“What am I learning as I research my life in Higher Education as a healing nurse, researcher and Shingon Buddhist priest, and as I pedagogise a curriculum for healing nurses? Weaving the webs of consciousness”.

 

Je Kan Adler-Collins, Faculty of Nursing, Fukuoka University, Japan.

 

Draft 3 September 2004

 

To be presented to the BERA 04 Symposium “How are we contributing to a new scholarship of educational enquiry through our pedagogisation of postcolonial living educational theories in the Academy?”, UMIST, Manchester, 16 September, 2004.

 

 

From the very onset of this presentation to you, I wish to acknowledge with an open heart the scholarly work of postcolonial writers and the voice, power and passion that they are bringing to the brotherhood of humanness. This text represents my first tentative but focused engagement with the theory of postcolonial writings where like Murray claims in his paper. I was and am living these values before becoming aware of the academic knowledge base that underpins the theory.

 

I would like to frame the positional stance of my paper within that of educational knowledge through self-study action research and the generation and testing of my own living educational theory. Such generation is set against my practice embedded in a background of colonial thinking, actions and power relationships within the academy. Such power relationships have given rise to the emerging area of scholarship, that of postcolonial theory.

 

It is not lost on me the irony of my circumstances as I live in a culture that was itself a colonising one with a recent history of brutal actions committed in the pursuit of its colonial ambitions. Japan herself on being defeated in the last world war was colonised by the post war powers in particular America. For many Japanese they feel acutely the Americanisation of their culture and their exists a deep cultural divide between the older generations of Japanese who see their culture being eroded and replaced with the neon glitter of Materialism and the young who are concerned about very different issues to their elders

 

As I work to pedagogise my values and knowledge as a healing reflective nurse with a consciousness that sees the possibility that my thoughts could be seen to be colonising as my academic theory is grounded in the training I received in a western paradigm. I seek at this point of my understanding to outline where I am, explore with you a set of ideas, and share with you experiences that I have had along my journey as an educator, living and generating my own educational theory in practice in this Global classroom of ours, the university of physical life.

 

 

(Bullough & Pinnegar, 2004) say that:

 

 

“The consideration of ontology, of one’s being in and toward the world, should be a central feature of any discussion of the value of self-study research” (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2004 p. 319)

 

I therefore wish to tell you a story, one where my ontological values, including love, move into living epistemological standards of judgement that can be used to judge the validity of my contributions to educational knowledge and theory.

 

The story belongs to the true tradition of storytelling. All cultures used to value story as the mode of transmitting knowledge, values and wisdom to the listener. Not only are the stories imbued with these values but in their telling they can be engaging and fun, a process which is, I think, a critical aspect of learning and remembering.

 

In the modern western concept of academia, the tradition of storytelling has been relegated to a lesser position than it once held, due to the advance of science and the representation of “facts”. Something has been lost from the richness and expressiveness of our communication. Some one is silencing our stories; they are being marginalised as just romantic ramblings. A culture that is without stories is in danger of becoming without heart, consisting of soulless blocks of data and information that no longer speak to the souls and hearts of the people but remain in the hands of the few privileged individuals for whom such data and its representation is their very lifeblood. The consequence of this trend is directly linked to the expansion of Western colonialism and its dominance at the expense of other cultures, voices and stories. The consequences of this dominance are clearly visible in today’s world where the stories are of war, suffering, exploitation and violence to the inhabitants and habitat of the great spaceship called mother earth.

 

Often, in cultures that have been labelled “less advanced than our own”, at the end of the working day devoid of cable television, videos, or the instant media pool of thoughtless escapism, people would make the time and hence the space to meet in the telling of their stories. Elders would pass on the deeds of warriors past, battles fought and lost. The women would tell of healing and morality, the land and its stories. Often the faith keepers would share their stories of mystery, magic and wisdom. Yet grounded in all these stories were the realities of daily living and the situations the people found themselves in. It was a way of communal sharing, bonding, clarification of roots and identity, and above all a learning space as the participants acted and interacted in the complex social and human relationships that took place around the telling of their stories.

 

 

In the Native American traditions, at a sacred fire the tobacco is offered to the four directions, the great prayer is said and the eagle feather is passed to each speaker who then is listened to in the telling of their story. Each story is original and unique to the teller who, in seeking wisdom from the link that the eagle feather represents to the creator, can open their heart and, for those who listen, the story can often become a teaching. I struggle with the correct form of language, as I am mindful that this is an academic scholarly gathering. By so being, the expected rights of passage include the use of certain high English and educational technical language, complex engagement with words, and, of course, referencing and the clear citing of references.

 

As this is an oral presentation I have deliberately excluded from this story many of the cited references. (This paper has 30 cited references. Therefore the references are cited in brackets along with some textual analysis and comments. The full-text paper can found and downloaded from my home page and will be given at the end of this presentation).

 

The focus is on the story, its process and its learning. The academic authority, so loved by the western colonial mindset and so very different, I would argue, from the living authority of my own being as a writer and story teller, has, I suggest, no place in the telling of the story but rather in the later analysis of the claims or ensuing discussions that may arise from its telling. I am however mindful that one cannot sign up for a game of Rugby and decide to play football.

 

To assist this process of presenting an oral academic paper in keeping with my values as the narrator, combined with my requirements to write academically, I wish to use bracketing within the written text, as demonstrated by Ben Cunninghan in his PhD thesis (Cunningham, 1999) where he cites Manen’s (1990:175) use of bracketing as being to “bracket preconceptions, prejudgement, beliefs and biases.” Ben goes on to explain:

 

“that doesn't mean what I bracket is unimportant. No, it only means that I work on what is outside the brackets separately first. I distance myself from what is inside the brackets, temporarily, until I am satisfied that I have understood everything represented outside the brackets to the best of my ability. What is inside the brackets is based on my values. In bracketing them I don't forget about them completely. No, it's just that I've now got a device for keeping them at a distance while I examine the textual data in front of me. Later I can synthesise both that which emerges from my examination of the data and that which is within the brackets"

 

I wish to extend Ben's understanding by suggesting that bracketing allows more than one process to occur at the same time. By this I mean that the story and its telling is a living narrative grounded in the facts of the actual events. The emotions that such events evoke can often be very deeply felt, even if in the narrative I am referring to events that have passed. The emotions are in fact living and being experienced again in real time, that of the present telling. Bracketing allows the narrative to weave its oral pictures and the listeners’ engagement to focus on the listening. Bracketing also allows scholarship and academic rigour to be present in such a manner that the space for telling the story is not violated but rather is strengthened by the academic underpinning. This can be used in the application of rigour to the learning, and claims of the account can also show where I have tried to make sense of situations and events and circumstances using the skills of an academic researcher, nurse educator and Buddhist priest.

