Combining Voices
In Living Educational Theories That Are Freely Given In Teacher Research
Jack Whitehead, Department of Education,
University of Bath, UK.
Notes for the Keynote
presentation for the International Conference of Teacher Research on Combining
Voices in Teacher Research, New York, 28 March 2008.
Accessible
from http://www.jackwhitehead.com/aerictr08/jwictr08key.htm
Abstract
In this keynote
I want to share four ideas that may be helpful in combining our voices as
teacher-researchers in order to extend our educational influence.
The first idea
is that multi-media forms of representation are enabling teacher-researchers to
represent and understand qualities of recognition in their educational
relationships with their students. I am thinking of educational relationships
that flow with a life affirming energy and a relationally dynamic awareness that tend to be masked or
omitted from much writing on education and about educational research.
The second idea
is that we can generate our living educational theories as explanations of our
educational influences in our own learning, in the learning of others and in
the learning of the social formations in which we live and work and offer them
as gifts to others.
The third idea
is that we can combine our voices in enhancing our educational influence
through producing and communicating our educational theories in the living
boundaries of cultures in resistance.
The fourth idea
is that while we live with the relationally dynamic awareness of space and
boundaries that Rayner (2004) refers to as inclusionality, our present ways of
representing our educational knowledge in the propositional and dialectical
theories legitimated in the Academy and in established and renowned
internationally refereed journals tend to mask this relationally dynamic
awareness. They also mask or omit the educational significance of our flows of
life-affirming energy.
Multi-media
narratives of living educational theories are shown to reveal the meanings of
such flows of energy and values. When combined in the living boundaries of
cultures in resistance they can be a transformatory influence in educational
change.
Introduction:
I want to begin
by thanking the organising committee of the 2008 ICTR conference for this
opportunity to explore some implications of ideas on combining voices in living
educational theories, in teacher-research.
Since beginning
my first teacher-research into my classroom practice for my masters degree in
1970 and attending my first ICTR conference in San Francisco in 1992 I have
been delighted by the global growth of the influence of teacher-research as a
form of professional development and as a way of helping pupils and students to
improve their learning. I have also been most impressed by the contributions to
educational knowledge generated by teacher-researchers. I am thinking here of
contributions to transforming understandings of educational theory and to
generating the new epistemology for educational knowledge as advocated by
Donald Schon (1995). I am also grateful
for this opportunity to develop further the ideas in the 2005 Keynote at ICTR
at McGill University on 'How Can We Improve The
Educational Influences Of Our Teacher-Researcher Quests?' (http://www.jackwhitehead.com/ictr05/jwictr05key.htm
)
In this 2008
keynote I want to emphasise the importance of teacher-research for improving
educational practices, for improving the social contexts in which the
educational practices are located and for contributing to educational
knowledge. I believe that everyone is here today because of a desire to enhance
their understandings and to share their ideas on how teacher- research can help
to improve the educational experiences of students and contribute to the
creation of a better world. The
focus of my own research programme for the last 35 years
has been to find
ways of bringing the embodied knowledge of professional educators into the
Academy for accreditation and academic legitimation at the highest level
possible. This has involved
engaging with issues of appropriate value-laden standards of judgment,
appropriate methodologies, the politics of educational knowledge and
appropriate forms of representation for explanations of educational influences
in learning. I shall explore these issues in relation to the four ideas
below.
1)
Multi-media forms of representation of recognition, flows of life-affirming
energy and a relationally dynamic
awareness of space and boundaries.
I'd like to
begin with three video-clips from classrooms to show the qualities in
educational relationships that I want to see lived more fully in the world and
that I want to see expressed and represented in our combined voices as
teacher-researchers. The first
clip is from a classroom in China, the second from a classroom in Canada and
the third from a classroom in the UK. As I move the cursor quickly along the
first two clips I would like you to focus on the expression of mutual
recognition between pupils and teacher, the flow of life-affirming energy
between them and the relational dynamics in the space and living boundaries of
these educational spaces. It is these qualities that I am saying are masked or
omitted from most established and renowned internationally refereed journals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1jEOhxDGno http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvLyxLU1o3U
When I look at
writings about education and teacher-research in the academic research journals
I am struck by the gap between the relationally dynamic and energy flowing
values shown through the video-clips and the meanings that can be carried in
words on pages of paper. What I think
the video-clips highlight, are the relationally dynamic awarenesses of space
and boundaries that we can all recognise as living relationships in the
educational spaces we create with our students.
