Introduction
How I have arrived at a
notion of knowledge transformation,
through exploration of my three roles, as creative writer, creative educator,
and Head of Department.
My aims
My aim in this thesis is to explore the evolution, meaning, and practice of a Ôliving theoryÕ of creativity which I shall call Ôknowledge transformationÕ. In brief, this theory is an attempt to explore the transformational quality of learning; its capacity to change both the learner and what is learnt. My journey towards and with this theory involves the intertwining of three personae: the writer, the educator and the educational manager - and explores the shared belief systems, and the strategies for creative transformation, that have informed each of them. In so doing, I am considering ÔlearningÕ as the capacity to respond to challenge, change, self and other, both in and out of formal learning contexts.
By listening to the voices of writer, educator and manager, (as well as my own students and colleagues) I will aim:
In so doing, this thesis will locate itself within the current debates that reclaim creativity as an educational goal, and return it to the curriculum, to the training of teachers, and to a central place within the definition of learning. Three voices in recent ÔconversationÕ represent where I too stand, in this debate.
It is a pity that the notion of ÔcreativityÕ in education has to be fought for or reclaimed, as it should be a central feature of teaching and learning. It is the crucial element in each generationÕs renewal and enhancement of itself. Without it society would roll backwards. Human imagination and spirit are what drove civilisation forward. (Wragg, T. 2005; 2) 2
I ask you to consider the inner life of the student who sits, often reluctantly, before you. Your task is to take that particular person into the living field of your discipline and in some way to change him by so doing.
No transformation, no education! (Abbs, Peter: 2003: 10) 3
Ôbeing creativeÕ is, at least potentially, the natural and normal state of anyone healthy in a sane and stimulating community, and .... realising that potential is as much a matter of collaboration and Ôco creationÕ as of splendid or miserable isolation. (Pope, Rob: 2005: xvi 4 )
The dissertation will aim to make its own contribution to this debate, by exploring what being creative has meant for me in practice, how it has enhanced my own identity as writer, educator and manager, and why and how I have been committed to sharing its transformative potential with students, trainee teachers, and my teaching team.
Its claim to originality is that it arrives at a ÔlivingÕ concept of Ôknowledge transformationÕ through multidimensional reflection; as a teacher who is a learner, as a learner who is a teacher, as a manager who has been one of a subclass, as an employee who has been a manager, as a creative writer who has lived in an imaginative world and as a teacher/manager who has interfaced with institutional, national and international policy and educational change. I am my own informant into different perspectives, and am able through these personae to have dialogue between several positions and arrive at a concept that is tested and lived from several perspectives.
The criteria by which I wish to be judged are amongst those described by Furlong and Oancea,5 in their enterprise of Ôdefin(ing) what good quality is in educational researchÕ. (Oancea and Furlong: 4) . These are the questions I have asked myself and to which I choose to be answerable:
my observations of self and others? Do I have clear criteria for judgement which I stand by?
The dissertation will take the reader through the following stepping stones on the journey:
I represent these as three different personae, because at many stages in an academic career they have appeared to be, not merely in conflict with one another, but paradoxical to one another. Even in themselves, their identities are split and ambiguous. Inside these roles, we may be driven by a sense of purpose, self-esteem and idealism: yet outsiders such as non-educators, the consumers of education, and policy-makers, often view these same roles with hostility, suspicion and contempt . Living with this paradox is part of what every educator will do; but even more so will this be the case, when the educator attempts to bring in to their practice other roles and ideologies which are not traditionally valued or visible within the academy. 6
Below are the three personae, and the paradoxes that emerge both within and between them:
the creative writer:
as enlightened commentator on the world, as creative problem-solver, inspirer of self and others, as maker, creator, and visionary
OR
as dreamer, as disconnected with the Ôreal worldÕ, as absorbed in a fictional universe, as anarchist unprepared to conform to institutions, regulations and constricting protocol or formulae, as dropout
the educator:
as mentor, guide, facilitator, one who empowers, offers opportunities, gives others voice, opens doorways, changes lives
OR
as assessor, judge, authoritarian, rule-bound, concerned with outcomes and not with processes, with uniformity and conformity 7
the
manager
one who facilitates and enhances the professional self-esteem and effectiveness of others, a team-builder, mentor, facilitator, visionary, problem-solver for self and others, as role-model, guide and critical friend, able to prioritise, support, inspire, think positively, lead and drive forward
OR
one who speaks for the institution, is corporate, remote, ambitious, ego-driven, controlling, uncompromising, unfair 8
Several professional dichotomies lie at the heart of the educator and the educational managerÕs practice. It is in experiencing and attempting to resolve these dichotomies, that my own ideology and belief system have been made apparent. Similarly, too, they have been made apparent by the daily challenges to their viability, presented by the academy.
