BOOK REVIEWS

Deconstructing Developmental Psychology Erica Burman, Routledge, London and New York (distributed in Australia by the Law Book Company, Ltd.), 1994, pp. 1-215. ISBN 0-415-06438 (pbk) $37.95.

Deconstructing Developmental Psychology is one of a number of books on psychology beginning to appear over the last decade, in which insights of poststructuralist theory are brought to bear on the subject matter of psychology. It is published in the Critical Psychology Series edited by John Broughton, David Ingleby and Valerie Walkerdine. The aim of the book is not to deconstruct in order to move beyond psychology, but to draw attention to the limited vision inherent in much developmental psychology, a limited vision that is directly attributable to its lack of awareness of the discursive construction of its own subject matter and of the political/personal implications of the ways in which it has constructed itself. 'Deconstruction' in this context is used to comment upon rather than to replace mainstream accounts of developmental psychology. Burman says in her introduction: 'my aim is to deconstruct developmental psychology, that is to identify and evaluate the guiding themes or discourses that structure its current dominant forms... I use the term "deconstruction" in the sense of laying bare, of bringing under scrutiny... I am using deconstruction here not as a formal analytic framework but rather to indicate a process of critique'.

The intended audience of this book is undergraduate students of psychology and presumably also of education. It is intended as a text that accompanies and comments on standard textbooks and which enables students to both immerse themselves in developmental psychology and to see it differently, to see its socio- political base and to question the desirability of some of its effects. To this end it is structured around the topics most usually found in standard texts used in courses on developmental psychology. It is organised in four parts: Constructing the subject; Social development and the structure of caring; Developing communication; and Cognitive development: the making of rationality. There are chapters on topics such as attachment, fathering, language and power, caregiving, Piaget and child-centred education, morality, and so on.

Each chapter briefly discusses some of the dominant patterns of assumptions, categories, explanations and methods used in the particular aspect of developmental psychology in question, and accompanies this with examples of research that students would not usually be exposed to in a developmental psychology course. It points out through this comparison what the limitations are

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in the dominant forms. For example, it shows how in taking the categories 'child' and 'family' as self explanatory categories--without recognising how the category is constructed in relation to other categories, such as 'mother' or 'society'--the problems experienced by the child can be explained in ignorance of the context and discourses through which they are constituted. This can (and does) lead to victim-blaming explanations where the mother is understood as responsible for the distress experienced by her child, when the source of the stress can more appropriately be attributed to the poverty they are both living in. Or, a contrary example, it can blind researchers and practitioners to the extraordinary power that children sometimes have over their mothers when they position themselves within dominant discourses in which they can make what are taken by their mothers to be valid claims about what their mothers should do for them.

At the end of each chapter there is an excellent list of further readings, sometimes including seminal works of the dominant forms and always including highly pertinent works that call these in question through showing alternative ways of asking and answering questions and using poststructuralist forms of analysis and critique. Accompanying this list of further readings are some very carefully worked through suggested activities which would enable any reader (or group of readers) to actively engage with the issues raised here and to come to understand through their own analyses what the issues are. These activities, which invite an active engagement in research, analysis and critique, are probably the major strength of the book. It is thus not a stand-alone book, nor a book which students can passively read in order to find what a poststructuralist critique of their subject might look like. It is a book which makes possible an active and critical engagement which, if followed through, would make for an exciting set of discoveries about the possibilities currently opening up in psychology. I would anticipate that with careful use of this text, teachers could give their students the possibility of participating in a new, dynamic form of developmental psychology which is both personally and politically responsible. At the same time this text makes visible just how intransigent the normative assumptions are that underlie many of the practices of developmental psychology and so would leave students in no doubt about just what a complex task it is to establish and maintain a new developmental psychology.

Bronwyn Davies School of Education James Cook University

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Framing Marginality: Multicultural Literary Studies Sneja Gunew, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1994. ISBN 0 522 84639 4 (pbk), $19.95.