This next clip
is some four minutes long. It shows three six year olds and a teacher
reflecting on the use of the TASC wheel to help their learning. The TASC wheel
(Thinking Actively in a Social Context) emerged from Belle Wallace's (2000)
original research over some 19 years in Zwa Zulu Natal. It includes the action reflection
cycles used by action researchers.
Working with
their teacher, Joy Mounter, the six year olds in video-clip explain their use
of the TASC wheel and then offer suggestions for modifying the model so that it
becomes a 3D and dynamic model to represent their learning. Whilst working on a
masters unit on understanding learners and learning at the University of Bath
Joy explained to her pupils what she was doing at the University. She was
surprised by their responses as they wanted to know how she could do such a
thing without involving them as the learners. Joy agreed with her pupils and
worked with them in developing their understandings of learners and learning.
Here is a video-clip included in Joy's answer, with her pupils, to the
question, 'Can children carry out action research
about learning, creating their own learning theory?' (see http://www.jackwhitehead.com/tuesdayma/joymounterull.htm )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti4syOrIDdY
Joy has combined
her voice with her pupils in answering the question, 'Can
children carry out action research about learning, creating their own learning
theory?' In answering this
question Joy has also combined with her pupils in understanding the action
reflection cycles in the TASC wheel and in making creative responses to the
ideas of others.
In
showing you what teacher and pupil researchers are capable of I am aware of a
danger of engaging with you in sustaining what Bernstein (2000) calls a
mythological discourse. This is a kind of discourse that might appear to be
educationally transformatory but is actually serving to reproduce existing
social formations. It is reproductive because it does not transform the power
relations that are keeping in place existing hierarchical arrangements in
society.
I
now need to introduce the idea of cultures in resistance to focus on the
transformative and reproductive influences of teacher-research.
I want to
consider the possibility that we are conducting our teacher-research in the
living boundaries between a professional culture that can recognise the
educational qualities in the above clips and an academic culture that omits
these qualities in its forms of representation and theories.
I draw my understanding of culture from Said (1993)
when he writes:
First of all it means all those practices, like the
arts of description, communication, and representation, that have relative
autonomy from the economic, social, and political realms and that often exist
in aesthetic forms, one of whose principal aims is pleasure. Included, of
course, are both the popular stock of lore about distant parts of the world and
specialized knowledge available in such learned disciplines as ethnography,
historiography, philology, sociology, and literary history (Said, p. xii1993).
"By the 'living boundaries of cultures in
resistance' I am meaning that that there is something expressed in the boundary
sustained by one culture that is a direct challenge to something in the other
culture. For example, in education there is a political culture that has been
imposing a regime of testing in schools. There is a professional culture that
has been stressing the importance of creativity. There continues to be tensions
in the boundaries of these cultures..." (Whitehead,
2008a).
I was first
attracted to the idea of the teacher as researcher during my classroom research
into the growth of my pupils' scientific understanding, for my masters
dissertation (Whitehead, 1972). This introduction to the idea of the teacher as
researcher coincided with my recognition that the dominant culture of
educational theory was mistaken. The view in the dominant culture, known as the
disciplines approach, held that the explanations I gave for my educational
influences in learning were at best pragmatic maxims having a first crude
and superficial justification in practice that in any rationally developed
theory would be replaced by principles with more fundamental theoretical
justification (Hirst,
1983, p. 18).
I just want to
focus on the idea 'would be replaced' . What I find outrageous in the above statement is that the
explanations we produce as teacher-researchers from our practical experience,
and that we justify in terms of the results of our individual activities and
practices, would be replaced by
principles with more theoretical justifications from abstract forms of
rationality in the theories of traditional disciplines of education.
