How do I improve my educational relationship with Louise
Cripps in the creation of my living educational theory? An educational enquiry.
Jack Whitehead, Department of Education, University of
Bath.
DRAFT 7 June 2007.
Context
On Tuesday evening's during 2007 I
have been tutoring educational enquiries for the masters programme in the
Department of Education of the University of Bath. Louise Cripps is one of the participants who has expressed
some concern about writing up her educational enquiry for submission. This is a
4,500 (maximum) main text with no limit on the materials in Appendices. In an
address to the British Educational Research Association, I argued for a
research based approach to professionalism in education in which individual
educators would produce accounts of their learning as they asked, researched
and answered questions of the kind, 'how do I improve my practice?' (Whitehead,
1989). Using insights developed while working with 6 teachers over a year
between 1975-76 to improve learning for 11-14 year olds in mixed ability
science groups, I have been advocating the use of action reflection cycles in
disciplining educational enquiries (Whitehead, 1976). These action reflections cycles involve:
Expressing a concern, interest and
or passion experienced in improving what one is doing; Imagining possibilities
for improving practice; Choosing
one possibility and forming an action plan that includes gathering data
on which to make a judgment on the influence of the actions in improving
practice; Acting and gathering data; Evaluating the influence of the actions in
improving practice; Producing an evidence-based explanation of educational
influences in learning for validation.
An action planner is often used in
support of this process. This involves responding to questions such as:
What is your concern? (What do you
want to improve?)
What could you do about this?
(Imagining possibilities)
What actions are you going to
take?
What data are you going to gather
to make a judgment on your influence?
Whose theoretical insights might
be useful to you in evaluating the influences of your actions?
Who are you going to ask to form a
validation group to evaluate the validity of your explanation of your
educational influences in learning? (your learning, the learning of others
and/or the learning of the social formations in which you are living and
working).
I will use this form of
educational enquiry in exploring the implications of asking, How do I
improve my educational relationship with Louise Cripps in the creation of my
living educational theory?
What is my concern(s)?
In the context of my
responsibility for tutoring Louise's educational enquiry my primary concern is
to relate to Louise in a way she finds helpful in producing a successfully
enquiry. At the time of writing Louise has suggested that she would find it
helpful for her writing to understand more about me and what I do in my
tutoring. In the context of my commitment to research-based professionalism my
concern is to research my question 'How do I improve what I am doing?' in a way
that contributes to the public knowledge-base of education. My assumption is
that by explaining my educational influences in my own learning, in the
learning of others and in the learning of the social formations in which I live
and work, I will be generating my own living educational theory as a
contribution to educational knowledge.
Imagining Possibilities.
In seeking to respond to Louise's
desire to complete an account of her educational enquiry for submission I have
produced two accounts of my own practice. These were produced in response to
Louise's feeling that if she knew more about me and what I do in my tutoring
then this might help her to produce her account.
Acting, Gathering Data and
Evaluating my Influence
I have produced two accounts and
checked with Louise to see if they captivate her imagination and are useful for
her writing. The first account emphasised the theories of others that I find
useful in explaining what I do. Having produced the account I could appreciate
that they didn't captivate Louise's imagination because they were presented in
propositional terms that were severed from any connection with real living
relationships. In the second account I worked at keeping a connection between a
narrative about myself and the ideas of others. Louise picked out as
'stimulating' some of the narrative, especially where I explained some
experiences that influenced my motivation in education related to the flow of
my life-affirming energy and values. I could see however, in our conversation
of 5 June 2007 that Louise, while highly motivated, was still puzzled and in a
creative tension about what to write and how to write in her educational
enquiry. So, I am now back at the beginning of an action reflection cycle
wondering How do I improve my educational relationship with Louise Cripps in
the creation of my living educational theory?
My concern is still with improving my educational relationship with
Louise. The improvement I have in mind is that I can offer something to Louise
in the form of this account or in the form of direct questioning that helps
Louise in producing her account.
My imagined possibility is that I can produce an account of my educational
relationship with Louise that explains my educational influence in my learning
in a way that Louise finds helpful in explaining her influences in learning.
Here are my actions – ie the account I am in the process of producing.
Explaining my educational
influences in my learning in my educational relationship with Louise Cripps.
The educational influences I have
in mind concern the expression and communication of the values and
understandings that constitute my learning as educational. The idea of what
constitutes learning as educational has been central to my working life in
education as I set myself the task, on coming to the University in 1973 to see
if could contribute to a reformation of what counted as educational theory.
What I had in mind was a form of educational theory that could explain the
educational influences of individuals in their own learning, in the learning of
others and, more recently, in the learning of the social formations in which we
live and work. I know the idea of reforming what counted as educational theory
was an ambitious aim but I felt that the dominant view that educational theory
was constituted by the philosophy, sociology, psychology and history of
education was mistaken. The mistake was in the belief that the practical
principles used by individuals to explain their educational influences in their
own learning in enquiries of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?'
would be replaced in any rationally developed educational theory by principles
drawn from the theories of the disciplines of education. What I have been
seeking to do is to show that the living educational theories produced in such
educational enquiries as the explanations that individuals produce for their
educational influences in learning can be legitimated in the Academy as valid
contributions to educational knowledge.
