ICTR 2007
Chicago Illinois
PROPOSAL SUBMISSION FORM
Presentation Information:
Title of Session: Setting
new standards: explaining how we exercise our educational leadership for
sustainable social transformation
Type of Session:
□ Strand
1
□ Interactive Presentation
□ Workshop
□ Symposium
□ Roundtable
□ Strand
2
□ Interactive Presentation
□ Workshop
□ Symposium
□ Roundtable
□ Strand
3
□X Interactive Presentation
□ Workshop
□ Symposium
□ Roundtable
Presenter Information:
Lead Presenter Information:
Name |
Jean McNiff |
Position |
Professor of Educational
Research |
E-mail |
jeanmcniff@mac.com |
Address |
St MaryÕs University
College Waldegrave Road, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, TW1 4SX, UK |
Telephone |
+44 1202 748768 |
Fax |
+44 1202 748768 |
Additional Presenter 1:
Name |
Jack Whitehead |
Position |
Lecturer |
E-mail |
A.J.Whitehead@bath.ac.uk |
Address |
Department of Education,
University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK |
Telephone |
01225 816816 |
Fax |
|
Additional Presenter 2:
Name |
Margaret Farren |
Position |
Lecturer |
E-mail |
Margaret.Farren@dcu.ie |
Address |
Department of Education,
Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Dublin, Ireland |
Telephone |
|
Fax |
|
Additional Presenter 3:
Name |
Yvonne Crotty |
Position |
Lecturer |
E-mail |
Yvonne.crotty@dcu.ie |
Address |
Department of Education,
Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Dublin, Ireland |
Telephone |
|
Fax |
|
Presentation Abstract
This proposal is for an
interactive symposium in Strand 3, ÔCollaboration/Professional Learning
Communities. The symposium is organised around the theme of showing how
practitioner researchers, who are positioned as educational leaders, can claim
justification to be exercising their educational leadership for sustainable
social transformation. A key methodological feature of the presentation is to
articulate the living standards of judgement used to assess the quality of
research-based practices, and to produce appropriate live evidence to support
those knowledge claims. The symposium will act as a validation forum for the
presenters, as they test the validity of their claims to knowledge, by drawing
on the feedback of participants. Through this same process, the symposium will
also become a research exercise, in which participants will be encouraged to
generate their own living theories of educational leadership.
The aims of the symposium
are therefore two-fold. First, we are hoping that the symposium will act as a
live validation event in which we present the findings of our collaborative
research and test our research claims as educational leaders who are aiming to
influence sustainable social transformation. To test our claims, we will
organise the symposium so that participants have maximum opportunity to
scrutinise our evidence, and offer feedback that will help us to ensure that
our research meets the requirements of the UK Research Assessment Exercise, as
potentially world leading in terms of its originality, significance, and
rigour. This will involve also testing with symposium participants the appropriateness
of the methods we develop to test the validity of our claims, as we explain how
we transform our values into our living standards of judgement, and present a
multimedia evidence base to show the living reality of our claims. We shall
also video our live practices in the symposium event itself, to show how we aim
consistently to live our values in our practice in all our educational
encounters. This will bring us to our second aim, that by involving research
participants in this validation exercise, they will come to see how, through
the process, they are able also to exercise their potential for educational
leadership as they lead us, and themselves, to deeper understandings of our and
their own research practices, and offer their explanations for how they do this
by generating their own living educational theories of educational leadership
practices. And so the symposium becomes a context for the development of
reciprocally influential communities of educational research practice, in which
all can become educational leaders.
Issues to be addressed
We four presenters are
seeking feedback to the following questions:
We are hoping that the
experience of participating in this symposium will enable all participants to
appreciate how they also can generate their own living educational theories as
educational leaders by conducting their action enquiries, and test their
research-based claims that their research, too, may be judged in terms of its
originality, significance and rigour. We are hoping that, collectively,
participants can agree the kind of values-based living standards of judgement
that are appropriate for judging the quality of practice-based educational
leadership research.
Educational leadership,
living educational theories, reciprocity