I believe that
many of you will have experienced the power relations in universities that
support the above move to replace your practical principles by those of
abstract rationality. I am thinking of the power relations that support only
abstract forms of conceptual reasoning in what counts as educational
knowledge. You can see these forms
of reasoning in the 2007 special issue of the International Journal of Research
and Method in Education:
"The analysis of what is scientific continues in
Wilf Carr's article. He argues that the assumption that educational research
should be seen as a form of social science is flawed and that it should be seen
rather as a species of practical science. Like Oancea, he draws on Aristotelian
concepts to argue that a practitioner acts educationally by acquiring an
ethical disposition to act in an educationally principled way. He suggests that
Gadamer's philosophy can guide us here by providing a model of 'science' which
is less reliant, or not reliant at all, on notions of method. For practical
science, reflectivity amongst practitioners is the key and it leads to a
conception of educational research starting from an understanding of what
education is (rather than what research is). Carr suggests that this kind of
research would no longer produce social scientific knowledge 'on' or 'about'
education but would develop self-knowledge amongst practitioners, enabling them
' to evaluate their practice on the basis of a coherent and clearly articulated
educational point of view'. Quality criteria for this kind of educational
research 'will not be the outcome of an abstract theoretical discussion about
the criteria themselves', but will be forged through an understanding of what
constitutes 'excellence' in educational research." (Thomas and Gorard, p. 239, 2007).
For me, the
problem with this form of reasoning is not that I do not agree with Carr's
suggestion that we need to develop self-knowledge as practitioners and to forge
our quality criteria for educational research from what constitutes
'excellence' in educational research. The problem is that the above form of
reasoning that dominates this special issue, and most Journals of Education, is
trapped within abstract relationships between concepts in a way that omits the
life-affirming energy and relationally dynamic understandings of living
educational relationships as shown in the above video-clips. My point is that they are serving a
reproductive function of a mythological discourse in sustaining forms of academic
knowledge that are excluding the flows of life-affirming energy, and embodied
expressions of the values-laden educational knowledge of educators, from their
representations of educational knowledge.
What I want to
offer today is a form of living educational theorising that is grounded in what
educators and students are doing and that draws insights from the theories of
abstract rationality without being replaced by them.
2) Creating
our own living educational theories and offering them freely to others.
I first proposed the idea of living educational theory to make a
distinction. This is the distinction between the explanations of education,
derived from theories in the disciplines of education characterised by abstract
rationality, and the explanations produced by individuals for their educational
influences in learning. I am thinking of the latter explanations in terms of
our values-laden and energised practical principles together with insights from
theories from the traditional disciplines of education.
In the late 1970s I was greatly influenced by the work of the logician
Evard Ilyenkov (1977, p. 312) and the question he asked about representing
'living contradictions':
'If an object exists as a living contradiction what must the thought
be (statement about the object) that expresses it?'
I experienced myself, my 'I', as a living contradiction in 1971, when
watching a video-tape of my classroom practice. I could see myself holding my
commitment to enquiry learning with my pupils together with my denial of
enquiry learning in my practice. Until I saw the video tape of my classroom I
believed that I had established enquiry learning with my pupils. The video
showed that I was actually giving the pupils 'their' questions and organising
the learning resources in terms of pre-set answers. As soon as I saw myself as
this living contradiction my imagination began to create possibilities for
moving my practice in the direction of living my values and beliefs more fully
in my practice.
I first began to formulate an understanding of action reflection cycles
as I acted on a chosen possibility, and evaluated the influences of my actions
in my pupils learning and produced an account of my professional learning
(Whitehead, 1972, 1976). The idea
that we teacher-researchers could generate our living educational theories
(Whitehead, 1989, Whitehead & McNiff,
2006) as explanations for our educational influences in learning emerged
from enquiries into improving learning with pupils. This idea has been used in
many educational enquiries throughout the world to distinguish the unique
living theories of teacher-researchers as they make their own original
contributions to educational knowledge. I want to draw your attention to five
doctoral theses from teacher researchers in Ireland that have been legitimated
at the University of Limerick over the past two years with the supervision of
Jean McNiff. They can be accessed from Jean's website at http://www.jeanmcniff.com/papers/reports.html
Mairin Glenn (2006) Working With Collaborative
Projects: My Living Theory Of A Holistic Educational Practice.
