How can I contribute to
improving our practices in producing evidence-based accounts of our influences
in our work?
For the improving practice conversation,
in the Riverside Centre in Keynsham on the 22 November 2007
My interest in improving my practice in supporting
the production of evidence-based accounts of our influences in our work has
two, intimately related, foci. I feel great satisfaction in my own work when I
see that I have had a creative and productive influence in bringing the
embodied knowledge of another into the public domain. I believe my own
influence is focused on enhancing understandings of the significance of
clarifying one's own values in the course of their emergence in practice and on
enhancing understandings of the significance of the ideas of others in living a
loving and productive life.
In saying this I know that I am fortunate in being
able to work with individuals whose work and embodied knowledge I value. When I
focus on the importance of bringing embodied knowledge (the knowledge expressed
in practice), into the public domain, I am thinking of showing this knowledge
in a form that can be comprehended by others. I am thinking of a quality of
communication that can captivate the imagination of another in terms of the
values and understandings that are being expressed in terms of living
worthwhile and productive lives.
What I want to do here is to offer you my own
understandings of your embodied knowledge in a form that might you to bring
your embodied knowledge more fully into the public domain. I am thinking of
your knowledge of your influence as you seek to improve the life-chances and
educational experiences of young people in Bath and North East Somerset.
By doing this I hope to contribute to the evidence in
the room we use at Riverside. I am thinking of the evidence that communicates
the values and understandings we are
seeking to live as fully as we can. I also hope to contribute to the evidence that
shows and explains the influences we are having in our work to enhance the opportunities and learning of young people in
B&ANES as we support each other in living as fully as we can what we really
care about.
For the
conversation of the 8th November 2007 Nigel, Sandra and Chris
brought their writings. Here are some quotes from Nigel and Sandra and Chris
that feel to me to be focusing on what they really care about.
From Sandra:
"Obviously, in my role,
my time is shared between Nigel and Chris, but I have come to know that in a
lot of ways, they are very similar and that makes it very easy for me to work
effortlessly on behalf of them!
All three of us have 'matured' together over the past three years and
yes, I have this underlying sense that I am valued and appreciated by Chris and
Nigel. I know they trust me to
'come up with the goods' and to do the very best that I can in whatever
challenge they set for me. I am
very proud to work within our team, albeit a very small, three person team, but
one that thrives on the passions within all three of us to succeed on behalf of
those children out there.....the next generation." (Harris, 2006)
From Nigel:
I
have total confidence in Chris and Sandra to do a good job. No, more than that.
I know Chris and Sandra will do the best they can and are clear about
what they're trying to achieve. They will achieve and I have total confidence
in them to do so (and if we don't we shrug and move on. There is NEVER any
blame. NEVER).
Chris,
I know, is absolutely passionate about inclusion. I know she loves her work and
I mean, loves it. Her passion, by which I mean her total dedication
(outside of family) is about how she can contribute to including children and
young people in education (and society generally) so they get the best out of
it. I have an idea that somewhere in Chris' make-up is someone who places a very
high value on equality, on fairness, on making the world a better place.
Sandra
is also passionate about her work and is absolutely dedicated to supporting the
'frontline workers' in their role. Very early on, Sandra knew what drove us.
She knew what Chris was passionate about. She knew what I was trying to
achieve. She connected, with ease, into our passions, our values (which I know
are her values) and our desires and problems and conflicts and disappointments
and supported us in achieving the best we can. Amazingly, Sandra also loves
her job (she's told so many people!). Not just likes it, but loves it. She
knows she makes a difference, not just by supporting us, but in connecting
directly with Head Teachers and others. Many times has Sandra sorted out a
problem, and even if she can't, she has this knack of leaving the other person
feeling confident that it will get sorted. In turn, I think we
recognised Sandra's immense ability in dealing with people, in communicating on
our behalf. In Sandra, we have someone who knows what we want and wants it
herself. (Harrisson, 2007).
Chris writes
about Sandra's influence in the organisation of the Recognition Ceremony for
the Inclusional Quality Mark at the Guildhall in Bath in November 2005:
"The
date was getting nearer and the sleepless nights started with dreams of the
Director of Eudcation speaking to an almost empty Banqueting Room. It was then
that Sandra came into her own and starting ringing the schools, stating that we
needed to know number by a certain date and that it was really important that
the schools were well represented. There developed a constant interaction
between Sandra and I, Sandra informing me of the numbers attending from each
school and each of the serves, and I responded by asking her to ring them again
to ask them to invite more people to come along. One school rang Sandra asking
if they could invite more than fifteen people, so which Sandra replied,
'Of
course! You can invite as many as you want. It's a big room and there is plenty
of space for everyone. The more the merrier!'