Another way in which I may define myself in the academy, is through a series of metaphors:
and by a series of statements and affirmations:
1) I have a responsibility to preserve my own well-being, so my actions are
fuelled by an energy which is capable of recharging itself, rather than by a negative and draining energy. It is only in this way, that creative responses can continue to be sustained.
2) I have a responsibility to derive lessons from all aspects of past experience, whether positive or negative: and to be inclusional in my revisiting of this experience, rather than selecting only what illustrates a theory or fits a paradigm.
3) I am energised through interaction and empathy with others, and this interaction is a major source of learning. 12
4) I empathise with others, by briefly travelling outside my own ego: in other words, by learning not to hear only what I know already, wish to hear, or would be convenient to hear. This is my goal and I am continually learning from others as to whether it is being achieved.
5) I also empathise with others, by seeing my own connection with them, however far they have travelled from my own position. 13
6) I also empathise with others, by recognising the patterns which they and I are part of historically and socially.
7) It is also my belief that this empathy only makes sense through transformation in the real and material world: and that we fulfil this, in a way that is unique and specific to our abilities, skills and beliefs.
8) I strongly believe in the notion of the global citizen who is not defined by nationality or religion, and who does not define others in this way.
9) However, I am aware of the specificity of the individual in time and place, and the specificity of individual experience. Thus whilst we tell the single story of the human condition, we tell a million stories and each are uniquely different and enriching.
10) Whilst being fully present in the moment and able to respond to the detail of what forms the moment, part of this mindfulness is understanding the many threads that lead from past to present and shape where we are now. It is possible to honour our personal and collective history whilst living fully in the present.
11) I am only prepared to act through these beliefs, rather than through desire for power, status, recognition, or fashion. I regard these latter drives as ÔinauthenticÕ to my own way of being.
For me, the qualities of the spirit, and the complexity of values and beliefs through which these are realised, are only truly brought into being when tested in the material world. The place where I stand is most truly tested through interface with the three roles I play in the world. For example:
of all colleagues in superior positions to herself, and is sending out allegations about them to University senior management which are being taken seriously: and the allegations then turn to me?
The chapters which follow, will draw on these and other critical incidents, to explore strategies both for survival and transformation. ÔCreative principlesÕ do indeed emerge, and I will use the evidence to explore and unpack these.
These are also, surely, the skills and strategies of Ôknowledge productionÕ? Surely the creative writer has much to share with the ÔpureÕacademic, about how to balance generality and specificity, how to separate description and analysis yet use the one as raw data for the other? how to create transformation through knowledge?
The poem below offers a small cameo of the strategies I have touched on above.
I encounter a toad as we are both crossing a road in the warm Mediterranean sun. I represent a threat to the toad, as my shadow is thrown across him. Understanding the threat, I BECOME the road until the toad no longer has anything to fear. In other words, to resolve a potential threat, I become the other (the road: understanding the fear of the toad). In so doing, I utterly enjoy the beauty and dignity of the creature, and am able to observe him in minute detail and to move into his time and pace. This empowers the toad to feel safe again, and to continue his journey safely to the other side of the road.
It is in this sense that I discuss later the concept of: I am nobody: I am somebody.
I am nobody, because in disappearing the other is given room to grow.
I am somebody, because in disappearing I experience the delight of heightened perception, compassion and understanding.
Toad on road
Loud shadow in the evening
street
When a silent, slow one,
grainy
Like the road
A toad
Starts its journey
Thigh by thigh bunched up
Chubby where its neck is not
On each side, intently
focused,
Its eye
and like a game
Of life or death
Freezes, eye, thigh
Not a twitch,
Becomes the road ,
I the shadow,
Freeze
To check how long it needs
How long a time for a toad
Is safety,
until, not breathing,
I am
Still enough to ruffle
Nothing.