Caitriona McDonagh (2007) My
Living Theory Of Learning To Teach For Social Justice: How
Do I Enable Primary School Children With Specific Learning Disability
(Dyslexia) And Myself As Their Teacher To Realize Our Learning Potentials?
Mary Roche (2007) Towards
A Living Theory Of Caring Pedagogy: Interrogating My Practice To Nurture A
Critical, Emancipatory And Just Community Of Enquiry .
Bernie Sullivan (2006) A Living Theory Of A
Practice Of Social Justice: Realizing The Right Of Traveler Children To
Educational Equality .
Margaret Cahill (2007) My
Living Educational Theory Of Inclusional Practice .
There are several distinguishing features of living educational
theories. The first is a tension or contradiction between the values and
understandings the individual uses to give meaning and purpose to their life,
and experiences in which these values and understandings are not being lived as
fully as the individual believes to be possible. I am associating such values
with the experience of a life-affirming energy whose representation seems to be
missing from explanations derived from abstract rationality. The most recent
living theory doctorate to be legitimated in the Academy with the explicit
recognition of flows of energy is that of Adler-Collins (2007) for his enquiry:
Developing an inclusional
pedagogy of the unique: How do I clarify, live and explain my educational
influences in my learning as I pedagogise my healing nurse curriculum in a
Japanese University?
His original contribution includes an energy-flowing, living standard
of inclusionality:
An energy-flowing, living
standard of inclusionality as a space creator for engaged listening and
informed learning is offered as an original contribution to knowledge. (Adler-Collins, 2007. (For the Abstract see http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/jekan.shtml)
I believe that everyone here understands that we cannot do anything
without energy. I associate a life-affirming energy with the educational
relationships and influences of teacher-researchers. Such energy is usually
affirmed with religious and spiritual expressions. Through my bodily
expressions today, in being present with you, I hope that you can feel the flow
the life-affirming energy I express in my educational relationships. I bring
this energy into my explanations of educational influences in learning with the
help of visual narratives. These narratives include video of my practice. If
you access the following url using a web-browser you can see how I integrate
video-evidence into a visual narrative:
Generating Educational Theories That Can Explain
Educational Influences In Learning: living logics, units of appraisal,
standards of judgment. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/166811.htm
To show what I am meaning by life-affirming energy I
would like you, if time permits, to talk to the person next to you for a couple
of minutes each about what really matters to you in your life in education. I'm
thinking of what you care about in your practice and that you are probably
working on to improve so that you can live your values and understandings more
fully in your practice.
I am thinking of
living educational theories as gifts that we offer freely to others. Many
social theories tend to focus on economic relations where what we produce
through our labour we exchange for money.
I like Sen's (1999) economic theory of human capability where he resists
the reduction of human capabilities to human capital and stresses the
importance of freedom. I like the ideas of Yunus Mohammed (2007) who along with
the Grameen Bank won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for ideas about microfinance
and social business. What I want to suggest is that the majority of people
present today have access to sufficient economic, cultural, symbolic and narrative
capital (Watts, 2008) that we can offer freely our educational theories as gifts
to others, not in an exchange relationship but in a relationship in which an
individual can freely offer this gift with no expectation of a return.
I now want to
focus on the idea of combining our living educational theories from our
teacher-research in the living boundaries of cultures in resistance.
3) Combining our
voices in living educational theories in the living boundaries of cultures in
resistance.
In this section I want to introduce the idea of the 'living boundaries
of cultures in resistance' and summarise the points I made in a presentation to
a recent conference (18-20 March 2008) on Cultures in Resistance in the UK on:
How are living educational theories
being produced and legitimated in the boundaries of cultures in resistance? http://www.jackwhitehead.com/jack/jwmanchester250208.htm
The main reason that I am engaging with the experience
of living in the boundaries of cultures in resistance is that I think we could
combine our voices as teacher researchers in extending the influence of living
educational theories in the creation of a world of educational quality. The living
educational theories that are created within a particular context can only have
a significant influence in the education of social formations through a
cultural influence in the lives of others.