This book's arrival was serendipitous in terms of my on-going education. While I was reading the book, I was also being exposed to other writing and discussion about some of the issues dealt with in Gunew's book. For example, one of my (Japanese) MA students was absorbed by her thesis topicmEnglish language dominance of the Japanese female psyche. She was teaching me about Phillipson's writings on linguistic imperialism. I also happened to hear a seminar by Alastair Pennycook about his thesis which dealt with the spread of English as a 'world' (whirled?) language. As well, I was teaching a unit on 'Language Change' to my MA TESOL students, one section of which was considering the idea of English as a world language.

All these threads were in some way tied together for me by my reading of Gunew's book. I originally approached the task of doing this review with some trepidationmnot only was this to be my first book review, but it would also be the first postmodernist critique I had attempted to read cover to cover. But I need not have been nervousmGunew has a very readable style which leads the reader through a complex web of issues, ending up at the works she intends to critique.

The book has five chapters divided into three sections~Introduction, Part I and Part II. The Introduction, 'From migrant writing to ethnic minority literature' introduces the reader to the definitions and history of this type of writing in post- colonial (are we?) Australia. The first part of the Introduction" serves as an 'unpacking' of the term 'multiculturalism', comparing its use in Australia with that in other English-speaking countries. In particular, Gunew explains the development of the terms 'migrant writing', through 'ethnic writing' to 'multicultural writing'. 'Migrant writing' tends 'to describe the writings of all those Australians perceived as not belonging to the literary and cultural traditions deriving from England and Ireland' (p. xi). Gunew prefers the term 'ethnic minority writing'. She states that these writings have always been 'perceived as 'other' (alter) than the Anglo-Celtic norm' (p. 3). She notes that 'the general shorthand term for minority ethnic writings in Australia is still 'migrant literature' ... transitory and not really rooted in place at all' (p. 4).

Gunew explains how these writings have usually been viewed as historical or sociological documents rather than as literaturemtreated as first-person accounts even when that was not the intention of the author. The battle for recognition as literature is still being fought. Gunew feels that these writers 'wish to be considered as Australian writers' without 'the special pleading ... inherent in the label "ethnic" or "multicultural"' (p. 14). Even though many of these writers are

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third generation Australians they are still 'seen as inhabiting a space "out there" and not in here and part of "us"' (p. 17). In the Introduction Gunew also deals with the dissemination of English language and literature through the colonial Empire of Britain.

The next section of the book (Part I) is entitled 'Framing Marginality' and leads the reader through the influences of such ideas as aesthetics, universal culture and civilised subjects. She draws on the writings of Lyotard (among others) to explore ways of representing 'other cultures in such a way as to avoid "mastering" or appropriating them' (p. 32). Colonial literatures are discussed with relation to the idea of the 'other', especially with reference to Said's Orientalism. Having read this section of Gunew's work, I gained a better understanding of colonialism, with the result that I was better able to grasp Pennycook's work on English language dominance.

The book then moves through post-colonial critiques and minority cultures/literatures to the idea of multiculturalism being 'between ethnicity and race' (p. 46). Gunew makes the observation that

Australia's tradition of using multiculturalism as a way of distinguishing ethnic groups within Western and European frameworks offers a possible model for other societies to scrutinise. Australia, on the other hand, needs to rethink race in the light of analyses and distinctions that have taken place elsewhere in other comparable societies (p. 47).

Chapter 3 deals with Feminist theory and minority writing. This is rather unexplored territory for me, but the chapter was well-written and argued and made a lot of sense. There was one quote which particularly resonated with me and my understanding. Gunew here is quoting from Teresa de Lauretis' work, 'Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema':

For each person, therefore, subjectivity is an ongoing construction, not a fixed point of departure or arrival from which one then interacts with the world. On the contrary, it is the effect of that interactionmwhich I call experience; and thus it is produced not by external ideas, values or material causes, but by one's personal, subjective, engagement in the practices, discourses, and institutions that lend significance ... to the events of the world (pp. 55-56).