 

 

[ My use of narrative clearly follows the ideas of McClure (McClure, 1996): “I did this, then I did that involves making links backwards and forwards of a story which is, moreover, still in the telling. (It) involves a kind of retrospective search for the prospective significance of events and decisions. This continuous process of moving to the past to assess actions and learning to the filter the clarity of hindsight brings allows me to identify tensions that I have lived and experienced and through the application of analysis and learning change the embodied values of the experienced past into the actions of the present. Evidence of such changes and learning will hopefully be found as an altered future where I can identify by spiralling back to the past where I made the change.

 

 

 

Kearny (Kearney, 1984): “The structure of narrativity demonstrates that it is by trying to put an order on our past, by retelling and recounting what has been, that we acquire an identity. These two orientations - towards the future and towards the past - are not, however, incompatible” ]

 

Visual images can be confusing, and you may be asking yourselves, what is a baldheaded white guy doing dressed as a Buddhist priest, holding an Indian eagle feather?

 

The answer to that question lies in the telling of the story.

 

It may not be appropriate to describe my training in that tradition here and now, but if I hold in my heart the intent, then the space created in here with you will become sacred and hold twenty minutes of shared story.

 

My story is a self-reflective action research enquiry where I examine forms of my knowing and my claims to know, through the methodology of a critical enquiry relating to my reflective story.

 

 

My story represents a journey of several interwoven strands of my "I", those of soldier, nurse, Buddhist priest, teacher and researcher. I seek to pedagogise my knowing and claims to know through the introduction of a healing curriculum for nurse training at a Japanese university. This journey has been held up to critical examination, publication and reflection over an eight-year period of completing a Masters Degree in Education [(J. Adler-Collins, 1997, 1998a, 1998b, 1999a, 1999b, 1999c, 2000, 2003)] and an M.Phil to Ph.D transfer paper at Bath University in January of this year, with the projected completion of my thesis in January 2005.

 

I have chosen the medium of story to make explicit my values to you and show how traumatic life events [(JeKan Adler-Collins, 1996)] can be transcended, re-examined and turned to the positive through engaging with finding the values of my "I", looking at these values and transcending them in terms of creating my living educational theory. This journey was made into a documentary by the BBC.

Story is another way of representing action research without constraining it within the traditional prepositional form - there is no necessary logic of connectedness in story....

 

Carter (Carter, 1993) says that a story:

 

" is a theory of something, what we tell and how we tell it is a revelation of what we believe.... (stories are) products of a fundamentally interpretative process that is shaped by the moralistic impulses of the author and by narrative forces or requirement."

(Carter, 1993, p.9)

                                                                                                                       

In the telling of my story I engage with the educational issues of the day, focusing around research methodology, claims to know, representing forms of knowledge and scholarship, its validation and the tensions these issues bring into my research and practice. As part of the process I struggle with finding a form of knowledge and its representation which allows me to hold my fundamental values as a priest, nurse and educator within a colonial system with a consciousness that sees the advent of postcolonialism as an urgent requirement for the advancement of mankind.

 

I am mindful that while seeking academic accreditation for my life’s work the multiple strands of self are often brought into tension. The resolution of these tensions in the creation and expression of my living educational theory is the challenge I face in my story.

 

My story weaves a path of learning as I move into and out of phases of confusion and tension, towards a new understanding, changing and modifying my understanding of my "I" as a result of the learning and insights achieved.

 

The telling of this story is set within the changing shape and form of education policy and politics within academia, not just limited to my university in Japan but, I would suggest, the background swell of university education affects all universities based on the western model of knowledge. Such social formations are soon going to have to review what is and is not knowledge as they respond to the challenges presented by the new forms of knowledge represented by the evolving forms of new technology.

 

[In the Masters’ programme, extensive reading is needed, not just engaging with the accepted textbooks but also with up-to-date articles and publications, and internet sites that are rich in the fundamental cutting-edge issues of problems that teachers experience. There emerges a very different picture. Suddenly everything stops being so clear-cut as presented in the neat taught modules, and the student researcher has moved away from this imagery into the real world of educational research. It seems to have presented itself to me as a minefield of conflicting polarities pertaining to theories, methodology, the meaning of knowledge, etc., often being represented in quite aggressive language and as scathing denunciation of the other’s position, resulting in disagreement and disharmony.

 

Within educational circles this is known as the paradigm wars described by (Gage, 1989), and as (Schön, 1995) states:

“Introduction of the new scholarship into institutions of higher education means becoming involved in an epistemological battle. It is a battle of snails, proceeding so slowly that you have to look very carefully in order to see it going on. But it happens none the less”

 

(Donmoyer, 1996) writes:

“The fact is that ours is a field characterised by paradigm proliferation and, consequently, the sort of field in which there is little consensus about what research and scholarship are and what research, reporting and scholarly discourse should look like”

 

All these issues do not fill me, the student, with confidence in the very system through which I have passed. Forms of knowledge, which were taught to me as facts, now turn out to be a positional stance, based on the viewpoint of the accrediting tutor and establishment. I call into question the validity and correctness of this process, not only from a position of a student who funded his study by working part time and at night, but as a professional who questions the morality of this system. I am deeply conscious that I had a choice as to whether to enter this system and I honour the process of growth which has allowed me to even engage with these issues. I do, however, also acknowledge that I am angry and frustrated, as the system has, on the surface, encouraged me to think but now seems to control how I represent that thinking.]

 

It is against this backdrop of world events that I seek to introduce a new curriculum for the healing and enquiring nurse in a Japanese university.

 

 

And so to my story

 

I seem to be a lone voice as I seek to show that love as a methodology can bring about a new form of consciousness where every thing is seen through its filter of joyousness,

compassion and brotherhood. This way of seeing is not a form of blindness rather one that encompasses the capacity of humanity to inflict pain , suffering and cruelty to each other, their environment and resource. Rather it acknowledges the fallibility of the human process and at the same time embrace the hope of humanity to transcend this repeating cycle of inflicting pain suffering and cruelty by focusing on the good , the positive and the future of hopefulness

 

And so it could be said that my story is now a love story. It was not always so.