All of the
teacher-researchers I work with in Bath have talked about tensions they
feel between the testing culture they are subjected to through government
agencies and their desire to engage creatively with their pupils as they
develop a personalized learning agenda with them. The accounts of Amy Skuse and
Ros Hurford record their creative responses to such tensions:
Amy Skuse: How
have my experiences of Year 2 SAT's influenced my perceptions of assessment in
teaching and learning? http://www.jackwhitehead.com/tuesdayma/amyskuseeeoct07.htm
Ros Hurford: How
does the writing of a new gifted and talented policy enable me to reflect upon
and evaluate my personal values about gifts and talents? In what ways am I
living my values in this area? http://www.jackwhitehead.com/tuesdayma/roshurfordee2.htm
I am placing an
emphasis on the importance of the communication potential of web-technology for
combining our voices in creating and sharing our living educational theories in
the living boundaries of cultures in resistance. I think that we can help each
other to sustain our flows of life-affirming energy in extending our
educational influences through the explicit recognition of the value we have
found in each others' narratives. This is what I am meaning by combining our
voices in living educational theories. While we might sometimes feel an
energy-sapping lack of recognition or open hostility to extending the influence
of our ideas in our workplaces, we can also feel the life-affirming energy in
seeing our ideas being of value to others in the creation of their living
theories.
In Claire
Formby's enquiry into How do I sustain a loving, receptively responsive
educational relationship with my pupils which will motivate them in their
learning and encourage me in my teaching? (see http://www.jackwhitehead.com/tuesdayma/formbyEE300907.htm )
Claire integrates
video-clips from a streamed server to explain her meanings of a 'loving,
receptively responsive educational relationship' and acknowledges the value of
some of the above ideas in her own living theory.
The global
influence of combining voices in generating, sharing and communicating living
educational theories can also be seen in South Africa (Wood, Morar, & Mostert, 2007) in China (Laidlaw,
2006; Tian and Laidlaw, 2006), Canada (Delong, 2002; Delong, Black,
& Wideman, 2005; Delong,
Black, & Knill-Griesser, 2005), the UK (Laidlaw, 1996; Smith, 2003; McNiff & Whitehead, 2006) and
Japan (Adler-Collins, 2007).
I now want
to look at the importance of our relationally dynamic awareness of space and
boundaries in combining voices in living educational theories in teacher
research.
4) A
relationally dynamic awareness of space and boundaries: inclusionality.
I
began this presentation with three video clips that I moved through in seconds
to communicate my meaning of an educational space that is distinguished by a
relationally dynamic awareness of space and boundaries. What I think the
speeded up clips show clearly is a relational dynamic in the movements between
the participants in the space. Individuals are receptively responding to each
other in the co-creation of their living boundaries in the educational space.
As teacher-researchers I am assuming that we have all experienced the
complexity of responding to the diverse needs of our pupils and students. I am
assuming that we are still curious about how to represent our educational
relationships in valid explanations of our educational influences in learning.
What I am
suggesting is that we are all living with the kind of relationally dynamic
awareness of space and boundaries as shown in the above videos. However, I am
claiming that the dominating forms of representation used in Universities for
explaining educational practices and influences in learning, remove the energy
we express in our embodied educational knowledges and do not express
adequately, in standards of judgment in academic texts, the expression of the
embodied values we use to give meaning and purpose to our lives in education. I
believe that the reason for this lies in the continuing tendency of academic
theories to replace the practical principles used by individual to explain
their lives, by principles with justifications in abstract rationality. What I
am saying we should be creating are different forms of academic theories from a
perspective of inclusionality:
At the heart of inclusionality... is a simple shift
in the way we frame reality, from absolutely fixed to relationally dynamic.
This shift arises from perceiving space and boundaries as connective,
reflective and co-creative, rather than severing, in their vital role of
producing heterogeneous form and local identity...