Holding the stillness
Under a heel
We wait
It and I
Its tiny planet in a sudden
trance,
When it sets off again
Thigh after chubbed thigh
Measured like a Tai Chi walk
Its eye
A needle of precise light
And I
Tamed to a patch
Of night
Slide away,
Checking the road underfoot
Jane Spiro Valbonne July 2002
The section above revealed who I was through the medium of a poem.
This section uses as its resource, the recording of an event which took place at the Cecil Sharp House in London on Saturday Oct. 22nd 2005. (Please read this section in conjunction with CD Video clip 1and handout: Appendix 1) It will comment on the video recording of this event by asking:
In other words:
in what ways does this event reveal who I am as an educator ?
The messages of the talk: the talk forms a synthesis of the work evolved over 20 years as creative writer: creative educator.
Overt messages: Its first message is that we can learn by heeding the natural impulses that drive us to Ôtell our storiesÕ; these central drives are those we should listen to as educators, and (as I say in the summarising section of the talk) Ôreturn this authenticity to our learnersÕ. The ÔpresentationÕ of story sources is merely an opening device to encourage the audience to think; Òwhat sources of story are there within me? what does, or would, inspire me to speak out, to tell my story?Ó
Thus, I lead from my own list of story sources, to the question: ÒIs there anything I have missed out?Ó The audience themselves can share the sources that may, or do, drive them: inner dialogues, life experiences, memories, fantasy, dreams and nightmares, other art forms. In essence, I am suggesting that creativity is not an Ôex nihiloÕ act; that creation Ôis never from nothing; it is always creation from somethingÕ (Pope: 200514); in other words, a radical revisioning of the classical view of ÔcreativityÕ, in which the poet or imaginer is a passive recipient of divine intervention.
The second message is the demystifying of creativity as an aspect of human potential, by anatomising it, looking at it in components, changing the vocabulary. The talk focuses on creativity as Òsomething that can be honed, developed and nurturedÓ, using frameworks which are familiar, a linguistic ÔscaffoldÕ that is recognisable to the language teacher: moving from sound/phoneme to whole texts. In other words, the talk reinforces the ÔsomethingÕ that is the source of creation: what one brings to the creative act in combination with what one knows about, and can already do, with language.
Covert messages: the covert aim was to address the criticisms of the sceptic teacher whose response I anticipate as: Òcreative writing is woolly and does not, cannot have, clear learning goalsÓ, and ÒI am not creative/imaginative. I hated Ôcreative writingÕ at school, so how and why should I put my students through this?Õ,and to convince them of the view that: creativity is an aspect of psychic and intellectual health, it can be honed and developed, and we all have the potential to be creative.
The short poem at the start of the talk was chosen, to remind the teachers of the worst kind of Ôcreative writingÕ classes, when teachers tried to elicit ÔimaginativeÕ ideas from nowhere, by eliminating rather than introducing stimulus. I had hoped this would be a starting point for identifying good practice; on the premise that it is easier, at times, to identify what is not working, than what is working. However, at this stage in the talk, it was clear the audience werenÕt quite sure whether the poem modelled good or bad practice; in other words, no one laughed, and they did not respond as if the poem were ironic!
It took the full one hour and fifteen minutes, for there to be evidence that there had been transformation: laughter, the buzz of conversation, the abundance of creative and lively outcomes to tasks, and the shared story at the end. In other words, I was planning and designing a transition from passive to active, from recipient to participant, from sceptic and resistant to empowered and engaged; and with the covert message:
ÒIf this process of empowerment has been true for you during this talk, then you have a strategy for giving the same empowerment to your learners.Ó
My own roles during the talk:
I find the relationship of knower: receiver implied by the Ôguest speakerÕ mode, difficult to participate in. Thus, and no matter how large the ÔreceivingÕ audience, I perceive them as a cluster of voices, responses, knowledge and experience which I wish to access.
In planning the talk I encountered the paradoxes of self:other described in earlier sections above.