The theme of this whole chapter was summed up for me by Gunew's citation of Jardine who stated that feminism 'is finally rooted in the belief that women's

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truth-in-experience-and-reality is and has always been different from men's ' (p. 59).

All of this background 'education' (in the sense of 'educare', 'to lead out') leads us to the prime focus of the book, Gunew's critiques of the work of four Australian women ethnic minority writers--Kefala, Walwicz, Cappiello and Couani. This section actually reads as if it were written before the Introduction and Part I. Indeed, in the Acknowledgments section, Gunew notes that various sections of the book were published over the years 'in order to help generate an appropriate critical climate' (p. vii). These sections have been reworked for the current volume. In fact, I felt that each of the critical essays in Part II, 'Reading for cultural difference', could easily be read without reading the earlier sections of the book. These chapters seem to stand alone. So, if one were interested, say, in the writings of Anna Couani, one could 'dip into' the book for Chapter 6, and then perhaps go back to the introductory sections for a further exploration of the themes of colonialism, race and place dealt with in the chapter on Couani's work.

Gunew's work has succeeded in making my former conception of 'migrant writing' problematic. These critiques lead me to accept Gunew's arguments that such writings are not merely autobiographical or sociological documents, but literature, 'a textuality which is visibly more worked over, and more conscious of textual conventions, than other forms of writing' (Barthes, cited by Gunew, p. 71). Also, reading the critiques and the extracts form the authors' works makes me keen to read more. In fact I was disappointed that the laws of copyright prevented the reprinting in this volume of larger amounts of all the authors' work. I was especially attracted to Anna Couani's prose poems. Like me, she grew up 'different' in an Australian country town and appears to carry all those earlier experiences of difference with her in her adult city life. My reading of her work was coloured by my view of Australian life--a white, middle-class Anglo- Celtic who has chosen to live her adult life as a French bilingual.

As teachers of languages, especially as teachers of that carrier of the dominant culture, English as a Second or Other Language (note the occurrence, once again, of 'the other' in this term), we need to listen to Gunew's explanation that 'those able to think from the beginning in more than one language find it impossible to consider language as a "natural" and unproblematic expression of experience. And those who have experience of more than one culture may find it more difficult to regard one culture as universal' (p. 73).

As David Malouf points out, 'mostly the only cultural history we get of a society is the one that is passed down to us by those who have power, privilege and the use of language' (cited in Gunew, p. 73). Should we not, therefore, in teaching English to our children and new migrants, share with them some of this literature? 'Reading.for cultural difference' could show that there are other

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versions of the Australian experience than the ones traditionally represented by the images of the bush so earnestly constructed via the pages of The Bulletin in the early years of this century. I believe this book would appeal to a variety of educators, and especially recommend it to those interested in exploring Australia and Australian culture through different eyes.

Michele de Courcy Department of Applied Linguistics and Language Studies University of Melbourne

The Texts of Paulo Freire Paul V. Taylor, Open University Press, Buckingham UK, 1993, pp. 176. ISBN 0 335 19019 7, paperback, $39-95.

Freirian dialogical education has offered many of us a viable, non-violent approach to just social changes and freedom. For nigh on three decades the Brazilian Catholic, Paulo Freire has been widely celebrated, mythologised and romanticised for the development of a pedagogy for teaching literacy to oppressed adults. His Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) is a classic in educational theory (Taylor includes a bibliography of selected works of/by Freire, 1959 to 1991). He represents a well-educated, upper-middle class member of society who has used his power and knowledge to further the interests of oppressed by creating a pedagogy of/for them. However, his awareness of his privileged situation came to him only slowly through a process of conscientisation, a form of 'paradigm shifting', which is more than a psychological process of reconstituting one' s self being linked to changing power relations. Similarly, Freire has enlarged our understanding of pedagogy as being concerned with more than the techniques of teaching or learning, linking it to the overt socio-economic and political activity associated with the fulfilment of human liberation. In this respect Freire has done much to further the enlightenment ideals of modernity, represented most clearly in his literacy campaigns in Brazil, Guinea-Bissau and central America. However, his work in this area was not only been frustrated by being forced into political exile from Brazil, but also by a significant lack of success in reinventing his pedagogy for different language contexts, and the fact that he has not produced a significant new work since the early 1970s.