To make this shift does not depend on new
scientific knowledge or conjecture about supernatural forces, extraterrestrial
life or whatever. All it requires is awareness and assimilation into
understanding of the spatial possibility that permeates within, around and
through natural features from sub-atomic to Universal in scale. We can then see
through the illusion of 'solidity' that has made us prone to regard 'matter' as
'everything' and 'space' as 'nothing', and hence get caught in the conceptual
addiction and affliction of 'either/or' 'dualism'. An addiction that so
powerfully and insidiously restricts our philosophical horizons and undermines
our compassionate human spirit and creativity. (Rayner, 2004)
I want to highlight
the importance of understanding that from a perspective of inclusionality we
are all included in the dynamics of a common living-space that flows with
life-affirming energy. As Ted Lumley, one of the originators of the idea of
inclusionality, points about about the importance of recognizing a
'pooling-of-consciousness'.
"...an inspiring pooling-of-consciousness that
seems to include and connect all within all in unifying dynamical communion....
The concreteness of 'local object being'... allows us to understand the
dynamics of the common living-space in which we are all ineluctably included
participants." (Lumley, 2008, p.3)
Working with such a relationally dynamic awareness of
space and boundaries does not mean that everything is to be included. The
living boundaries of cultures in resistance sometimes include the need for
protection against damaging influences, especially those involving a lack of
recognition.
In
learning how to combine our voices as teacher-researchers in the generation and
testing of living educational theories I am aware of the importance of
including some narrative wreckage in the story of a life well-lived. I am
thinking of the kind of narrative wreckage that involves a lack of recognition.
A smooth story of self might (Maclure, 1996, p. 282) initially feel comfortable
to a listener, but without the acknowledgment of what has been involved in
persisting in the face of pressure, a story can lack authenticity. In a
contribution to the conference tomorrow with Jacqueline Delong (Whitehead &
Delong, 2008) we are focusing on 'Persisting In The Face Of Pressures' to
emphasise the importance of including one's responses to difficult and painful
experiences in one's living educational theory.
Here is the extract from the paper with Jacqueline
that serves to highlight the need for recognition and for developing protective
boundaries, in the face of violations, that can continue to be open to the flow
of life-affirming energy and values that carry hope for the future of humanity.
" Human beings seek recognition of their
own worth, or of the people, things, or principles that they invest with worth.
The desire for recognition, and the accompanying emotions of anger, shame and
pride, are parts of the human personality critical to political life. According
to Hegel, they are what drives the whole historical process. (Fukuyama, 1992, p. xvii)
It
was the denial of such recognition by a suicide bomber that cost Gill Hicks her
legs and others their lives on
July 7th 2005. On this day Gill Hicks was on the London underground
pulling out of King's Cross Station when Abdullah Shaheed Jamal detonated the
bomb that injured Gill. Gill writes:
"It
– I
didn't matter...
I wish he
had made the effort to know me before he detonated his bomb. I wish I could
have looked at him in the eyes and had the opportunity to say – I am not
your enemy, I wish you no harm, I am not the enemy.
I am a
person, a human being – just like you, just like you." (pp. 2-3)"
Hence
my emphasis on the significance of the recognitions in the three video-clips
above. In overcoming and circumventing obstacles to the flow of values of
humanity I feel that two affirmations have been most significant in my
practitioner-research.
The
first is the experience of an energy that I feel is flowing through the cosmos.
This energy is life-affirming for me and I associate this energy with the state
of being affirming by the power of being itself. When I read these words in
Paul Tillich's work on The Courage To Be (1968, p.168), I understood that this
referred to theistic experience. Having no theistic desires myself I use the
words to communicate my experience of a flow of life-affirming energy.
The
second affirmation is in relationships with others who recognize who I feel
myself to be. These two affirmations are enabling me to overcome and circumvent
the following episodes of a lack of recognition of my contribution to
educational knowledge. I do not want to minimize the emotions of anger, rage,
humiliation and embarrassment I felt on experiencing the lack of recognition in
the following judgements. What I do want to emphasise is the importance of
responding to the lack of recognition, embedded in institutional power
relations, by keeping open the channels that flow with life-affirming energy,
pleasure and humour.
