The Organic Intellectual Educator

Contrasting images of teachers' lives and work, from compliance with bureaucratic controls, disaffection and lack of critical reflection, on the one hand, to innovation, commitment and reflexive critique, on the other, set the context for this article. Gramsci's classification of teachers as 'professional intellectuals' who transmit stable, even stagnant, knowledge, as distinct from other 'organic intellectuals' who evolve knowledge and engage critically with personal and social issues, is set within that context. Both distinctions were taken as an incitement to political action in the work which is then reported, where principles derived from Maslow's concept of the Taoistic teacher were instituted in an in-service course explicitly framed to encourage self-originating and self-determining approaches to intellectual growth. Extracts from projects by six teachers are used as evidence of the range, methods, depth and quality of personal engagements in educational experiences.