Evolution of Educational Knowledge and Living Educational Theories

A letter from Jack Whitehead

I am writing this on the 17th March 2003 at a time when an attack by British and other troops on Iraq looks imminent. I can feel the closeness of the killing and death. I have just wished my son Jonathan Happy Birthday! This carries my love. Living with these tensions between love, killing and death I'm wondering whether our contributions to the growth of educational knowledge might help to educate our global social formations in living more fully the values of peaceful well-being.

I have in mind a shared research programme in which we are learning to live our values more fully in our practices. I am thinking of how we might share our learning in our educational enquiries of the kind, 'How am I improving what I am doing?'.

I imagine that no matter who we are and what we are doing, we have a desire to educate ourselves through our life-time of learning. I also believe, whether as parents, educators and/or citizens, we also want to contribute what we can to the education of others and to influence the education of our social formations in ways that can contribute to the development of a more peaceful and productive world.

In this letter I am breaking new ground for myself as I move from a linear, one to one form of e-communications, to the branching network of interconnected e-communications below. I am hopeful that you will engage with some of the ideas this letter gives you access. I hope that you feel my desire for inclusivity as I show some of the interconnected pathways of communication that have already contributed to the creation and testing of living educational theories within our different local, regional, national and global contexts.

I will begin with the pleasure of seeing someone that I haven't met making a creative and critical response to the idea of living educational theory. I am thinking of Colin Smith's ideas on the development of shared living theories and I do hope we will and engage and respond to his paper 'Supporting Teacher and School Development: learning and teaching policies, shared living theories and teacher-research partnerships'. This has been published in Teacher Development, Volume 6, Number 2, pp. 157- 179, 2002. You can download the final draft of this paper in Word format by clicking here

I am connecting Colin Smith's ideas on shared living theory to the living educational theories of Jackie Delong, Cheryl Black, Heather Gnill-Greaser and Geoff Suderman-Gladwell in the Grand Erie District School Board in Ontario, Canada. Jackie's award for leadership in action research from the Ontario Educational Research Council in 2001 was richly deserved. I think you will appreciate Jackie's achievements in stressing the importance of understanding one's 'system's influence' in the abstract and contents of her living theory doctorate as a Superintendent of Schools. Jackie supported Heather, Cheryl and Geoff in their masters programme at Brock University and it is my belief that they have made public their embodied knowledge as master educators in their dissertions. Cheryl is now a school principal and is continuing with her educational enquiries in a doctoral study of her educational influence. Yet, I doubt if these insights could have developed in the way they have without Kevin Eames' research in the 1980s and early 1990s where he demonstrated how teacher-researchers could 'grow their own' school-based action research group.

Terri Austin, the Head of a Charter School in Alaska has stressed the importance of the practice of community in the self-study of teacher-education practices. I am relating my present learning about the education of social formations to Terri Austin's doctoral enquiry on the practice of community and to Alan Rayner's inclusional ways of being. Alan Rayner is a biologist and ecological researcher whose stress on inclusional ways of being seems to me to offer great hope for the evolution of our living theories and their contributions to a more peaceful and productive future for humanity. Robyn Pound's (2003) doctorate on, 'How can I improve my health visiting support of parenting? The creation of an alongside epistemology through action enquiry' makes a contribution to this future by showing the potential of a living quality of alongsideness to contribute to the well-being of parent-child relationships and to a living theory of health visiting practice. I am also linking Peggy Leong's work on 'Learning Circles' at the Academy of Best Practice in Learning in Singapore to Colin Smith's notion of shared living theories.

The importance of making public our embodied knowledge through webs of living theories can be appreciated through the idea of living standards of educational practice and judgement. Moira Laidlaw developed this idea, communicated it to me and I shared this with Jackie Delong. We both shared the idea with Heather Gnill-Greaser. Heather highlighted the significance of living standards of practice (and judgement) in her M.Ed. dissertation on Vision Quest of Support to Improve Student Learning: Validating My Living Standards of Practice: Heather Knill-Griesser. Mike Bosher has developed his own living standards of judgement and transformed his embodied knowledge into the public knowledge of a doctor educator in his thesis on 'How can I as an educator and Professional Development Manager working with teachers, support and enhance the learning and achievement of pupils in a whole school improvement process?'