As I
present the judgments I hope that you feel my spiritual resilience as I seek to
strengthen the educational influences in my own learning through creative
responses to the following judgments made on behalf of the University of Bath
and carrying the disciplinary power of the organization.
Without
these judgments I am certain that I would not have exercised and expressed my
creativity in the way that I have done in my original contributions to
educational knowledge. I don't want to be understood as thanking those who
contributed to these judgments. However I do want to recognize the part that
they have played in my finding a creative way of preventing their damage
through rechannelling the energy in my feelings of rage, anger, disgust,
humiliation and embarrassment. I am thinking here of the importance of making
creative responses with humour, that can rechannel the energy into the loving
pleasure of my generation of educational knowledge with my teaching and
educational research.
I am
hoping that you will help me to understand the extent to which I can
successfully rechannel the energy, through humour, into this loving pleasure. I
imagine that I am expressing myself with this pleasure here with you now as I
recount experiences that at the time included the passion of the above
emotions. I think your responses will help me to see the extent to which I am
doing what I believe that I am doing.
I
imagine that everyone would like to see some evidence that they are influencing
their institution in some systemic way. Here are two judgments that provide
evidence of my own systemic influence. The first is in a 1976 judgment,
approved by the University Senate, that clearly asserts that I have influenced
the School of Education. Given a desire to enhance my educational influence, a
desire I think we might all share about the work we do, I can imagine you might
experience yourself, as I did, a living contradiction on being informed of the
following influence in the whole School of Education:
1976
Grounds for
recommending that a tenured appointment should not be offered, from the
Academic Staff Committee, approved by Senate:
You
have not given satisfaction in the teaching of prescribed courses.
There
is an absence of evidence to suggest that you have pursued research of
sufficient quality for the assessors to be assured of your ability to perform
adequately the duties of a University Lecturer.
You
have exhibited forms of behavior which have harmed the good order and morale of
the School of Education.
Many
voices combined in protecting my employment at the University of Bath from
these judgments and in 1977 I accepted a tenured appointment until August
2009.
My
desire to extend my educational influence remained undiminished and I received
the following evidence that my influence was now extending to the whole
University but not in the way I was intending!
1987
Following
complaints about my activities and writings from two Professors of Education a
disciplinary meeting was held which included the University Solicitor and I was
informed in writing by the University Registrar that:
Your
activities and writings are a challenge to the present and proper organisation
of the University and not consistent with the duties the university wish you to
pursue in your teaching and research.... You must be loyal to your employer.
These
judgments came after the following rejections that contribute to my stories of
narrative wreckage as I felt the power relations that refused me permission to
question the judgments of examiners of research degrees, in any circumstances.
1980/82
Following
two rejections of doctoral submissions I could not, within the university
regulations of the time, question the competence of my examiners' judgements.
The letter from the Secretary and Registrar of the University informing me that
I was not permitted to question these judgements, under any circumstances,
stated:
Once
the examiners have been appointed, their competence cannot in any circumstances
be questioned.
1991
The letter
of 1987 from the Registrar containing the above statement was used as evidence
in 1990 by a Board of Studies in a recommendation to Senate that there was
prima facie evidence of a breach of my academic freedom. Senate established a
working party on a matter of academic freedom. They reported in 1991:
The
working party did not find that... his academic freedom had actually been
breached. This was however, because of Mr Whitehead's persistence in the face
of pressure; a less determined individual might well of have been discouraged
and therefore constrained.
Here
is my re-enactment of a meeting with the working party where I had been invited
to respond to a draft report in which the conclusion was that my academic
freedom had not been breached; a conclusion I agreed with (Thanks to Sarah Fletcher for taking the clip). What I did not agree
with was that there was no recognition of the pressure to which I had been
subjected to while sustaining my academic freedom. In the clip I think you will
feel the energy in my passion for academic freedom and academic responsibility.