I have nothing to say: (I am humbled by the collective knowledge and experience of others; I learn most as chameleon, fly on wall, litmus paper; I am self experienced through others, listener) versus
Look at what I have to say!: ( I have experienced a sense of gift since childhood, tested, honed, questioned, refined, rejected, polished, trialled, exposed, but it has remained as a strongly rooted irrepressible power and sense of self. Yet it is best expressed when in a state of forgetfulness through engagement with the activities I love.)
The design of the talk works with these two personae:
I am chameleon, fly on the wall, litmus paper:
the roles that emanate from this sensibility, include: eliciting audience ideas, listening where their ÔturnsÕ change in length and quality, focusing on individuals in the crowd as if they were my only interlocutor and encouraging others to listen in the same way.
I identify moments of delight when the audience opens up and emerges as a cluster of individuals; the nicknames of pets, teachers and librarians, poems about mothers, cousins and nieces, show of hands to show standpoint and positioning in a debate, formulation of personal myths.
There is delight, when the audience Ôleap outÕ of an idea I have presented, to generate new ones of their own; the unpredictable (eg. the chain of human beings who formed a link between sky and earth in the creation myth), the unique (eg. the dog called Bombi who didnÕt like being washed), the aesthetically exciting (eg. my daughter is like a shell; she is like mother of pearl).
There is delight where the size of the audience becomes an actual resource for learning: there is a task where the audience is asked to choose which of two texts are most Ôstory likeÕ. The show of hands as a result of this gives us real quantitative information about how readers perceive story, and what they see as its central ingredient.
I am a chameleon, where members of the audience suggest an aspect I had not considered, or critique something I have done so my view of it begins to reshuffle and reformulate. In one activity, we build poems about members of the family; this is critiqued at length by a member of the audience who says: the whole area of family is problematic for my students, because they are from broken or problematic families. Yes, I need to reformulate so this activity can equally be about friends, teachers, pets and others; and/or I need to consider when and if it is appropriate to invite students to talk about their families.
I am a chameleon where there are opportunities to learn with and from the audience.
One member of the audience asks: ÒWhat is the difference between stone and rock?Ó And here, not quite sure where the experiment will lead, the audience and I work out the differences through metaphor: ÒMy father is a rock: kind? stable? strong? Ò ÒMy father is a stone: kind? stable? strong?Ó Again, the delight here is in audience: speaker relationship becoming an actual research resource. We learn together that rock has positive connotations for most native speakers: that stone has negative connotations.
The discovery takes on a new twist, when a further member of the audience suggests that ÔstoneÕ can be positive if connected, for example, with the stone of St. Peter and the founding of the church; but then, of course, with the translation of the Greek into stone, rather than rock. But what was the connotation of the original?; and so the dialogue becomes a real learning journey.
Look at what I have to
say! look at what I can do!
The section above lists roles which are about sublimating the self and becoming a part of the ÔotherÕ; being guided and led by it, changing into the other. In contrast, there were moments in the talk where the strong sense of self was in control, saying, ÒLook what I have to say! Look what I can do!Ó These too are moments of delight:
á beating time and keeping a brisk pace with the audience, almost like conducting an orchestra
á acting and improvising the poems and stories, being the performer
á controlling the Ôturn takingÕ of the audience as a collective, by raising my hand, waiting for silence, and drawing up groundrules for finishing tasks.
á drawing threads together by returning to my own frameworks, summaries and story examples
The body language of leadership
It is interesting to notice the changing body language that accompany each of the roles I am nobody/I am somebody. Sinclair suggests that body language is an essential element of leadership; through body language the leader reveals his/her style of leadership, and stresses that we should develop our Ôcapacity to understand what is going on when people inhabit and display their bodies in organisational settings.Õ 15
As a ÔsomebodyÕ, in control of the group, responding as leader and to the audience as collective, I speak at a faster pace, almost giving myself a ÔbeatÕ to orchestrate my own activity. When reading the poems and modelling student examples, I exaggerate my intonation and appear to ÔplayÕ facially, standing at the front of the audience and in the middle. It is only in this ÔsomebodyÕ role that I actually inhabit the central space at the front of the room. Otherwise, I am pacing from right to left, at times walking down the central aisle, and working Ôoff centreÕ. My arms are also in almost constant activity, beating, demonstrating Ôshow of handsÕ, holding a text, holding the microphone, turning over transparencies. Where they do not have a function, I am using my arms to sweep my hair back; a sign that I am slightly uncomfortable with this role, and have a fear of being hidden. Sweeping away hair is my own psychic reminder that I need to be fully present in order to hold my position; and the activity of the arms seems also to reflect my sense that as leader one needs to be constantly doing.
