Title:

How are we contributing to a new scholarship of educational enquiry through our pedagogisation of postcolonial living educational theories in the Academy?

Authors & affiliations:

Paulus Murray – Royal Agricultural College, UK

Sarah Fletcher – University of Bath, UK - WITHDRAWN

Je Kan Adler-Collins – Fukuoka University, Japan

Jack Whitehead – University of Bath, UK

Abstract:
(Your abstract must use Normal style and must fit in this space)

In our practitioner-research in higher education we have been influenced by Schon’s (1995) call for the development of a new epistemology for the new scholarship. In contributing to this epistemology we will focusing on the communicability of our living standards of judgement, our units of appraisal and our living logics of educational enquiry. While we recognise our uniqueness in who we are and what we are doing as individuals influenced by Islamic, Christian, Buddhist and Humanistic values and beliefs we also recognise and experience an inclusional (Rayner, 2002) flow of life-affirming energy from each other. We each experience this energy differently in the expression of our embodied, spiritual and other values and recognise a desire in each other to work with each other's inclusional ways of being.

Researching our educational practices in Japan, Ireland and the UK we will show how we have transformed the embodied educational values in our educational relationships, into the living, epistemological standards of judgement we use in explaining both our own learning and in explaining our educational influence with those we teach. We will also explain how, in our pedagogisation (Bernstein, 2000) of living educational theories (Whitehead, 1989) within our Academies, we have contributed to the education of these social formations. The explanations will show the significance of a determination to persist in transcending some of the pressures that can push individuals to submit to the reproduction of an existing social formation when living educational values more fully requires a social transformation. Evidence from research into our own educational practices shows that we each are working with the post-colonial intention of not imposing our own values and beliefs on those of others, but of working with the intention of bringing those values that carry hope for humanity more fully into the world and stemming the flow of those values that do not carry such hope.

With evidence of our use of ICT in our pedagogy we will examine to what extent we are acting locally and influencing globally in the development of a new scholarship of educational enquiry through the pedagogisation of postcolonial living educational theories (Murray, 2004) in the Academy.

Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity. Lanham; Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Murray, P. (2004) How do I, a mixed race educator, contribute to a postcolonial present and future through talking, writing and acting my postcoloniality: Performing my Mixed-Race Educative Practice in White Spaces. Retrieved on 13^th March 2004 from http://www.royagcol.ac.uk/~paul_murray/Documents/How do I.doc

Rayner, A (2002) The Formation and Transformation of Anticulture - From 'Survival of the Fittest' to 'Thrival of the Fitting' Retrieved 19 May, 2003, from http://www.bath.ac.uk/~bssadmr/inclusionality/anticulture.htm

Schon, D. (1995) The New Scholarship Requires a New Epistemology. Change, Nov./Dec. 1995 27 (6) pp. 27-34.

Whitehead, J. (1989) Creating a living educational theory from questions of the kind, 'How do I improve my practice?' Cambridge Journal of Education, Vol. 19, No.1,1989, pp. 41-52

Title:

Proposal Title - How is my inclusive, postcolonial living educational theory and spirit in Ubuntu influencing my own education, the education of those I teach and the social formation in which I work? Actual Title - Speaking in a Chain of Voices ~ crafting a story of how I am contributing to the creation of my postcolonial living educational theory through a self study of my practice as a scholar-educator,

Authors & affiliations:

Paulus Murray, Royal Agricultural College.

Abstract:
(Your abstract must use Normal style and must fit in this space)

I am a professional educator and practitioner-researcher who is exploring the implications for his teaching of fusing Critical Organization Theory with Living Educational Theory. I have chosen to give expression to this research into my educational life as a practice and narrative of self-reflective inquiry.

This presentation is focused on my learning as I lead a postgraduate Action Masters course and exercise and develop my living educational standards of judgement. These living standards are grounded in my embodied knowledge of the loving spirit of Ubuntu.

Being an educator and researcher who self-designates as ‘Mixed Race’ means that I am one of those very rare teachers in British higher education whose ontological development and epistemological interests have emerged from a dialectical experience within a Whiteness-centred society (Ifekwunigwe, 1998).

In this presentation I will explain how I problematise ‘Whiteness’ in my educational practice and clarify the embodied values that flow through my experience of performing my ‘Mixed-Race’ identity with the spirit of Ubuntu. I will be seeking to show that this clarification of my embodied values transforms them into living and communicable standards of judgement that can be used in the pedagogisation of inclusive, postcolonial living educational theories in the Academy.

Ifekwunigwe, J. (1998) Scattered Belongings: Cultural Paradoxes of "Race," Nation and Gender. London: Routledge

Title:

How are my embodied values within my educational multiplicity as a professional educator influencing and influenced by my practice? WITHDRAWN

Authors & affiliations:

Sarah Fletcher, University of Bath

Abstract:
(Your abstract must use Normal style and must fit in this space)

I study my practice as a professional educator from 1973-2004 to gain insights into my influence on others’ learning and theirs on mine. In my publications (Fletcher, 1978, 2000, 2002a) I recognise a multiplicity of strands with cross fertilisatory progression, which approximate to my educational life as a teacher, mentor and researcher. I term these multiplicities ‘selves’ after Day (1997) and distinguish these from ascribed ‘roles’. Through video (Fletcher, 2002b) I can see that I unconsciously embody distinct and different professional values in my multiplicities while I consciously enact different roles.