You
can imagine her saying it, can't you? One school took her literally and sent
out an open invite to all the parents, at which point we began to wonder if the
Banqueting Room, with a capacity of over three hundred, would be big enough! We
soon came down to earth when Sandra spoke to me after one phone call to a
school which reported they would be bringing eight altogether. Eight!
Altogether! She must have seen the distress in my face and added that she had
responsed by saying to them that another school was bringing as many as thirty.
When Sandra rang them later that day they told her they would be bringing a
coach load. As the school was small, it seemed now that nearly the whole school
would be attending." (Jones, 2007)
At
the Improving Practice conversation on the 8th November 2007 Sandra
is talking about the images she has chosen to advertise the conversation and
the values she connects with as she chooses the images. Chris responds with a
description of how Sandra influenced the organisation of the November 2005
Recognition Ceremony and you can see this in the video-clip of Sandra below.
This still image, at the moment it was taken on the video also communicates to
me the qualities of relationship that distinguish Chris' expression of
inclusionality.
The meanings
communicated by Nigel, Sandra and Chris and expressed through their writings
captivate my imagination and help me to understand their feelings of working with each other. They help me
to understand the values that they wish to see being lived more fully in the
workplace and other spaces in which we live and work.
As I read the
writings and participate in the conversation I am aware of different qualities
being communicated with words and bodies. There are different communications
between the embodied expression of meaning and the words on the pages of text.
I am thinking particularly of the embodied expression of a life-affirming
energy in such values as loving what we are doing and the expression of
confidence in each other.
Let me show you
what I mean by these embodied expressions through my meanings of 'life-affirming energy with values'
with the help of the following brief video clips of Nigel, Chris, Kate, Chris & Marie, Marie and Sandra.
Nigel Harrisson on love at
BERA 2006 Chris Jones Inclusion
Recognition 040707 Kate Kemp: values to live by
Marie Huxtable &Chris
Jones BERA 06 Marie
Huxtable - what really matters Sandra Harris Images and
Values
I am assuming that enhancing the flow of
life-affirming energy, values and understandings being expressing through the
video-clips is helping to make the world a better place to be.
I am also assuming that producing and
communicating stories of the influences of our lives, work and learning is also
contributing to making the world a better place to be.
Here is a short story from a teacher. I think
it might serve to focus our attention on what it might be to enhance the
evidence of our influence in the work that we are doing. I imagine that you are
seeking to enhance the life and educational opportunities of young people and
that you would be pleased to see evidence-based accounts of your influence in
enhancing the life and educational opportunities of the person in the story:
These are some of the influences which have shaped
my view of education and the way I teach:
Up to the age of 11 I loved school and felt it was
a home from home. When I took the 11+ I remember friends talking excitedly
about going to the "tech" and that was how we saw our future. The
secondary modern school and the grammar weren't a feature as they were seen as
being for middle class children. It was a terrible shock to find out that I had
a place at the grammar school and I can remember the worried look on my
father's face when I read the letter to him. He was concerned that I wouldn't
fit in at the grammar school and that after a time that I wouldn't fit in
with my own community either. Although my parents challenged this placement
they felt they had to accept this "help" and this was my 1st
awareness that I was from a community considered disadvantaged.
My time at school was now characterised by feeling
out of place and this persisted until I left at 16. My parents had no
contact with my school. My father found reading and writing extremely difficult
and I used to do most of this for him. He avoided going to meet teachers at
parent's evenings because he might be expected to read something. I was given
elocution lessons and felt very strongly that I didn't want to change my way of
speaking.There were lots of times when my family and community background were
presented in a negative way. In academic terms I learnt a lot, gained 'O'
levels and wanted to study for 'A' levels. My confidence suffered though and
this was a result of feeling torn in two different directions ; on the one hand
my family needed me to get a job as soon as possible and on the other teachers
seemed determined that I should aim for university.
I chose to work as a nursing auxilliary in a
psychiatric hospital. I was very quickly given opportunities to work
on projects to help people move to independent living. The respect I felt
around me in this work was the unidentifiable thing missing from my schooling.
My job description contained numerous references to types of learning I was
responsible for yet I realise that this was an extension of my education
as I was able to continue learning.
When I applied to become a student at Bristol
Polytechnic I didn't have 'A' levels and an Access Course wasn't feasible
because of the long unpredictable hours I worked. I was amazed to be invited
in, loaned books to read, asked to give input to a social work course and once
again experienced formal education which was accepting and inclusive.