Following my meeting with the working party the report that went to Senate
acknowledged that the reason my academic freedom had not been breached was
because of my persistence in the face of pressure. This phrase, 'persistence in
the face of pressure' is a phrase I continue to use in combining voices in
teacher research.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBTLfyjkFh0
The
most recent creative and energised response, to a lack of recognition, is my
response in the here and now to a judgment about my contribution to knowledge.
In 2006 this contribution was judged by the Academic Staff Committee at the
University in response to my application for a promotion from a Lecturer to a
Readership. The UK differs from the US in having a series of promotions from
Lecturer to Senior Lecturer to Reader to Professor. I had not previously
applied for promotion because a new contract would have meant that I had to
give up my tenured contract. So many individuals had freely given their time,
energy and talents to making sure that the judgment in 1976, that I was not to
be offered a tenured contract, did not stand, that I did not feel comfortable,
until 2005, with applying for a promotion with a new contract that would have
removed tenure. It wasn't anything to do with the economic security of a
tenured position. It was the knowledge of the political and ethical integrity
of those who, in 1976 had worked
for me to be offered a tenured appointed. The
main reason that I gave way to the urges of some colleagues to apply for a
Readership was that I thought the institutional recognition of my original
ideas in the generation of living educational theories, as a contribution to
educational knowledge worthy of at least a Readership, would help to spread the
influence of the ideas. I still feel sure that this recognition by the
University of Bath would help to spread this influence.
As you read the
judgment do please bear in mind the point I have been making for years that the
forms of representation in the established and renowned international refereed
journals, when they restrict contributions to words or still images on paper,
do not permit the communication of my meanings of life-affirming energy or
values-laden, relationally dynamic standards of judgment:
2006
An
application for a Readership was rejected by the Academic Staff Committee on
the grounds that:
For
a promotion to Reader, the Committee needs to establish that a candidate has made
an outstanding contribution to the advancement of knowledge. In this regard the
Committee considered that the case for this level of contribution was not yet
made and in order to develop the case further it will be necessary for you to
focus on producing articles which can be disseminated via established and
renowned international refereed journals.
In
meeting the 2006 obstacle to the recognition of what I claim to be a
contribution to educational knowledge, worthy at least of a Readership at the
University of Bath, I want to find a way of circumventing the obstacle rather
than overcoming it. I am now feeling that the public understanding of why the
University of Bath did not recognize, in 2006, my contribution to educational
knowledge as a contribution appropriate for a Readership, will do more to
enhance the influence of living educational theories than the acknowledgment of
this recognition in the offering of a Readership.
What I am
hoping that I have been able to do in this presentation is to include some of
the narrative wreckage that breaks into a smooth story of self in the creation
of a living educational theory. I hope that I have been able to do this in a
way that is authentic in not shying away from critical incidents, yet also
prevents a possible pathologising influence. I am thinking of pathologies that
can develop if passionate expressions in emotions such as rage, shame,
humiliation and embarrassment are not rechanelled into the pleasurable energy
of contributions to educational knowledge (Cho, 2005). I am thinking of
contributions that flow with the pleasure of a loving life-affirming energy in
educational relationships that I hope you are experiencing me expressing with
you now.
I want to finish
with the idea that we can all help each other, whatever age, to create our own
living educational theories in which we account to ourselves for living our
values and understandings as fully as we can. You can see at:
http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/mastermod.shtml
and at:
http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/living.shtml
the living
theories of master and doctor educators that have been freely given for sharing
through the internet, in the hope that they will contribute ideas that may be
of value in the generation of your living theories as we combine our voices in
enhancing our educational influences in improving our local and global
contexts. To conclude I return to the images of educational relationships from
the video-clips as a reminder of the importance of the flows of loving energy
in our educational relationships, of the importance of communicating the
continuously moving dynamic of educational relationships and of making sure
that these are represented appropriately in explanations of educational
influences in learning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1jEOhxDGno http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvLyxLU1o3U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti4syOrIDdY
Thank you once
again for enabling me to share ideas with you. I always feel inspired by the
love for what we are doing in education and that we show that we are willing to
share in tomorrow's programme at ICTR.
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