in the Education of Adults and Adult Education Quarterly.
And the next book? Well, its Socio-material Approaches to Educational Research, co-authored by Tara Fenwick and Peter Sawchek, and to be published in 2011. And yes, it will be published by Routledge.