As a ÔchameleonÕ (I am not really here: I am nobody: I am a cipher) my pace changes tangibly. As someone who was entirely silent as a schoolgirl, I intuitively adjust
the body language of control, so the learner can take over that space. Explicitly that means; periods of silence as the facilitator, a direct focus of attention on the speaker so they are not discouraged by glazing over, disinterest, a sense of being hurried or being
silently judged. When the audience are working on their task, I seem to act as if I wish phsyically to disappear: moving backwards away from the group rather than into the group. When they are speaking to me, telling a story or raising a point, I hold eye contact with them for surprisingly long periods of time, without a restless anxiety about Ôwhat the rest of the class are doingÕ. Similarly, it is at these moments, when hearing their responses, that there seems to be most delight in my role, most manifestation of the ÔtransformationÕ I am aim for.
The architecture of the talk:
Although there is a shuttling between I am nobody/I am somebody, the reality is that every stage, its purpose, its time scale, and its desired outcomes, have in fact been planned by me.
I aim for participants to experience both the unpredictability of a journey somewhere new, combined with the safety of knowing the journey has been expertly planned.
In parallel, as facilitator I aim to plan the journey with a clear sense of direction and purpose; but giving opportunity for participants to take us on a cycle of diversions, to select where the stations are and what sites we discover en route.
The planned journey/unplanned journey are built up through a series of cycles:
Since these cycles are accumulative, it also means that more audience contributions are included at each stage, until the final activity, where I aimed to elicit a complete story from the participantsÕcontributions: characters, their names, plots, places, and the language to describe them.
An example is the nickname cycle:
Viewing my own session enabled me to ask the question:
is my actual practice congruent with my central beliefs about teaching and learning?
In the ways outlined above, I felt there was congruence between my beliefs and my practice. However, I also have arrived at several areas where I would wish to develop, improve, or move forward.
I should say more about the influence of others on my ideas: since one of my key messages is that we learn collaboratively, and through interaction with others,
I should demonstrate that I have done so myself; not only by learning through students and the act of teaching, but also from peers, colleagues and current debates in my field.
Since another central message is the link between text and performance, I should work on demonstrating this more successfully myself. For example, in this session my repertoire of ÔrolesÕ seemed rather limited, and I noticed myself falling into the Ôcaricature headmistressÕ role when modelling poems! It would also enhance the ÔperformanceÕ quality to learn the texts that I model off by heart, where this is practical. Some of the readings involved turning my back to the audience, and this too could be improved with powerpoint slides, learning texts by heart, or preparing hard copy of the slides to read face to face with the audience.
I should be aware of the nervous habit of smoothing back my hair, at various moments of transition between tasks and between roles.
Where and how did Ôknowledge transformationÕ take
place, and what was my evidence for this?
The evidence I was able to identify from this event was:
á the change in audience response, from passive and non participatory, to ÔbuzzingÕ with energy and responsiveness, initiating highly engaged questions and offering responses to activities
á the examples of activity and story at each stage: nicknames such as Red Baron (the bad tempered librarian), Bombi (the dog who did not like being washed); myths of the beginnings of the human race (men and women on separate planets, human beings forming a chain to reach from heaven to earth), story beginnings from first lines (One day Baldilocks woke up and found he had been transformed into Rapunzel; one day Bombi woke up and found he had been transformed into Franz Kafka); the metaphors and lines of poetry generated (my niece is a shell; she is like mother of pearl); the creative thinking that was evidenced through questions: (what is the difference between rock and stone?; could stone ever be positive?)
For me this was the very happening of Ôknowledge transformationÕ . We started with less than half the audience ÔadmittingÕ to writing for themselves of any kind: diary, journal, poetry, story. We ended with all engaged in the development of myth, metaphor and poetry, and with a revealing of the mechanisms whereby this experience could be replicated in their own classrooms.