Paul Taylor is a lecturer in community education at University of Tours (France), after having successful experience reworking Freirian pedagogy in West Africa. He learnt more about the potency of this method through

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community education in Leicester and has done much to enlarge it through Agusto Boal's (1980) Theatre of the Oppressed. He opens the book with an explicit and well thought out statement on dealing with sexism in Freire's texts, explaining the need to retranslate his works to avoid such offensive language; he has done so with Freire's approval. Taylor concludes with a critique of Freirian pedagogy and literacy campaigns for the inherent sexism of their power and knowledge. Taylor offers a partial (in both senses) study of Freirian pedagogy using a method that interweaves a reading of Freire's life with a critical study of the coherences in his work and an expose of its contradictions so as to identify ways of doing 'liberatory pedagogy' differently. He explores the contradictions in Freire's work by problematising his pedagogy, interrogating its structures, questioning its conventions and examining its habituated assumptions.

Due recognition is given to the range of social and intellectual factors that formed Freire and his view of pedagogy. Taylor argues that the major sources and influences have been French pedagogy (Lucien Febvre), Czech materialist philosophy (Karel Kosik), Aristotelian and Hegelian philosophy, and Brazilian Catholic liberation theology (Helder Camara). The absorption and retranslation of this heritage means that Freirian pedagogy expresses something of a cultural hybridity. We also learn a little of the origins of the practices Freire was able to meld together to form his pedagogy, such as the long-established community- based learning groups, the culture circles.

Taylor's analysis of the creation of the generative words used to teach literacy leads him to argue that the principles of negotiated learning are contradicted and the processes of creating these words reflect the interests of Freire's coworkers rather than the students. Taylor also provides an in-depth analysis and decoding of the pedagogy deployed in the Culture Circles. He describes the situations depicted in two different (albeit incomplete) sets of the ten scenes, indicates the teaching approaches applied to this material, and provides a critical commentary on both. The hidden agenda associated with each of the pictures is revealed along with the deft ways in which questions are or are not used to manipulate the realisation of the objectives for the session. Some sense of the severity of this critical analysis of the teaching/learning process in the Culture Circle is captured in the following sample of terms: 'illusion' (p. 88), 'pedagogic bad faith' and 'taboo' (p. 89), 'the totemic status of the book' (p. 90), 'unashamedly calculated' (p. 96), 'fundamentally dishonest' (p. 97), and 'vague or inconsistent' (p. 98). This critique provides a disturbing re-evaluation of Freire's pedagogy and his conception of literacy, from which it is reasonable to argue that Freire offers a modified version of banking educationmmore of a co-operative banking system.

Taylor also points out how Freire's pedagogy is limited by its emphasis on reading rather than writing, arguing that it is the ability to write that gives people

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the power to engage in dialogue and to change the world. He observes that no mention ismade of writing in the initial motivational pre-literacy sessions; this may reflect the fact the Freire himself prefers to talking to make books rather than writing them. Taylor's point is that 'being literate goes beyond being a quiescent reader: it requires the person to become an active writer, and thereby to become a maker of their own world, their own history' (p.91). Taylor concludes that 'the writing of the world' is more important than reading as a way to 'the righting of oppression' (p. 150).

From Taylor's work we can begin to ask anew some basic questions: what is meant by the terms oppressed and literacy? how does literacy education effect social control rather than human liberation? is not all education an exercise in cultural invasion? what does it matter that we teach people to read and the poverty of their existence has not changed? can universities be relevant to the lives of ordinary people and create learning that confronts their social realities? can education transform social reality for the betterment of all? is there a difference between education in the national interest and investment in education? who are the oppressed and the oppressors? whose interests are served by Freirian pedagogy?