At the heart of my explanations of
my educational influence in learning are the values and understandings I
express in giving meaning and purpose to my life, my ontological values. When I
express these values in my educational relationships they include a flow of
life-affirming energy. To see what I mean by such energy with values you could
view the 45 second video-clip from a celebration led by Peter Mellett on
Jacqueline Delong's graduation day for her doctorate on the 18/12/02. From left
to right you can see Margarida Dolan, Pete Mellett, Margaret Farren, Chris
Seeley, Jacqueline Delong and Jack Whitehead.
at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxqRF2tVLB4
For some 10 seconds, between 31-41
seconds on the clip, this energy is flowing in the pleasurable laughter as
Peter Mellett responds to Margarida Dolan's question, 'How will I know if this
is the last sound if I haven't heard it before?'
In explaining my educational
influences in learning (and I believe in yours too) it is necessary to include
such flows of energy as explanatory principles. In the 45 second clip above we
are gathered together in a celebration of Jacqueline's successfully completed
doctorate. Jacqueline's thesis has been accredited as having made an original
contribution to educational knowledge. We are sharing an affirmation of
well-being in the sense of an accomplishment in a productive life. This
affirmation of well-being seems to be to be a vital explanatory principle in my
explanations of my educational influences in learning. It is at the heart of
what I understand as an inclusional way of being, enquiring and knowing. I
think Louise understands the significance of such a flow of life-affirming energy
in sustaining her passion for education. Here is an image from a Tuesday
evening masters session that I feel resonates with the same life-affirming
energy as my expression between 31-41 seconds of the above clip.
The second explanatory principle,
in the explanation of my educational influence in my own learning, is the
inclusional principle of receptive responsiveness. My most powerful experience
of this inclusional principle was while video-taping Margaret Farren and Yvonne
Crotty in their presentation at AERA in Chicago on the 12 April 2007. You can
see Yvonne living the value of receptive responsiveness in the 1 minute 33
seconds clip
at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFXbhFQsg9s
.
As Margaret begins to introduce
the session, Yvonne is receptively responsive to a participant in the group and
seeks to include this individual through her enquiries. I also feel this quality of receptive
responsiveness as I watched the 2 minute video-clip of the educational
relationship between Louise and me as we explore possibilities for Louise's
writings.
The two minute video-clip is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu_YSX7SlI0
What is crucial for me, in
explaining my educational influences in learning in terms of receptively
responsive values and understandings, is in seeing the harmonic balance between
our embodied expressions. While the
words we are using are masked by the sounds in the rest of the room, we have
both commented on how receptively responsive we to each others' expressions.
So, in the course of my present writing I am learning how to include such
receptively responsive relationships, with their flow of life-affirming energy
and values, as explanatory principles in my explanations of educational
influence. Unknown to both Louise and I, members of the group placed placards
in front of the camera, which evoked the explosions of laughter in similar
images to the one of Louise above and the clip of the celebration on Jacqueline
Delong's graduation day.
The main reason I developed a
vocation for education was that having been awarded a degree in science in 1962
I felt that my educational relationships in school and university would have
been better in more of my teachers had related to me as an individual worthy of
being recognised as a person who could take some responsibility for his own
learning. I think of recognition in the way it is used by Fukuyama:
Human beings seek recognition
of their own worth, or of the people, things, or principles that they invest
with worth. The desire for recognition, and the accompanying emotions of anger,
shame and pride, are parts of the human personality critical to political life.
According to Hegel, they are what drives the whole historical process. (Fukuyama, 1992, p. xvii)
My vocational move from being a
science teacher, developing my pupils' scientific understanding, to being an
educational researcher helping constitute educational theory, has not lost
contact with my primary motivation for sustaining my commitment to the vocation
of education. In supporting educators in the generation of their living
educational theories, as explanations for their educational influences in
learning, I focus on the development of explanations that include the pupils
voice in being recognised as individual human beings of value and as having
some responsibility for their own learning.
One of the reasons I want to
improve my contribution to the educational relationship with Louise is to see
what I can do to enable her to make public her embodied knowledge as an
educator and a headteacher as she works to enhance the education of her pupils
and the professional learning of colleagues in the school.
For example, in the following 5
minutes 57 seconds video-clip, Louise is participating in the collaborative
creation of understandings with her pupils in a way that shows her educational
relationship and influences in the learning of her pupils. Louise holds her
pupils within an inclusional gaze that for me can be distinguished by what
Martin Buber refers to as the humility of the educator and by the recognition
of values in the glance of the educator:
"If this educator should ever believe that for the
sake of education he has to
practise selection and arrangement, then he will be guided by another criterion
than that of inclination, however legitimate this may be in its own sphere; he
will be guided by the recognition of values which is in his glance as an educator.