 

The early stages of this story are set in the darkness of human actions. These stages were based on my feelings resulting from my abandonment and lack of nurturing which had festered in me since the early days of my childhood. I now view the fact that I was orphaned and in care for all of my childhood not as the responsibility of my parents but the chance for me to choose my response to this fact. In honouring my parents for the gift they gave me of my life and accepting that they were the best parents that they could be in their circumstances, this released all the attachment of pain and anger, and the negative feelings I had felt since my early childhood. Once this abscess had been lanced, an understanding came to me, a feeling of great love and warmth pervaded my consciousness and I found that for the first time in my life I could love and honour my parents.

 

The difficulties of my childhood and early adolescent years, the physical and sexual abuse that took place, I carried as an emotional scar which forced a separation between my heart and emotional body. By emotional body I am referring to the concept that a holistic form of self is based on the harmonious integration of four bodies,. These being; the spiritual, the mental, the emotional and the physical. I carried this filter with me and can recognise the distorting effect it has had on my journey towards understanding the feeling of unconditional Love. By distorting I am meaning that all new emotions pass thorough the experiences of old ones and if the experience is an unconscious one then often the result will be a distortion of what you are feeling. Removal of the filter by understanding its cause can release ones emotions from the perceptions of the past enabling things to be reviewed in a different light of consciousness and understanding

 

This awakening came during my 100-day fast, on a mountain in Japan, where I was able to revisit all these areas of dis-ease and pain with a different insight and a filter of love and forgiveness (In Japanese this is called Di Ji Hi). For, in my heart, I had to find within myself the strength and compassion to forgive those who had violated me as an individual and a person. This implied forgiveness of those who had come in contact with my wounded psyche and, because of my inability to function in loving relationships, I was unable for many years to recognise the need and craving that I had for love and acceptance from others. I, in turn, was guilty of a form of ignorance and abuse and many were damaged by their contact with the wounded me. I needed not only to forgive those whom had violated me but perhaps a harder task I also forgive myself. His Holiness the Dalai Lama (The Dalai Lama & Chang, 2004) has spent his life as a living exemplar of the power and wisdom of forgiveness.

 

 

To get out of council care and avoid becoming a guest of Her Majesty’s pleasure, I took the Queen’s shilling at the age of 17½. I took to the army like a duck to water. It was great - food, money, and lot of guns to play with. Little did I know that I had just changed one form of institutional abuse for another. I served for 14 years and thoroughly enjoyed my military service. I was medically disabled out of the British Army in 1990 as a result of injuries I suffered and the accompanying sickness which caused a breakdown and hospitalisation in 1991. This was closely followed by the breakdown of my marriage and estrangement from my children by court order.

 

I was without a family or job, and was sick and in a wheelchair. Sick on all levels. I was in desperate need of a focus, and this was starkly provided by being informed that I had bone cancer. The shock of this presented me with a choice - do I do what the medics want or do I accept the disease and try to beat it? I chose the latter and finally, after lengthy periods in hospital and a long course of toxic drugs, I gave up and decided that if I was going to live I needed to heal myself. So started my journey into the murky waters of healing and complementary medicine.

 

On reflection I find it an interesting fact that the only doors open to me in terms of help in what was a very dark and difficult time for me came from people who were by choice or circumstance disadvantaged. The fascinating world of the giro, benefits and social services opened before me. This was a world that stood in stark contrast to my ex-military world of controlled violence and obedience. My friends and companions taught me the system, how to use it to survive, what to do, what to say. Needless to say their advice was sound and far more useful in terms of living than the moralising judgements passed by the helping organisations.

 

I moved to Glastonbury - the new age city of enlightenment which, legend has it, was founded by King Arthur of Camelot, (I was of course told that I was an incarnated member of the Round Table and duly initiated into several different ones!), grew the dreadlocks, learned the new age speak, and of course the compulsory Didgeridoo. I experienced many different groups and became well and truly messed up with strange healing groups, ideas and philosophies; from the Earth Goddess movement, controlled by 300lb spiritual Amazons who tried their best to covert me to a more spiritual understanding of my feminine energy, to bonding with male awareness group on the mountains of Wales, (recovering my masculinity from the Earth Goddess experience!), to being buried for ten days in some obscure Celtic ritual to attune to my native heritage from the dark bogs of Ireland. I went through the strange and rather disquieting experiences of the Occult, the covens and their rituals, through to the truly wonderful teachings of the Pagans and the not so wonderful antics of the Black Arts.

 

Yet throughout this time I found that there was a universal thread of love and compassion walking alongside the misery and despair, power and power abuse. I was at this time still too wounded and still too blind to see or to understand.

 

My healing began when I started work as a volunteer in a drug rehab centre. There I learned the severity and hopelessness of drug addiction and the destructive craving such dependency can bring. I witnessed the suffering of AIDS and Hepatitis at first hand. Strangely, my experiences in the children’s home stood me in good stead. For the abuse that addicts are subjected to is beyond words, as are the actions they will do or take to fuel their habits. It was at this time that I saw the pure goodness and unselfishness of those who have nothing, sharing and giving their all to someone who has even less.

 

Being touched by those whom society had cast out showed me that my life was a good one and I had little to complain about. I wanted to help, not to reach out in a middle class way or manner but to assist those who felt no hope in their humanness to reach out and find it. Many failed, many died both from the condition of their addition or the side effects or often, just out of sheer despair, ended their own lives. I stopped judging and prayed to the universe to give me strength and allow what was left of my time to be given in service to people as I was still seeking ways to live with and combat the diagnosis of bone cancer as I searched and trained in many different forms of healing. It was in Glastonbury that I first came across the positive impact that positive creative visualisation can have on health, in particular mental health. From those early days my interest, belief and skill has grown as I moved into the study of esoteric Buddhism in Japan.

 

 

 

In Glastonbury, I met a volunteer worker who was to become my future wife and we soon opened our own school and clinic in Bath City, United Kingdom.

 

Building our own school moved the lessons into a new arena - one of Education and Power, Education and State. It seemed to have little to do with knowledge and learning. I quickly realised that I was so very unprepared to meet these situations and determined to address this by improving my teaching skills and seeking academic accreditation for my course in healing theory and practice.

 

My educative journey started with my move into formal higher education and teacher training followed by a PGCE (FE) programme at Bath Spa College of Higher Education. This was awarded in 1995. I met in Dr Jack Whitehead an individual who was to become a friend and mentor to me, at Bath University in 1995 when I registered for the Masters Degree in Education. I was ordained as a Buddhist priest in Japan in December 1995, and in 1996 I documented for the BBC, in true Action Researcher tradition, the development of my spiritual insights during a 100-day fast in Japan (Adler-Collins &Pomeroy, 1998) by keeping a video diary. I was awarded my M.A. in education from the University of Bath in 2000. I moved to Japan in May 2000, registered for an M.Phil/Ph.D. degree at Bath in 2001 with Dr Jack Whitehead as my supervisor, and I was appointed assistant professor of nursing (mental health) at Fukuoka University in April 2003. I successfully passed my transfer paper, moving my research from M.Phil to Ph.D., in January 2004. If the universe allows it, I hope to submit my thesis in January 2005.

