The Faith of an Economic Migrant

About the Book

In the book the author explains that his undergraduate studies were in the Physical Sciences and Mathematics, and that as a schoolmaster and subsequently as a University lecturer, Educational Research had grabbed his interest. He came to realise that the different styles of research in Education were grounded in various philosophical views about the nature of knowledge, about the social world, and crucially, about "reality". As he was concerned about the "reality" of an immanent and transcendent God, he looked for a method of enquiry for establishing the validity of his religious experience. In so doing he found that he had to reject as inappropriate, methods of enquiry such as those in Hermeneutics and Phenomenology. However, he turned to the concept of Theoretical Generalisation ( as against Statistical Generalisation) which underpins the Case Study method of enquiry and realised that this is an appropriate research method for validating his religious experience. Consequently, he decided to narrate in this book his own religious experience as a case of a family man who experienced the "reality" of God's presence whilst fully immersed in his professional career in a secular world. The book gives valuable insights into the world of a professional educationist at school and College levels and into his life as an economic migrant in England.

About the Author

A Mauritian by birth, Dr Yves Benett came to England after having completed his secondary school education in Mauritius. He obtained the BSc (London) degree in 1954 and subsequently the Postgraduate Certificate in Education, and the MA(Education) and PhD(Education) degrees at various British universities.

His teaching experience has been wide-ranging: 10 years (1955-1965) in Mauritius as School Master, followed by two years of school teaching in London and 28 years (1968-1996) of teaching in Higher Education at Huddersfield (as Lecturer, Senior lecturer, Principal lecturer and Reader). For many years, he was External Examiner for Teacher-Training and degree courses in Education at the Universities of Durham, Manchester, Wolverhampton and Ulster, respectively. He was also the Head of the Centre for Educational Research and the Director of the Higher Education Funding Council's Research Programme, at the School of Education, University of Huddersfield.

His consultancy work in Education started in 1973 (with a UK Government-funded research project in South India). This aspect of his professional experience continued (albeit intermittently) with some 20 commissioned projects both in England and in developing countries (in Turkey, Ghana, The Gambia, and the francophone countries of West Africa). He is the Scientific Adviser to the Educational Research Network in West and Central Africa (The Gambia Chapter).

He has published some 35 articles/papers in international, academic journals and co-authored three books on Education.