Taylor has provided a valuable and original account of Freire and his pedagogy, and argues that he has given us a benign and enlightened approach to dialogic education which is, nevertheless a form of banking education. He also argues that the reductionist interpretation of functional literacy, against which Freirian pedagogy has been constructed, is a 'mean minded' approach which asks so little of education. This is a lucid, friendly critique of Freire's pedagogy, that is not drowned in the fashionable clich6s of postmodernism. Taylor has produced one of the more interesting and provocative scholarly analyses of the Paulo Freire's work and of literacy in recent years. In his exploration of the contradictions in a pedagogy which is so full of hope, Taylor is not so much seeking to put it down, but to widen the horizons of pedagogical understandings and actions, creating new possibilities and perspectives by exploiting the ruptures identified in order to further the utopianism which underpins the Freirian method.

References Boal, A. (1990) Theatre de l'opprime, Maspero, Paris. Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Herder and Herder, New York.

Michael Garbutcheon Singh Faculty of Education Central Queensland University

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Shards of Glass: Children Reading and Writing Beyond Gendered Identities Bronwyn Davies, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1993, pp. 210. ISBN 1 86373 444 9 (paperback), $19.95.

Poststructuralist Theory and Classroom Practice Bronwyn Davies, Deakin University Press, Geelong, 1994. pp. 125. ISBN 0 7300 1728 1 (paperback), $24.00.

As both a primary school teacher and a graduate student in education I found both of these books to be enjoyable and informative and recommend them to anyone interested in exploring the possibilities that poststructuralism offers for understanding how gender identities develop and the implications this has for classroom practice. I first encountered Bronwyn Davies' work in a graduate course in research methodology and her ideas inspired me to devise and carry out a research project in which I used poststructuralist theory to guide and analyse my own practice. I thus come to this review as something of a Davies 'disciple'. I have generally found her work to be compelling and exciting and neither of the books reviewed here disappointed me.

In Shards of Glass, Davies describes research she undertook in collaboration with Chas Banks following on from the work reported in her previous book Frogs and Snails and Feminist Tales (Davies 1989). The children who were in preschool when interviewed for the previous study are now in primary school. Davies again uses interview data to provide an insightful commentary on the processes of becoming gendered from a poststructuralist perspective-- poststructuralism functioning here as a set of conceptual tools with which to analyse data and illuminate the specificity of detail that might escape other forms of analysis. This detail includes the way individuals speak and write their gendered identities into existence, the way they position themselves in relation to others, and the way gender is used as one of the main defining terms of identity.

Davies uses poststructuralist theory to undo the boundaries between social, psychological, historical and literary analysis. Her previous research into how children perceive their worlds involved trialling a range of different research methodologies, none of which she found totally useful to her purpose. She finds poststructuralism useful because it allows the researcher to see the work that language does in limiting, shaping and making possible one kind of world or another.

Alerting us to the part discourses play in maintaining the power of dominant groups in society, it becomes possible to look through the discursive nature of dominant cultural storylines and establish whose interests they serve. The

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possibility of breaking down old patterns, discourses and structures is offered by Davies as a way of deconstructing the male/female dualism which she finds limiting for all individuals. In a generative way, she offers a range of suggestions for individuals to speak/write new ways of being into existence. What is particularly useful about Davies' suggestions is that they are based on the premise that gender stereotypes and inequities are a problem for everyone, not just girls. It is essential to her work that both boys and girls be included in the activities involved in opening up gender categories.