Ben Cunningham and James Finnegan have influenced my learning about living standards of educational practice and judgement through the quality of their questioning in relation to spirituality and education. Ben's doctoral enquiry was, 'How do I come to know my spirituality as I create my own living educational theory?' James focused his enquiry on How do I create my own educational theory in my educative relations as an action researcher and as a teacher? James' question 'How can love enable justice to see rightly in my practice?', in Chapter Eight of his Thesis, continues to inspire me. I have also been influenced by Paulus Murray and his doctoral research, in my learning about the importance of racialising my insights and discourses. Paulus ideas and educational influence can be see in a paper we presented at AERA in New Orleans in 2000 on White and Black with White Identities in self-studies of teacher-educator practices.

Jean McNiff's original ideas on action research as a generative and transformative process have been matched by the influence of her books and writings in encouraging individuals and groups to develop their own living educational theories. As her writings show, Jean has extended her enquiries and influence into the Middle East. Jean's booklet on Action Research and Professional Development is a delightfully clear introduction and Jean has made this freely available to celebrate our 21 years of working together. Ideas from Jean's booklet have influenced the contributions to Passion in Professional Practice edited by Jackie Delong and Cheryl Black.

Peter Mellett is working on the development of the Action Research component of a 'Research Observatory' at the University of Bath. Action researchers at Bath have contributed to a review of educational action research carried out by Peter Mellett for the British Educational Research Association You can access the review in Word format by clicking here.

Sarah Fletcher has integrated action research processes into her research into making public the embodied knowledge in her own mentoring practice. She has also been supporting teacher-researchers to share and make public their embodied knowledge of mentoring. Sarah is also developing visual narratives that can communicate the meanings of embodied values in educational relationships. I am working with Peter, Sarah, Jackie and Cheryl in different enquiries to develop multi-media accounts of educational influence including the education of social formations. As soon as these can be accessed through the web, I will let you know. Sarah is working with Tadashi Asada from Tokyo University and Tadashi is doing much to develop action research approaches to teacher development in Japan. JeKan Adler-Collins is moving to Fukuoka to start work at the University. JeKan is researching his influence in making public his embodied knowledge as a healing nurse and integrating this into the nursing curriculum of the university. He is studying his own pedagogic influence in the learning of his students.You can read JeKan's writings and participate in the e-forum discussions of living action research.

You might also like to access the work of Judi Marshall and Peter Reason, two colleagues I work with in the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice (CARPP) at the University of Bath. I particularly like Judi's paper on living life as inquiry. and Peter's inaugural address on Justice, Sustainability and Participation.

I want to finish this letter by drawing your attention to what I see as the government's most damaging policy in relation to the future of educational research. Departments of Education like my own who have been judged to be of 5 or 5* quality receive far more funding to support their educational research than other Departments. The present move to create greater selectivity by awarding 6* (and additional funding) is going to increase the damage I have in mind for the future of educational research.

Consider two of the living theory doctoral studies to have been awarded by Kingston University when the Faculty of Education was judged at level 2 in a previous Research Assessment Exercise. I am thinking of the doctorates of Moyra Evans and John Loftus . While Deputy Head of Denbigh Comprehensive School Moyra carried out her enquiry on 'An action research enquiry into reflection in action as part of my role as a deputy headteacher'. In Chapter Eight she explains how she developed her own living educational theory. While a Headteacher John Loftus conducted his research on 'An action research enquiry into the marketing of an established first school in its transition to full primary status.'

My anxiety for the future of educational research is that the creation and testing of living educational theories will be marginalised by a funding mechanism that will support a degenerating research programme. Let me explain. In the 1960s and 1970s the dominant view of educational theory was that it was constituted by the philosophy, psychology, sociology and history of education. In terms of today's disciplines and fields of enquiry one could add, economics, politics, management and leadership. The problem with the old disciplines approach was that none of these disciplines either individually or collectively could produce a valid explanation for the educational development of an individual from within the learners' educational enquiry of the kind, 'How am I improving what I am doing?'. I set out an alternative 'living' approach to educational theory in my own doctoral thesis.

The creation and testing of living educational theories is grounded in the assumption that individual learners can create and test their own educational theories in the course of their educational enquiries.These enquiries can include the kind of appreciative and engaged responses to the ideas of others, researched by Pat D'Arcy in her thesis. Rather than the bulk of the money going to support the old disciplines approach to educational theory, I am suggesting that money should certainly be fairly distributed to those Departments of Education which can demonstrate a quality of teaching, supervision and research that is leading to the growth of educational knowledge through the creation and testing of living educational theories.

Love Jack.