I felt a vocation to become a teacher but was
unable to follow my degree with a PGCE due to my disability. I then spent
5 years working in the mental health team of Avon County Council and put
a lot of my energy into enabling service users to be heard in the
decision-making processes affecting their lives. Although I received
considerable criticism for this as it wasn't part of my remit and wasn't valued
by my employers it became the most valued part of my work as I saw the
transforming effect it had for individuals.
Quite out of the blue I received a letter stating
that it was now possible for people with chronic health conditions to apply for
teacher training. I phoned Bath Spa University College that day and felt on top
of the world. After qualifying I was injured by a pupil and for a while felt
like leaving teaching. The judge who heard the assault case asked me to speak
to the boy ; I listened to his experiences of feeling inadequate, what it
was like to be excluded from classes and his sadness about my injury.
Then he asked me why I wasn't at school and then said " well what about
kids who can't learn proper, you'd better get back quick !" I took his
advice.
Having read the quotes from the
writings we shared on the 8th November, looked at the video-clips,
and read the short story, I want to suggest that we could use the action
planner and TASC at http://www.jackwhitehead.com/jack/arplanner.htm
to begin to form our evidence-based accounts. The action planner and TASC wheel
might appear initially to be constraining but a lot of practitioner-researchers
have found it useful to get started before moving to more narrative forms of
expression to include their evidence-based explanations of their influences in
improving practice. I am thinking here of the educational enquiries of the
practitioner-researchers who have successfully submitted their accounts for
accreditation on the masters programme at the University of Bath and that you
can access from:
http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/mastermod.shtml
If we want to connect our stories to the
stories of others who share are values in an international context, Mary
Roche's (2007) and Margaret Cahill's (2007) stories could provide a stimulus to
our own. Both Mary and Margaret offer their stories as their living educational
theories of their learning as they seek to live their values as fully as they
can in their context of the Republic of Ireland.
Here is Mary's Abstract for her living
theory thesis:
Towards
a living theory of caring pedagogy: interrogating my practice to nurture a
critical, emancipatory and just community of enquiry.
In this narrative of my self-study
action research into my practice I describe and explain my living theory of
caring pedagogical practice as I claim to know my own educational development
(Whitehead 1989a) in relation to teaching children to realise their capacity to
think critically, within a context of a new scholarship of educational practice
(Boyer 1990). I claim that as I researched dialogical pedagogies that would
support my aims of encouraging children to be critical thinkers, I also
reconceptualised my own identity as a critical thinker and began to challenge
dominant orthodoxies that have traditionally determined who is seen as a knower
in a primary classroom and who is seen as an educational researcher.
I articulate how my ontological values
of care, freedom and justice in relation to others were transformed through
their emergence into the living standards of judgment by which I evaluated the
educational influence in learning of my developing dialogical practice.
I claim that I have generated a
personal living educational theory about teaching children to be critical
thinkers that is grounded in the idea of 'being' rather than 'having' (Fromm
1979), and this stands as my original contribution to knowledge in my field. I
explain how I experienced a dissonance between my values and my practice that
led me to critique dominant didactic norms as located in an abstract concept of
a generalised 'Other', whereas my dialogical practice was located in the idea
of relationships with real, concrete others (Benhabib 1987). I explain the
significance of my research, grounded in my multimedia evidence base, for my
own educational development, for my institution, and for the wider educational
research community, as I clarify the developmental processes of my capacity to
theorise my practice. (Roche, 2007 http://www.jeanmcniff.com/MaryRoche/index.html
)
Here is Margaret's Abstract:
My Living
Educational Theory
of
Inclusional
Practice
This thesis is the articulation of my
living educational theory of inclusional practice, which evolved through
undertaking research in the area of educational provision for marginalised children. It is a narrative account in
which I offer descriptions of and explanations for my practice, as I transform
my educational contexts into a celebration of democratically-constituted inclusional
practices.
The thesis demonstrates how my embodied values of justice,
inclusion and equality compelled me to develop social and educational practices
that included potentially marginalised children. My living educational theory
of inclusional practice therefore contains within itself a living theory of
social justice premised
on the idea that all are equal participants in democratic public discourses. I explain how I have
transformed these values into the living critical standards of judgement by
which I wish my work to be evaluated.