In Shards of Glass, Davies sets out to explore how children struggle to establish and maintain a unitary and consistent sense of being within the gender discourses available to them. Davies and Banks introduce the children in the primary school study groups to some understandings about poststructuralist theory, involving the students in a range of activities that gives them access to skills in deconstruction and reconstruction of discourses about gender. Davies' analysis includes looking for ways in which the children get caught up constituting themselves within the male/female dualism and exploring opportunities to resist this. Poststructuralist theory is used as a way of analysing the data, enabling Davies to see inconsistencies as fascinating tensions in storylines and as opportunities for working towards opening up gender categories.

Shards of Glass can be read on many different levels and in many different ways, depending on the background and life experiences of each individual reader. A significant feature is the way in which Davies explores how the structure of a text might work to provide a pastiche of images and discourses, layered upon each other, interrupting, intermingling and disrupting the reader's interpretation of other discourses and storylines. This produces a kaleidoscopic effect, with different patterns, orders and combinations coming into play as the focus shifts from one combination of discourses to another. This effect is produced using material from a range of sources to dislodge and interrupt the apparent seamlessness of the text and authority of the author. Davies introduces stories about the childhood experiences of herself and others, data from the study groups and some of her own collective biography or 'memory work'. Like an archaeologist, Davies pieces the fragments together (thus the title of the book), presenting a story that might be written/read from many different positionings. Davies offers glimpses of herself as mother, daughter, child, teacher and researcher, inviting readers to do the same, using their existing ways of knowing to reconstruct new meanings about gender.

Poststructural Theory and Classroom Practice seems to me to tell more of the same story, but Davies has refined her thinking and focused on (perhaps) a different audience with this text. Her avowed aim in writing this book is to make

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poststructuralist theory more accessible and show how it might be used to make sense of classroom practice. While some of the material used in Shards of Glass is revisited, this is done within the perspective of new insights and fresh ideas, giving the reader a sense of the development of Davies' thinking and reflection since her previous analysis.

From this perspective, I thus found Poststructural Theory and Classroom Practice a more enjoyable and useful book to read. Davies elaborates on some of the earlier ideas for involving children in deconstructing and reconstructing gender discourses but uses new material and examples of how teachers might begin to explore 'memory work' and other strategies in their classrooms.

Davies uses poststructural theory to analyse the classroom practice of a teacher, Mr Good, providing different readings of her observation and analysis, from several different perspectives and at different times. This serves to illustrate how political, historical and social discourses influence and infiltrate the storylines that teachers use as the basis of their practice. I found Davies' exploration of the Whitlam era, and the links between dominant cultural and educational discourses emerging in that era, both fascinating and illuminating. Her poststructural analysis uncovered new meanings and understandings that shed light on my own way of living and being a teacher. What develops out of this analysis is Davies' suggestion that contemporary teachers be wary of the likely tension between their 'emancipatory intent' and the 'constitutive effect' of their classroom practice. Teachers attempting to use progressive pedagogies (as Mr Good does) face the dilemma of changing and conflicting contexts and discourses, which can operate to marginalise/silence individual students or groups of students quite effectively. The power and authority positionings of teachers can come into conflict with their emancipatory intent in a way which serve to bind children more strongly to the dominant cultural discourses. Davies presents this as a compelling argument for teachers to examine their own practice within a poststructuralist framework, if they wish to begin to help their students to collapse oppressive cultural binaries.

Davies' exploration of multiple readings of popular texts, in which she looks at the film Pretty Woman, was the section of the book I found most enjoyable. The adventure of exploring the layer upon layer of possible meanings, as Davies illustrates the collapse of the life/death and male/female binaries in the text, seemed to soar to an exhilerating crescendo which left me feeling both elated and disappointed that the story had ended. Days later, I found myself still musing about possible different musical interpretations and accompaniments for this section of the text, confirming just how successfully Davies illustrates the 'blissful' possibilities of multiple readings, in the move toward breaking of entrenched and accepted cultural patterns.

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With these two texts, Davies has done something that many authors in the field have failed to do. She has made poststructuralism accessible to everyday classroom teachers and provided practical suggestions about how teachers and students can work together to open up the possibility of speaking new worlds into existence.