How does knowledge transformation manifest itself?
Why is knowledge transformation significant?
My belief is that this capacity to transform and be transformed lies at the heart of creativity; and creativity lies at the heart of the healthy individual, community and even civilisation.
Creative insight is required for new steps. I feel that creativity
is essential, not only for science, but for the whole of life.
If you get stuck in a mechanical repetitious order, then you will
degenerate. That is one of the problems that has grounded every
civilisation.16 (Bohm 1998)
What evidence can I gather
to explore this issue?
This dissertation will offer concrete evidence of the kind demonstrated above, in order to assess the validity of its theories.
The evidence derives from a career in education/creative writing, in which the boundaries between the two have been systematically questioned and broken down.
The evidence includes:
The evidence at each stage, points to the following answer to my question:
I perceive the educator and creative writer as co-existing, mutually enriching personae, whatever the academy may think of me:
and even further,
I will continue to demonstrate this intermarriage, until the academy recognises me.
In analysing the evidence, I have searched for patterns and recurring strategies, in order to answer the question:
What are the creative principles which lie at the heart of my capacity to create/educate? which have made the creative writer/educator role sustainable?
My evidence for the objectivity of my judgements will be as follows:
manager and educator? and if I have, how can I continue to do so, and to share the processes with others, so that they may be enriched by this too?
My task and goal is no less than one of transformation, and it is according to this that I wish to judge and be judged.
[1] For taxonomies of cognitive skills see Major Categories in the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/guides/bloom.html Retrieved 15/01/04
2 Wragg, T. (2005) cited in Guardian Education Tuesday Nov. 15th p. 2
3 Abbs, Peter (2003) Against the Flow p. 10: letter to his former geography teacher
4 Pope, Rob (2005) Creativity: theory, history and practice Routledge London ; p. xvi
See also Rob PopeÕs review, The return of creativity in Language and Literature Vol. 14 (4): 376 to 389, Sage: London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, which finds further echoes of this view in two further works under discussion: Carter, Ron (2005) Language and Creativity: the art of common talk Routledge: London, and Attridge, Derek (2005) The Singularity of Literature Routledge: London .
5 Furlong, John and Oancea, Alis (2005) Assessing Quality in Applied and Practice based Educational Research: a framework for discussion at http://www.bera.ac.uk/pdfs/Qualitycriteria.pdf. Retrieved 25/05/05 from the Worldwide Web.
6 See; Johnston, Bill (2001) Values in English Language Teaching – notions of professionalism amongst teachers, in contrast with their actual status and positioning within their contexts/cultures/institutions. See also Munro, Petra (1998) Subject to Fiction: Women TeachersÕ Life History Narratives and the Cultural Politics of Resistance – accounts of the paradoxical self-images of female teachers
7 See Judi Marshall re. ways of positioning oneself within the academy with reference to conformity, non-conformity or controlled revolutionary
8 For descriptions of womenÕs experience of their line managers: Tannen, Deborah, Thomas, David TeachersÕ Stories , Pagano, J. (1990) Exiles and Communities: teaching in the patriarchal wilderness Albany NY: State University of New York Press)
9 These dilemmas and how teachers resolve them, are seen as central to identity, in Johnston, Bill (2003) Three Facets of Language Teacher Identity in Values in English Language Teaching
10 Abbs, Peter (2003) Against the Flow, London: RoutledgeFalmer
11 Stables, Andrew (2003) Learning, identity and classroom dialogue, in Journal of Educational Enquiry, Vol. 4, no. 1 2003
12 See Martin BuberÕs theory of I and Thou, in Buber, Martin Knowledge of Man; and also Magonet, Jonathan, Talking to the Other
13 An
inspirational example of this is Nelson MandelaÕs view of the liberation in
South Africa, not of his black compatriots, but of the white man who he feels
is equally enslaved by his prejudices:
in Mandela, Nelson (1993) The Road to Freedom
14 Pope, R. (2005) p. 84
15 Sinclair, Amanda (2005) Body Possibilities in Leadership, in Leadership, Vol. 1 (14) p. 387 Sage: London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi
16 Bohm, D. (1998) On Creativity Routledge: London