 

Educationally and empirically this brings my story up to date, but what is missing from the story are the other threads, the inside values and learning’s - those of the man, father, nurse, teacher, researcher and priest - as they continued to weave their own patterns of teachings, learning’s, conflicts and difficulties. The multiplicities of my many selves danced a somewhat hectic rhythm, one that was by no means woven in overall harmony and enlightenment.

 

Several intriguing question springs to mind at this point of the story:

 

“ How do I make my values explicit? Where do my values come from? and What standards of judgement do I use to hold them to account, to myself and to others?”

 

These last eight years of my story have been a sustained living educational enquiry into my practice and I would argue the practice of living my humanity, as I have moved from asking questions of the nature “How do I improve my practice as a teacher?”, as expounded by my friend and supervisor Jack Whitehead, to questions of my own such as “How do I know my values of Love and Loving are good and safe?”, “How can I improve my humanity and service to that humanity through a life of conscious living” and “ How can I show Love as a methodology?”

 

What was it that brought about this shift of focus in terms of the questions being asked?

 

My academic process was well under way with my completion of the Further Adult Education Teaching Certificate (FAETC) stages one and two, followed closely by my PGCE (Further Education). I was teaching at the local college on the City and Guilds 3251 Health Promotion course, I had learned what was required to teach within the system, and yet a niggling dis-ease tapped at my subconscious like an itch I could not scratch.

 

This itch became an all out rash when I started my Masters in Education at Bath University’s Department of Education. Sometimes in any story there is a meeting or event that has a huge impact on your life. One such meeting was with Jack Whitehead, a lecturer in the department of Education at Bath University. His thinking was an inspiration to me. Here was an academic, albeit at that time still struggling for formal acceptance within the university, telling me that my ideas and concerns were important and reflected directly on my practice. I was for the first time being told that Action Research would allow me to express what my concerns were in my practice and I could actually use “I” in my writing. I had struggled so much with the academic form of representation, particularly in Nursing publications, that required me to say meaningless statements such as the author believes, it is the opinion of the writer that! ,- rather than I believe, I think, I saw, I did and later I know.

 

The action research cycle indicates a spiral of events from reflection, planning, action and observation, reflecting again, revision of plan, and to new actions and new observations. (Whitehead, 1993) in his publication "The Growth of Educational Knowledge" introduces the concept of the "I" being central to this process. What does this mean? The "I"?

 

To me, this question of the "I" stopped me in my tracks, for in truth I did not really know who "I" was. This may seem a contradiction in terms, and indeed it is, and after several attempts at writing this presentation I was repeatedly brought back to the question of who "I" was.

 

I remember with affection the conversations we would have where we would agree the position of things and then I would move the players by introducing an experience that changed my thinking completely. The exasperation on my supervisor’s face was a picture to behold. It is only in later years as I reflect on the process of my learning that I can see that Jack held a safe educational space for me. I am mindful at this point of a poem by Apollinaire quoted by (Eisner, 1997) The poem is:

 

 

"Come to the edge," he said.

They said, "We are afraid."

"Come to the edge," he said.

They came.

He pushed them.

 

And they flew.

 

The above poem encapsulates the tensions I believe my tutor was experiencing as I was at this time preparing to undertake a life-threatening 100-day fast as part of my Priest training. Jack seemed anxious that there was a clear definition between the role of supervisor and my freedom of choice, as (Winter, 1998) describes, "to take risks."

 

I would amend the penultimate line of the above poem from "He pushed them" to "I chose to jump". I choose to accept personal responsibility for my actions. No-one in education has the right to push another into an abyss from where they may not have the ability, means or strength to come out.

 

The empowerment of self is to accept the full consequences of your actions. I chose to live on the edge, to see my new stars, to see my new seas, not only did I choose to see them but I chose to fly in my heavens and swim in my new seas. Through this I could celebrate the freedom of expressing my living educational theory in the living truth of my practice.

 

I went to Japan and completed my 100-day fast. This is another story for another time. Suffice to say the experience was life changing. I believe I had a near death out of body experience on day 75, received my mission and teachings and was sent back.

 

I feel it is necessary to try to explain or examine this point of abandonment because I became conscious of an awareness which was very subtle, almost tickling at my subconscious and this very act of abandonment posed a new question to me, Where am I in my essence of humanness? The definition of abyss: the primal chaos, bowels of the earth, lower world, bottomless or deep chasm (Oxford English Dictionary[J1] , 1978) failed to describe to my satisfaction where I was in time and space.

 

Some would describe this abyss as a place of darkness, for me it was anything but dark. At that particular time, empowering myself by giving myself permission to enter a state of abandonment, many of the constructs of who and what I supposed I was ceased to exist. Yet at the same time there seemed to be an inner core of me that was exposed by this very process of abandonment. This intrigued me and forced me to re-examine my understanding of self. Perhaps in my previous enquiries I was being self-limiting in trying to find a medium that fully and lovingly represented my core values and at the same time trying to explore the essence of me in relationship to the journey of my learning and ability to convey this learning to my students and peers?

 

It may seem simple now, but one almost felt like shouting 'Eureka!'. The idea started to take shape in the form of the question: perhaps we have multiple selves? Perhaps we exist in more than one time and space? I started to feel a tension building within me. As a nursing professional I have worked with people labelled as having mental disorders. I have survived my own personal experience of a nervous breakdown, and my incarceration and treatment. Was I now experiencing some psychotic episode or a fragmentation of self, was I now engaging with the concept of schizophrenia, would I allow fear to close down this avenue of enquiry? (Habermas, 1976) states that in testing the validity of an account it should be comprehensible, its propositional claims should be justified by evidence and its value base should be made explicit. How can I make such deep and personal insights comprehensible while at the same time struggling to form my own understanding and comprehension of these new insights? Where and how do I provide evidence of this process?

 

So many questions, so few answers!

 

Physically, the fast caused a lot of lasting problems; spiritually, it raised my consciousness to a new level. Such understanding was not to be without its costs. I returned to the UK a changed man. It was at this time I started to look at Western thinking and knowledge from a non-white gaze. What I saw caused me considerable dis-ease.