Seeing educational potential in my tri-multiplicity, I began to develop my capacity to pedagogise my living theories, realising I could transform the execution of my assigned roles within the Academy by living my multiplicity as experiential enquiry. In asking questions of the kind, How can I improve my practice? (Whitehead, 1989) I began to integrate consciously professional knowledge, skills and values (Standard for ITE, 2002) within my multiplicity and use these as a framework to improve my own and others’ learning. This has brought me to confront an imposition of educationally inappropriate roles as a lecturer with disablement and threatened to deny educational values I embody, notably my emancipatory educational value of ‘nurturing courage to be’ (Tillich, 1952). Through my contribution, I account for how I continue to strive to live my core values.

Day, C. (1997) Working with the Different Selves of Teachers: beyond Comfortable Collaboration in Hollingsworth, S. (1997) International Action Research, Falmer Press, London

Fletcher, S.J. (1978) Bien Joué, French Teaching Games, London, E.J.Arnold

Fletcher, S. (2000) Mentoring in Schools: A Handbook for Good Practice, Kogan Page, London.

Fletcher, S.J. (2002a) Ethics, Values and Validity, a paper presented to the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans as part of a symposium convened by Feldman, A. March 2002

Fletcher, S.J. (2002b) ‘Improving mentoring with action research and digital video technology’ Links Bulletin 25, pp. 25-26 London, Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research

The Standard for Initial Teacher Education in Scotland accessed at www.qaa.ac.uk. 28 February 2004

Tillich, P. (1952) The Courage to Be.

Whitehead, J. (1989) Creating a Living Educational Theory from Questions of the

Kind, How Do I Improve My Practice? Cambridge Journal of Education, 19 (1) 41-52

Title:

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?

Authors & affiliations:

Je Kan Adler-Collins, Fukuoka University

Abstract:
(Your abstract must use Normal style and must fit in this space)

The cultural context of my question is the Faculty of Nursing at Fukuoka Prefectural University in Japan. The history, economics and politics of this social context are important to my enquiry as I am seeking to influence the education and the social formation of a new faculty of nursing through the design and pedagogisation (Bernstein, 2000) of a curriculum for healing and enquiry nurses. This is a context for my own learning as I ask, research and answer the question, 'How am I developing a curriculum and pedagogy for healing and enquiring nurses in living my life of learning in educational enquiry?'

The research context is focused on my knowledge-creation as I seek to contribute to the development of a new epistemology for a new scholarship of educational enquiry (Adler-Collins, 2000) for healing nurses. The development of this epistemology will be studied as part of the process through which the embodied knowledge of nursing practitioners is validated and legitimated in the Academy. This will involve the clarification of the embodied values in the process of their emergence in nursing practice. It will also involve the clarification of my own embodied values and knowledge as I design and pedagogise a curriculum for the healing and enquiring nurse. In the process of this clarification, the embodied values and knowledge will become transformed into living educational standards of judgment and practice that can be used to evaluate the validity of my knowledge claims.

Adler-Collins, J. (2000) A scholarship of enquiry. M.A. dissertation, University of Bath. Retrieved on 14 March 2004 from http://www.actionresearch.net/jekan.shtml

Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity. Lanham; Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Title:

Do the values and living logics I express in my educational relationships carry the hope of Ubuntu for the future of humanity?

Authors & affiliations:

Jack Whitehead, University of Bath

Abstract:
(Your abstract must use Normal style and must fit in this space)

Since coming to the University of Bath in 1973 I have sustained a commitment to contribute to the regeneration and testing of educational theories that included the embodied values, or practical principles, of educational practitioners. To distinguish these educational theories from other theories I have called them living educational theories. This idea of living theories connects with a question asked by the Soviet Logician, Eduard Ilyenkov (1977) in his book on dialectical logic when he asked, if an object exists as a living contradiction what must the thought be (statement about the object) that expresses it. The significance of the question about the nature of the thought that can express living contradictions in language can be appreciated in the light of Karl Popper’s rejection of theories that contain contradictions between statements (Popper 1963, p. 317).

Because I see an educational theory as an explanation of the educational influence of individuals and social formations that includes learning to live values more fully, I attach great importance to those values that appear to me to carry hope for the future of humanity. In my research I have previously demonstrated the possibility that practitioner-researchers can gain academic legitimation for doctoral and other self-studies of their own embodied knowledges, practices and influences in the education of themselves and others (Whitehead, 2004). My present interest in the education of social formations arises from a continuing desire to extend the educational influence of living educational theories to the organisation, reproduction and transformation of social formations.

In seeking to extend this influence I am introducing three new ideas into my research from the work of others. The first is the experience and meaning of Ubuntu (Murithi, 2001) The second is that of making the possible, probable (Joan Whitehead, 2003). The third idea, 'living inclusional logic', owes much to Alan Rayner’s work on inclusionality and on dynamic relationships and boundaries (Rayner, 2002).

Ilyenkov, E. (1977) Dialectical Logic. Moscow, Progress Publishers.

Murithi, T. (2001) Practical Peacemaking in Africa: Reflections on Ubuntu. Retrieved 13 March 2004 from http://www.actionresearch.net//monday/Ubuntu.htm

Popper, K. (1963) Conjectures and Refutations, Oxford, O.U.P.

Rayner, A (2002) The Formation and Transformation of Anticulture - From 'Survival of the Fittest' to 'Thrival of the Fitting' Retrieved 19 May, 2003, from http://www.bath.ac.uk/~bssadmr/inclusionality/anticulture.htm

Whitehead, J. (2004) What counts as evidence in self-studies of teacher education practices? In Loughran, J. & Russell, T.(eds,) The International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching Practice. Netherlands; Kluwer academic publishers (in press)

Whitehead, Joan (2003) The Future of Teaching and Teaching in the Future: a vision of the future of the profession of teaching - Making the Possible Probable. Retrieved 13 March 2004 from http://www.actionresearch.net/evol/joanw_files/joanw.htm