Honour Through Collegiality: The Intellectual Legacy of Helen’s Collaborations with Students

Abstract

In bearing witness to Helen Gunter’s lifework, we examine her intellectual legacy through the lens of her collaborative work with students. We trace Helen’s input in working in concert with others in creating something new. We explain that this creation of new knowledge is the result of a critical engagement with colleagues, illustrated by examples from a plethora of joint-authored publications that make original and important contributions to the field. Framing this chapter around the thinking of Hannah Arendt, we use Arendt to explain the legacy of Helen’s work from our own personal reflections on working with Helen in enabling us to understand dark times in public education in England. Finally, we observe that Helen’s desire to find the truth has rendered her work critically original and, at the same time, like Arendt, disruptive yet challenging.