 

I needed to travel and see if what I was feeling was real or just a side effect from my fasting. To all intents and purposes, at that moment of abandonment it could be argued that you cease to exist. I experienced this during my 100-day fast. Having reached that state I experienced some very fundamental questions about who and what I am as a human being, but even these questions, which on the surface appear simple, draw the individual who seeks the answers into a minefield of unexplored or unresolved questions and emotions.

 

One of the most fundamental issues for me was the acknowledgement of colonialism, the part that it played in my life, my service to it by compliance through ignorance, and now my total abhorrence of any form of colonialism in any creed, colour or gender.

 

I dedicated my life to seeing with a colourless gaze rather than a gaze of whiteness or a gaze of blackness. This did not mean that I was not aware of the gaze of colour. Far from it. It just meant that in my life and my interactions I consciously chose to see all as part of our humanness, to see individuals as unique in their own light no matter what colour, creed or actions they held, professed or acted. I needed to abandon and unlearn many of the truths that held my western psyche together.

 

I am uncomfortable with subscribing to the postcolonial debate. Let me explain my discomfort. My understanding about colonialism is that it is alive and well. There is nothing 'Post' about it. I believe it needs to be addressed from the inside to transcend the cruelty of colonialism. In this I agree with Murray (2004) and wish to be clear that I am using his distinction between post-colonialism to mean after colonialism and postcolonial to mean enquiries that are engaging with existing colonial practices.

 

I was deeply surprised when I started to receive abusive communications from a forum member. I struggled to look for the teaching as this member was mentoring our forum. My surprise turned to dismay when I read the paper written by that member and that the attacks were on a personal level with language and selective manipulation of text . This process has brought home me the difficulty in trying to share with others your views and how such views can and often are misunderstood. It also reminded me of the Dalai Lama words on the practice of forgiveness.

 

“ to reduce hatred and other destructive emotions, you must develop their opposites – compassion and kindness”

 

(The Dalai Lama & Chang, 2004) p.73.

 

Murray acknowledges that as he expresses his passion for clarifying his own ideas he can wound others with his abusiveness and his harsh criticism. I have experienced this and wish to gently reflect on the words of Archbishop Tutu spoke at the Nobel laureates gathering in Oslo 2001:

 

“ In our country we speak of something called ubuuntu. When I praise you, the highest praise I can give you is saying, you have ubuntu- this person has what it takes to be a human being. This is a person who recognises that he exists only because others exist: a person is a person through other persons. When we say you have ubuntu, we mean you are gentle, you are compassionate, you are hospitable, you want to share, and you care about the welfare of others. This is because my humanity is caught in your humanity. So when I dehumanise others, whether I like it or not, inexorably, I dehumanize myself. For we can only be human, we can only be free together. To forgive is actually the best from of self interest.”

 

(The Dalai Lama & Chang, 2004) p69.

 

 

I am very unhappy about being forced or abused into adopting and issue solely based on race or an interpretation of race or the text of selected writers. Such a position is against my lived and held Buddhist values. Buddhists endeavour to seek a middle way by understanding from where humanity has come and in hope to where it is going. When I understand the issues involved, I will engage with the use of words in my understanding of them and may well use them with a different meaning. I hold the right to proceed with caution as I move to understand the issues that postcolonial/post-colonial scholars are raising. I am comfortable with my stance that I am anti-colonial, not just in my theory but in my every day conscious practice.

 

 

I think the following note of caution (Loomba, 1998) underpins my position so that I can in terms of transparency hold that I am being true to my values, my understanding and my desire to know and learn:

 

“A third result of the boom in postcolonial studies has been that essays by a handful of name-brand critics have become more important than the field itself - students feel the pressure to 'do' Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak or Homi Bhabha or to read only the very latest article. What Barbara Christian (1990) has called 'the race for theory' is detrimental to thinking about the area itself. It is the star system of the Western and particularly the United States academy that is partly responsible for this, and partly the nature of theoretical work itself, which can be intimidating and often self-referential. Thus although most students feel obliged to take some note of postcolonial theory, not all of them are inspired to be creative with it perhaps because they often lack expertise in colonial and postcolonial histories and cultures.” (Loomba, 1998, pp. xv-xvi).

 

[(Merton, 1965) quotes Laurens Van Der Post’s The Dark Eye in Africa where he refers to Western man being akin to a one eyed giant. “ Like a one eyed giant, bringing with him the characteristic split and blindness which were at once his strength, his torment, and his ruin. With his self-isolated and self scrutinizing individual mind, Western man was the master of concepts and abstractions. He was the King of quantity and the driver of those forces over which quantitative knowledge gave him supremacy without understanding. Because he ruled matter without understanding it, he faced his bodily self as an object which he could not comprehend though he could analyze and tamper with every part of it”(p.1).

 

Merton goes on to say that the West had science without wisdom and the East had wisdom without science. To my understanding, both were acting in a blindness of their respective visions. What was needed was the integration of both East and West in order to see with both eyes.

 

 

So back to my story;

 

With my new understandings and insights and a mounting feeling of disquiet, I have travelled extensively during the last eight years. I studied in Canada as a shaman and healer and worked in a medicine lodge performing traditional healing ceremonies. Eventually, after years of tests, I was given the Indian spirit name of Great White Bear, which I carried until it was changed to Sun Bear Child after a series of spiritual fasts, sweat lodges and prayers. What I saw in the Native American Indians was how much they had suffered and still are suffering from the coming of the White man to their land. The social and spiritual problems are huge, they are a people trying to find themselves and their own authentic voice. By no means an easy task when you have seen the systematic genocide of culture, and the language beliefs that are applied to an inferior race by one that deems itself to be superior.

 

What I also saw was that some still held the teachings, the stories and the wisdom of their race and the mindful way of living with nature and holding it in respect by treading lightly on the face of mother earth. Some had forgiven the White man as in the words of the Christian Bible, echoed in the speech by Martin Luther (King, 1981), Love in Action:

 

“ then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they do”. Luke 23:34 (p.39)

 

I turned next to Mexico and worked with the poor alongside the curranderos - wonderful healers rich in the history of the Indian people , a people whose lives are still being affected by Spanish colonialism, the Catholic Church and unbelievable poverty, dirt and disease. Here was a clear case of knowing without science. They survived on knowledge of the land and its plants and a mixture of faiths and beliefs from the different cultures that had invaded or conquered their lands. They lived with such passion for life and such vibrancy - something you do not see so often in over-civilised developed countries.

 

My training as a priest and in healing studies continued in Japan. It was in Japan in 1999 that a letter caught up with me. It was to be another life-changing event as it contained the divorce papers from my wife. Her mother had died and left considerable estates and fortunes which her advisors told her could be used by me to help build a hospice, which was our dream. Divorcing me before probate was granted as was the advice of her financial advisors took care of that possibility.

