My CV is my curriculum: The Making of an International Educator with Spiritual

Values

Ram Punia's draft Abstract for his Ed.D. Thesis, May 2003

To share my embodied professional self this self-study aims to develop a discursive consciousness of my lifelong experiences as an international educator with spiritual values. Lifelong learning in vocational education and training (VET) in the Further and Higher Education (FE/HE) sector includes a variety of roles and contexts including a lecturer in Singapore and Sheffield polytechnics; a teacher trainer in Hong Kong; a consultant in Fiji; Western Samoa; Mauritius and a student of EdD at the University of Bath.

The narrative inquiry to explore the nature of my professional self is based on the dialectical relation between the self/I and the external context. Thus my CV became the curriculum of my present self in a variety of roles and contexts. Stories, cases, critical incidents, documentary evidence, literature review, interactions with significant others, academic learning and personal insights are used to produce my living educational theory.

This exploratory inquiry into the nature of my present self makes three professional contributions. Firstly, it provides useful knowledge of the professional development and achievements of a technical teacher, a teacher trainer, an international consultant, a professional educator (Whitehead, 1999), a doctor of education (Boyer 1990; Thorne and Francis 2001) and an organic intellectual/transformative educator (Tickle 2001). Secondly, a new model of curriculum development of life-long learning emerges for professional educators with spiritual values. Thirdly, action research emerges as an additional strategy for the integrated development of international aid, international education and international educators.

The emergent thesis seems to be that there is no life-long learning without a discursive consciousness of one's self. Owning (taking responsibility for the task) and contextualising (developing genuine problems and solutions to benefit the context) are the essential dimensions of a living theory of life-long learning. These dimensions emerged from spiritual belief in unity in diversity in life.

The originality of the contribution of this thesis to the academic and professional knowledge base is how I integrated my spiritual values to enhance the quality of my self and other professional selves as an international educator.