My
original contributions to knowledge are to do with how I demonstrate the
development of inclusional practices that are grounded in the realisation of my
values that honour the individual and enable them to become agents in the
creation of an inclusive society. From the grounds of my evidence base, I claim
to have developed an inclusional practice that has profound implications of the
education of the teaching profession and other social formations. (Cahill, 2007)
I also want to suggest that Madeline
Church's (2004) representation of a network could be useful to us in showing
that we connect our activities through our relationships and that these are
contributing to enhancing our influences in the provision of opportunities for well-being and a
productive life for young people in B&NES. Here is Madeline's representation of a network of
relationships 
I think we could develop multi-media narratives for
communicating our living educational theories of our workplace influences. I
believe that our living theories will show the expression of our talents for living our values as
fully as we can and that we will offer our living theories as gifts to others
to work with in making their own contributions. I am thinking of contributions
that also enhance the well-being and economic and educational opportunities of
others. If you want to see what I'm meaning by a multi-media narrative, here is
one I presented at the BERA
2007 conference on Generating Educational Theories That
Can Explain Educational Influences In Learning: living logics, units of
appraisal, standards of judgment
( you can access this at http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/166811.htm
)
I think that Louise Cripps (2007) is expressing such talents in
the clip below and has offered her living theory of her educational enquiry 'How do I improve my educational
relationship with the learners I work with, both adults and children?' as a gift to others at http://www.jackwhitehead.com/tuesdayma/louiseeenov07.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ck_ECxcaEc
In developing our living educational theories of our influences in the
workplace I think it is wise to integrate insights from the most advanced
sociocultural and sociohistorical theories of the day. This is because our
cultural and historical contexts influence the expression and development of
our talents and gifts. The clip below shows Louise Cripps talking with me at
the end of a masters group at the University of Bath. Louise and I have already
commented on how the non-verbal communications show a mutually of respect and
response in our relationship. Louise's account would not have been produced
without the history of the policies that have led to the financial support of
the Government for the fees to support Louise's educational enquiry for the
masters programme I am sharing
with Louise some of the ideas that have emerged from my research programme into
educational theory at the University. These ideas are now part of the cultural
influences in publications in books, libraries and web-space. In the generation
of our living theories you will hear me stressing the importance of recognizing
the significance of these cultural and historical influences. If you want to
follow up some of these ideas you could have a look at Snow (2001) and Schon
(1995). Snow advocates research into how we can bring our practical knowledge
(in my language our embodied knowledges) into the public domain. Schon advocates the development of a
new epistemology from action research for comprehending and validating the
knowledge of reflective practitioners.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu_YSX7SlI0
If
you ask me for evidence of my educational influence in the learning of others
in my work, I can provide this with visual narratives that integrate the voices
and living theories of the practitioner-researchers I work with (Whitehead,
2006). I'm hoping to explore further what I might do in responding to your
narratives that could help to strengthen their evidential base in descriptions
and explanations of your influence in working in the service of the young
people in B&NES.
References
Cahill,
M. (2007) My Living Educational Theory of Inclusional Practice. Ph.D.
submission, University of Limerick.
Furlong,
J. & Oancea, A. (2005) Assessing Quality in Applied and Practice-based Educational
Research. Oxford; University of Oxford, Department of Education.
Harris,
S. (2007) What Makes Us Work Together. Paper for Improving Practice
Conversation, Riverside, Keynsham, 8 November 2007.
Harrisson,
N. (2007) It Was Never Going To Fail. Paper for Improving Practice
Conversation, Riverside, Keynsham, 8 November 2007.
McNiff,
J. (2007) My Story Is My Living Educational Theory, in Clandinin, J. (Ed.)
(2007) Handbook of Narrative Inquiry: Mapping a Territory. Thousand Oaks,
London, New Dehli; Sage.
Rayner, A. (2005) Space, Dust and the
Co-evolutionary Context of 'His Dark Materials'. Retrieved 2 August 2006 from
http://people.bath.ac.uk/bssadmr/inclusionality/HisDarkMaterials.htm
Roche, M. (2007) Towards a living theory of caring
pedagogy: interrogating my practice to nurture a critical, emancipatory and
just community of enquiry. Retrieved 6 November 2007 from http://www.jeanmcniff.com/MaryRoche/index.html
Schšn,
D. (1995) The New Scholarship Requires a New Epistemology. Change, Nov./Dec.
1995 27 (6) pp. 27-34.
Snow, C. E.
(2001) Knowing What We Know: Children, Teachers, Researchers. Presidential
Address to AERA, 2001, in Seattle, in Educational Researcher, Vol. 30, No.7, pp.3-9.
Whitehead, J.
(2006a) Living Inclusional Values In Educational Standards Of
Practice And Judgement, Ontario Action Researcher, Vol. 8.2.1. Retrieved 21 November 2007 from http://www.nipissingu.ca/oar/new_issue-V821E.htm
Whitehead, J.
& McNiff, J. (2006b) Action Research Living Theory. London; Sage.
Jack Whitehead, 21 November 2007