 

My story is a love story. I have had some great teachers. I returned to the UK, finished my Masters, settled my affairs in England and moved to Japan to study more as a Priest.

 

Because of the legal process in the UK relating to my divorce, I was again without a home or funds. So I walked the sacred paths of Buddhism in the mountains of Schikoku Island. I lived without money, shelter or food for one year. Living on what the Buddhists calls Ostei, the gift of giving, I worked as I walked by healing and praying. People would give me food and invite me into their homes. In the mountains I washed in rivers and did waterfall meditations. I found plenty of time to write, to research my beliefs and to see how the heart of Japan was so different from the colonial image that had been grafted onto it in the post-war era. For me, this time was a period of such peace and beauty, I walked with the tree spirits, the elementals, the hotoka (Buddha’s). I walked with my inner peace and harmony on a journey of joy and healing.

 

As luck would have it, I had submitted a paper to a Japanese journal while in England; this was published and I was invited to speak at a conference. It was at that conference that I meet my future Dean. She was so impressed with action research and healing that she invited me to join her university faculty. The only problem was that it would be another three years before it was built! I gladly accepted with a smile. Never thinking that events would turn out in such a manner, I did join her staff.

 

I re-entered the temple for formal training in Tagawa City and did my second 100-day fast, priest Gyo in Japan this is selected tasks of spiritual significance and I served in the temple as second head Priest. I saw a different side of Japan through the eyes of a priest and was privileged to see the private Japan, one so very different from what the west sees. After my training was finished I moved to Kumamoto City and opened a small healing school and clinic with the help of a friend. We soon had a successful business going and I was able to develop more of the healing curriculum I had first started all those years ago in England. I registered for my M.Phil /Ph.D at Bath University to continue my education, as I had seen the value of education when balanced with an open heart and consciousness. I just loved studying!

 

In 2001 I received a formal invitation to apply for a position at Fukuoka Prefectural University’s new faculty of Nursing. Over the next two years I met the full force of the western model of knowing under the control of the medical model. I battled in meeting after meeting for the healing curriculum. It was only thanks to the training I had been given in the MA in Education at Bath that I could hold my own in terms of educational structure, and in the end win through when the Japanese Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health accepted my curriculum and I was appointed to the university in 2003 as the first healing teacher in a Japanese university.

 

To those who have studied for their PhD, the writing up of the process in some form of academic sense is often a challenge and very frustrating. So it was with my own research. It was at this time that my supervisor, on a visit to Japan, introduced me to the work of Bernstein and his theory of pedagogy. We have a beautiful clip of his enthusiastic endorsement of Bernstein’s work and my less than enthusiastic receipt of the pearls of wisdom.

 

I think it is fair to say that Bernstein’s theory’s (Bernstein, 2000) are difficult to understand, in particular his language of pedagogy. I did eventually see a way by which I could bring in my understandings and values to the academy. For me, the secret lay in understanding the codes and coding of the different types of pedagogy. The challenge was the rewriting, presentation and living of the new codes without becoming a living contradiction and negating my life values in my living practice.

 

As Bernstein’s ideas have become important to my research and to my story, it would be useful at this stage just to visit some of them and their meanings, in what at first seems like learning a new language, and to ask the question:

 

“How appropriate is Bernstein’s theory in representing my work?”

 

In the next part of my story I draw heavily on a personal communication from Jack (Whitehead, 2002), as he flew back to the UK after his supervisory visit. It has taken two years for me to be able to understand his enthusiasm and get on the inside of what he meant.

 

Bernstein says:

 

Pedagogy is a sustained process whereby somebody acquires new forms or develops existing forms of conduct, knowledge, practice and criteria from somebody or something deemed to be an appropriate provider and evaluator - appropriate either from the point of view of the acquirer or by some other body or both.

 

Bernstein distinguishes between institutional pedagogy and segmented pedagogy, and says that what is of interest lies in the interactional consequences of the relation between institutional and segmental pedagogies. Bernstein says that:

 

Institutional pedagogy is carried out in official sites (state, religious, communal), usually with accredited providers.

 

Segmented pedagogy is carried out usually in the face-to-face relations of everyday experience and practice by informal providers. A segmented pedagogy may be tacitly or explicitly transmitted and the provider may not be aware a transmission has taken place. Unlike institutional pedagogy, the segmented pedagogic process may be no longer than the context of the segment in which it is enacted.

 

Pedagogic relations - When Bernstein talks about pedagogy he is referring to pedagogic relations that shape pedagogic communications and their relevant contexts. He distinguishes three basic forms of pedagogic relation. They are:

 

Explicit, progressive in time, a pedagogic relation where there is a purpose, an intention to initiate, modify, develop or change knowledge and conduct of practice, by someone or something that already possesses, or has access to, the necessary resources and the means of evaluating the acquisition.

 

Implicit

1. 1.         [Implied or understood though not directly expressed: an implicit agreement not to raise the touchy subject.
2. 2.         Contained in the nature of something though not readily apparent: “Frustration is implicit in any attempt to express the deepest self” (Patricia Hampl).
3. 3.         Having no doubts or reservations; unquestioning: implicit trust.]

 

By explicit and implicit he means the acquirer may or may not define the relation as legitimate, or accept as otherwise what is to be acquired. Explicit or implicit refers to the visibility of the transmitter's intention as to what is to be acquired from the point of view of the acquirer. In the case of explicit pedagogy the intention is highly visible, whereas in the case of implicit pedagogy the intention from the point of view of the acquirer is invisible.

 

I am mindful at this point that in the design, introduction and implementation of the healing course I had consciously built into the curriculum explicit forms of knowledge as expected by the establishment. This knowledge took the form of education learning outcomes that were grounded in western educational assessments. Examples would include Anatomy and Physiology, which are science-based and factual.

 

At the same time, the body of knowledge I held to be important for healing nurses, such as love, compassion, and caring, humane values, was definitely explicit from my conversations with the educative authorities about the value base of my course. What became clear at a future point was that two very different understandings were being held about the same conversations.

 

What is now becoming apparent, as I understand Bernstein’s ideas, is that the implicit understandings between myself and the establishment were very different in terms of what the pedagogic conversations were in relationship to values and understanding. This led to conflicts and tensions at a later date.

 

In the holding and teaching of my explicit values of a healing nurse, I had understood that the implicit values understood by the social formation were the same as my own. In that assumption I was mistaken.

 

It would seem to me that implicit forms of communication have a high degree of probability for misunderstanding, and the holder of power will often incline towards, and have the power to enforce, their understanding of the implicit agreement as being the correct one.