Reference Davies, Bronwyn (1989) Frogs and Snails and Feminist Tales: Preschool

Children and Gender, Allen and Unwin, Sydney. Jacqui Stanley Millgrove Primary School Warburton East, Victoria

The Unobtrusive Researcher Allan Kellehear, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1993, 177 pages. ISBN 1 86373 513 5 (paperback), AUD $19.95.

Kellehear's purposes, in this readable advocacy of a careful study of easily accessible aspects of behaviour (eg., dress, organisational spaces, household objects, photographs, books, official statistics, diaries, film, music, food, etc.), are fourfold. In pointing out the shortcomings of what people say as representing a satisfactory account of why they behave as they do, Kellehear sets out to introduce a range of research methods which complement social surveying and in-depth interviewing--sources such as written and audio visual records (Ch. 4 and 5), material culture (Ch. 6), simple observation (Ch. 7) and hardware and software capable of capturing the products of human responses (Ch. 8). A second purpose is to expose some major shortcomings of relying solely on interview and questionnaire-style approaches to social research. As a third, Kellehear aims to provide practical guidance as to how to begin one's acquisition of these 'other' data via unobtrusive methods. A final purpose is to introduce those without formal training in research to 'basic research jargon, principles of research design and data analysis' (p. viii). How well have these purposes been achieved?

This is a book of two parts. The first third is a very readable account of basic research terms, the merits of unobtrusive methods and principles of research design and pattern recognition. Even for academics rarely given to stumbling over the nuances, ambiguities and downright complexity of navigating their way through the conceptual maze of empirical-analytic, interpretive, critical, historical and philosophical research, Kellehear's first three chapters are worth perusing. For undergraduate and post-graduate students, making their first tentative steps into the research field, these chapters are commendable in that they are likely to leave the beginning researcher theoretically oriented rather than disoriented, as so often results when students' study plans arbitrarily point them in the direction of discrete and compartmentalised research methods units with names such as

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'Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods' and 'Statistical Research Methods 5102'. Pedestrian and sterile coursework in research methods has little to do with acknowledging and nurturing wellsprings of curiosity. Kellehear's initial chapters promise not to snuff out such flames. In particular, a convincing case is made for embarking upon a journey into inquiry which sets out to recognise patterns in the data we gather (Ch. 3), whether through content, thematic or semiotic analysis. Supported by a set of appropriately made decisions about the deductive or inductive nature of our inquiries (Principles of Research Design, Ch. 2), readers are provided with a sound and ethical rationale for research decision-making.

In the second part of the book, Kellehear proceeds to present sources and methods of research which, while lacking in academic sophistication and status (and the point is made that this needs to be seen non-pejoratively), stand as concrete examples which, Kellehear claims, 'expose the folly of relying solely on what others say to understand human culture in any of its diverse settings' (p. 160). A litany of 'research possibilities' are presented in the last five chapters which cover written records and other aspects of material culture. While this compilation is interesting, I suspect anyone operating within the 'wellspring of curiosity paradigm' would have already 'sussed out' their own prospective data sources and find many of this book's examples, while quite comprehensive, irrelevant to their own, more focused purposes.

In his preface, Kellehear indicates that he believes his book will have much to offer those from 'education and training backgrounds who have not made a formal study of doing research' (p. viii). While it is not my role to speak for such a diffuse potential readership, I suspect it will be only those with a research methods background, regardless of how theoretically disorienting or impoverished it may have been, who have the entry behaviour needed to work through the initial chapters. In short, there may be few who read this book who have not already had some experience with research or have recently discovered a reason for doing some. As an introduction to research, the first three chapters will serve them well. That there are, in the remaining five chapters, a range of methods and sources of information capable of making us less reliant on what people tell us about themselves is undeniable. However, whether they will be of more than passing interest to anyone without a penchant for the compilation, categorisation and cataloguing of human responses and response products is less certain.

Ken Alexander Faculty of Education Edith Cowan University