 

Tacit

1. 1.         [Not spoken: indicated tacit approval by smiling and winking.
2. 2.          
1. a.          Implied by or inferred from actions or statements: Management has given its tacit approval to the plan.
2. b.         Law. Arising by operation of the law rather than through direct expression.
3. 3.         Archaic. Not speaking; silent. ]

 

This is a pedagogic relation where initiation, modification, development or change of knowledge, conduct or practice occurs, and where neither of the members may be aware of it. Here the meanings are non-linguistic, condensed and context dependent; a pure restricted code relay.

 

It would seem therefore that of the three forms of pedagogic relation, two of them - the implicit and the tacit - offer considerable potential for miscommunication and mis understanding.

 

Identifying what relationships exist within any conversation would be of prime importance in communicating correctly and understandably between all parties engaged in the pedagogic discourse.

 

Pedagogic Modelling

 

Primary pedagogic mode of modelling

Here Bernstein means primary in the sense of time and also primary in the sense of durability. This primary modelling is where both transmitter and acquirer are unaware of a pedagogic relation.

 

Secondary modelling is a deliberate and purposive relation only for the acquirer. So, in relation to my intent to pedagogise my knowledge of Bernstein's ideas in this presentation, I am engaging in secondary modelling. By this I mean that I am engaged in a deliberate and purposive relation so as to understand and use his language of pedagogy in a way that he would recognise as a valid representation of his ideas in my own pedagogy practice in this text.

How then do I transform my knowledge into a pedagogic process?

 

This is achieved by use of the pedagogic device.

 

A pedagogic device is a general principle underlying the transformation of knowledge into pedagogic communication. Bernstein distinguishes between a relay and the relayed. He is particularly interested in what constitutes the relay.

 

 

Jack asked a question which I believe is highly relevant to my own thinking:

 

“Why am I committed to exploring the significance of the pedagogisation of knowledge in taking forward my own life of enquiry?”

 

Jack answers:

“If I am right, that the validation and legitimation of living educational theories in the academy have established a new disciplined approach to educational theory, then I am justified in seeking to extend their influence in the education of individuals and of social formations. The feeling that I am right in attaching such motivating values to the creation and testing of living educational theories is connected to my belief that these theories explain the lives of individuals in learning to live values of humanity and that they can provide a learning resource for others who are engaged in similar life enhancing enquiries. Hence my desire to understand better the relays in the pedagogisation of knowledge as I seek to extend the influence of living educational theories in the education of social formations.”(p.3)

 

Bernstein compares what he calls the language device and the pedagogic device in terms of three rules of the pedagogic device. These are a distributive rule, a recontextualising rule and evaluative rule. He says that these rules themselves stand in particular hierarchical and power relationships to each other. Recontextualising rules are derived from the distributive rules. Evaluative rules are derived from the recontextualising rules.

 

As with any rules they deserve a closer scrutiny:

 

Distributive rules regulate the relationships between power, social groups, forms of consciousness and practice. Distributive rules specialise forms of knowledge, forms of consciousness and forms of practice to social groups. Distributive rules distribute forms of consciousness through distributing different forms of knowledge. So, the distributive rules of the pedagogic device can be used to recognise and realise the pedagogising of healing nurses' knowledge. They can also be used to deny this recognition and realisation.

 

It was here, in the distributive rules, that I became consciously aware that colonial influences were being brought to bear on my course here in Japan. These took the form of “Science is best, empirical evidence is the only reliable form of evidence”. The Medical model, and those who subscribed to it, held the power position to enforce the accepted RD (regulative discourse).

 

It is therefore easy to see that different and conflicting consciousnesses can be held. So while acknowledging that such devices exist, they are not helpful in moving the understanding to a single discourse.

 

I am of the mind at this point to question “Is such a move even desirable?” Perhaps the tensions identified so far are needed to move things on, so to speak. Conformity would give rise to a dominant unchallenged view, soon to become dogmatic and easily draconian in terms of power. This is a pattern we see repeated in many forms of colonialism with dire results for all involved. Seeing the tensions and the areas where they occur can show us where we have room for “exchange” and modification. To that end, understanding the pedagogic devices offers a clear reference point for identifying tensions for future analysis and resolution.

 

The recontexualising rules regulate the formation of specific pedagogic discourse. So in relation to the knowledge embodied in the living theory theses and dissertations in actionresearch.net, the recontextualising rules pedagogise this knowledge into pedagogic communication. The recontexualising rules can also be used to eliminate this knowledge from pedagogic practice and discourse.

 

The evaluative rules constitute any pedagogic practice and that any specific pedagogic practice is there for one purpose, to transmit criteria. For Bernstein, pedagogic practice produces a rule for consciousness (p.28).

The pedagogic device provides the intrinsic grammar of pedagogic discourse (i.e. grammar in a metaphoric sense).

 

Pedagogic discourse is a rule that embeds two discourses; a discourse of skills of various kinds and their relations to each other, and a discourse of social order. He calls the discourse that creates specialised skills and their relationships to each other instructional discourse (ID), and the moral discourse that creates order, relation and identity is termed regulative discourse (RD). He uses the formula ID/RD to show that the instructional discourse is embedded in the regulative discourse, and that the regulative discourse is the dominant discourse. Pedagogic discourse is the rule that leads to the embedding of one discourse in another, to create one text, to create one discourse.

 

This point raises another tension that I have seen in action in the course of my working with the university in Fukuoka . If the formula ID/RD is applied to personal pedagogic conversations relating to practice, this can give rise to the generation of our epistemological living educational theory accounts. When the formula is applied to pedagogic conversations within the social formation, a new set of communications occurs. Tensions arise when the social establishment needs the ID but holds a different RD. The creation of one discourse can lead to and often is at the negation of the voice of the other.

 

Because of this I agree with Bernstein’s position, where he points out that most researchers often make a distinction between what they call the transmission of skills and the transmission of values. For Bernstein there is only one discourse, not two (p.32). He sharpens the concept of the principle which constitutes pedagogic discourse, by suggesting, formally, that pedagogic discourse is a recontexualising principle:

 

 

“Pedagogic discourse is constructed by a recontextualising principle which selectively appropriates, relocates, refocuses and relates other discourses to constitute its own order. In this sense, pedagogic discourse can never be identified with any of the discourses it has recontextualised.” (p. 33).

 

I find `this is problematic. By problematic, I am thinking of how Bernstein says that:

“ to know whose voice is speaking is the beginning of one’s own voice” (p.xxv).

 

I freely acknowledge that it could be the filters of my own living ontological values that I hold as a Buddhist Priest that are causing my dis-ease. It remains however my understanding that Bernstein has provided a useful tool for analysis of a system that can be and is colonised in terms of power with the social formations.

 

This dis-ease is heightened when I engage with his concepts of classification and framing. Bernstein states:

 

“Classification establishes voice, and framing establishes the message, and they can vary independently. There is more than one message for carrying any one voice. Different modalities of communication can establish the same voice: - different modalities of framing can relay the same voice or identity (p.12).”

 

In this important statement I see the full potential for colonisation and power controls. The mere act of classification means that someone has the power to classify and the ability to police that classification. In the terrible times of apartheid in South Africa, the state had the power to classify according to colour. History has born witness to the misery that has caused. (King, 1981; Mandela, 1995; Merton, 1965). The voice of the state is used in many forms of communication as propaganda, the dominant message being that of the dominant political party. History is full of the abuse of such methods.

 

The importance of the framing of the message should not be underestimated. It is also an act of consciousness to be aware of such framings and who is doing the framing. In this case scenario I agree that we can find our own voice by seeking consciously to filter out the messages of others from our words, thoughts and deeds. Individual living educational theory accounts of educational practitioners, generated by conscious thinking, critical analysis and rigour of actions and accounts can make good use of Bernstein’s model as a platform for analysis. Such accounts would be the first step for a voice against the colonial power base of our education system today. Such accounts take into account the useful insights of Bernstein’s modelling including its rigidity by extending them to include loving, conscious engagement and understanding of his codes, grounded in actual accounts of practice.

 

Such accounts also offer us an understanding of how to transcend the codified power relationships. I think that Bernstein would agree with this statement as he highlighted his similar concerns where he acknowledges:

“ that these rules are not ideologically free and are essentially implicated in the distribution of, and constraints upon, the various forms of consciousness”.

 

He continues:

“ that while both the language device and the pedagogic device become sites for appropriate conflict and control, there is a crucial difference between them. In the case of the pedagogic device, but not in the case of the language device, it is possible to have an outcome, a form of communication which can subvert the fundamental rules of the device (p.28).

 

In relation to the pedagogising of my healing nurse texts, the distributive rules are significant because they distinguish between two different classes of knowledge. Bernstein believes that it is the very nature of language that makes these two classes of knowledge possible. He terms them the thinkable class and the unthinkable class (p.30). He believes that there is a potential discourse gap between these two classes and stresses that it is not a dislocation of meaning, but it is a gap. I would like to focus on this gap, which I will refer to as the primordial gap. I am using this term in the context that the gap that exists between the two classes has the potential for originality of mind.

 

For example, according to science (thinkable class), healing is firmly in the unthinkable class, consequently all the forces and power available to the thinkable class in terms of voice, validity and distribution are brought to bear in order to negate, silence or control. The answer, as I understand it, is the primordial gap.

 

Understanding this primordial gap is particularly important for attempts to pedagogise knowledge. This is because any distribution of power will attempt to regulate the realisation of this potential discourse gap between the thinkable and unthinkable knowledge.

 

Bernstein believes that part of the reason why the rules of the pedagogic device are stable is that this gap will always be regulated. He points out that any distribution of power will regulate the potential of this gap in its own interest, because the gap itself has the possibility of an alternative order, an alternative society, and an alternative power relation (p.30).

 

In developing my own ideas of the primordial gap I am mindful of the issues of stability in relation to colonial forms of knowing. In the move to reduce the damaging aspects of colonial thinking and seeing with a colourless gaze, as is my Buddhist teaching, it is important to examine Bernstein’s work for what is, in effect an excellent critique and analysis of colonial workings. This limits the use of his work in terms of his understandings but offers a sound analytical framework for analysing the colonial system of knowing and its power relationships.

 

The advent of self studies thesis emerging around the world shows that, when ready, Living Educational Theories do influence social formations. The hold that any distribution of power has on controlling the primordial gap is influenced by context. But for those of us on the edge, in Apollinaire’s sense, we keenly feel the negations of our values. It is, however, as we emerge from the primordial gap with new forms of knowing and understanding that we can offer hope for the future.

 

Living Educational Theories are spawned, born and nurtured in this primordial gap, a sort of black hole out side of the control of the educative space. The formula of ID/RD flourishes in the primordial gap when applied to self study narratives. The tension already mentioned between self ID/RD and establishment ID/RD means that the primordial gap, rather than being seen as a gap is in fact a mechanism for inclusionality along the lines of Alan Rayner’s (Rayner, 1997) understanding that all things are connected.

 

Jack puts it most eloquently in his letter to me:

 

“In relation to the pedagogising of healing nurse texts, power relations distribute the unthinkable and the thinkable. They differentiate and stratify groups through the distributive rules. Sociologically speaking, the distributive rules in medicine have created a specialised field of production of pedagogic discourse, with specialised rules of access and specialised power controls that are serving, at present, to eliminate the pedagogisation of the knowledge of the healing nurse through the pedagogic device of the present nursing curriculum in the Academy.”

 

Finally, what would strengthen and extend Bernstein’s model would be the inclusion of what I would call Holonic discourse. I draw upon Ken Wilber’s (Wilber, 2000) understanding of the holon being something that is whole and yet part of something else. Holonic discourse could in effect act as a bridge between thinkable and unthinkable classes and the primordial gap. What emerges is complete within itself but extending beyond the sum of all that contributed to its being. Having such a discourse would create a Holonic space - one that would hold in constrained disagreement new knowledge, ideas and understanding. Such a space would allow concepts, ideas and knowledge to emerge from the primordial space in safety and not be negated at their conception.

 

I have found it very valuable to draw on insights achieved through critical engagement with accounts of my own learning through my lifelong educational journey. Bernstein has offered me a tool for engaging with the complex issues of education and power structures in a social formation grounded in a colonial structure. As I pedagogise my forms of knowing I can see the areas of tension for what they are. In relationship to my Buddhist practice, I can step back from emotional involvement and attachment and focus on my ontological values of love and compassion in relationship to the living epistemological standards in the accounts of my learning. Through this process of the journey and the evolvement of my continuing story and the moving of my ideas and concepts to wider forums such as this international meeting of BERA and others, I can test the validity of my claims to know and extend my understanding to a new level.

 

My story is unfinished and still remains a love story, a journey of learning and understanding as I move through the whole spectrum of human emotions and feelings. I hope that in the hearing of my story you will have found something worth remembering that will enrich you in some small way. I look forward to listening to your stories and perhaps, at a place in a future time, sharing another.

 

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