But even then his selection remains suspended, under constant correction by the
special humility of the educator for whom the life and particular being of all
his pupils is the decisive factor to which his 'hierarchical' recognition is
subordinated." (Buber, p. 122, 1947)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ck_ECxcaEc
So, in answering my question, How
do I improve my educational relationship with Louise Cripps in the creation of
my living educational theory? my present
practice is to offer Louise the above account with the following two
intentions. The first intention is to focus Louise's attention on explaining
her educational relationships with the pupils (and possible colleagues in the
school). I am doing this because I believe that making public Louise's embodied
knowledge as an educator will contribution to the knowledge-base of education.
I believe that if Louise will answer the following questions she will be well
on the way to producing an educational enquiry for her masters degree:
What do I want to improve?
Why do I want to improve this?
What am I going to do to
improve what I am doing?
What data will I gather to
enable me to make a judgment on the influence of my actions?
Who am I going to ask to help
with the validation of my explanation of my educational influences in my own
learning and in the learning of others? (I will ask the validation group to
evaluate the comprehensibility of my explanation, the quality of the evidence I
produce to justify my claims to know, the clarity of my explication of the
assumptions in my practice and explanations, my authenticity and integrity in
showing, over time through interactions, that I truly believe in the values and
understandings I claim to be living by).
My second intention in sharing the above account with Louise
(and yourselves) is to see if exploring the limits of my creativity in
producing living standards of judgment, from flows of life-affirming energy
with values, with the relationally dynamic awareness of space and boundaries of
inclusionality, is helpful to Louise and others in the production of their
unique living standards of judgment. I am thinking of these standards in terms
of the unique constellation of explanatory principles that each individual can
use in explaining their educational influence in their own learning, in the
learning of others and in the learning of social formations.
The two ideas I am using from the original work of Alan
Rayner (2007) are the ideas of inclusionality itself, as a relationally dynamic awareness of space and boundaries as
connective, reflexive and co-creative and the idea of receptive
responsiveness. I am bringing my own original idea of the importance of
recognising the importance of forming living standards of practice and judgment
with flows of life-affirming energy with values. I am suggesting we find ways
of communicating the meanings of our flows of energy with values as explanatory
principles in our explanations of educational influence.
In writing the above I do not want to lose sight of the
relationally dynamic influence of the ideas of others in my understandings. One
of my latest publications is Living
Inclusional Values In Educational Standards of Practice and Judgment (Whitehead, 2006) You can access this at http://www.nipissingu.ca/oar/new_issue-V821E.htm
. The Appendices show the influence of the ideas of other theorists, on issues
such as rigour, validity that I work at bringing into my educational
relationships. Perhaps the most significant of these ideas in the growth of my
own educational knowledge and in my capacity to articulate my own living
educational theory was Michael Polanyi's insight that I must understand the
world from my point of view, as a person claiming originality and exercising
his personal judgment responsibly with universal intent . (Polanyi, 1958, p. 327).
I shall
pause here and offer this to Louise and yourselves, as my present practice,
while looking forward to Louise's responses in her educational enquiry into
improving her practice.
I shall
also offer the writings to the 2006-7 BERA e-seminar I'm convening for the BERA
Practitioner-Researcher Special Interest Group on What standards of judgment
do we use in evaluating the quality of the educational knowledge and
educational theories we are creating as practitioner-researchers? You can join in the conversations in
this e-forum from the What's New page of http://www.actionresearch.net
.
I am
offering the writings as part of my response to the latest posting of the 6
June 2007 from Peter Mellett:
From: esspem@BATH.AC.UK
Subject: Re: 18 December 2002
Date: 6 June 2007 15:47:44 BDT
To: BERA-PRACTITIONER-RESEARCHER@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Reply-To: BERA-PRACTITIONER-RESEARCHER@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Dear
Alan, Jack and All -
......However, whatever our
vocabulary, I suspect we are all very much in the
same neck of the woods. What we
have said to each other so far makes me
suspect that the appropriate
logic we are seeking to understand might not
actually allow for the separate
existence of ostensive concepts
called 'standards of judgment'
(which we've spent the past three years
trying to reveal in our own
ways). My grasp of the idea of an inclusional
logic suggests that, if we
relate in ways that are educational, within an
inclusional gathering whose
members are receptively responsive (so that we
each 'sing with the voice of the
other and know the meaning'), then the
standards of judgment should be
implicit within this process. We do not
have to name them as separate
entities: they are not content, but process.
It is the quality of the
relationships that carries the claim to having
knowledge and of being
educational. It's not so much the 'what' of
standards of judgment as their
'how'. Good-quality interaction (within the
logic of our shared humanity)
includes and communicates its own standards
of
judgment.
The idea of
logic I work with is that it is a mode of thought that is appropriate for
comprehending the real as rational (Marcuse, 1964, p. 105). My intuitions are
telling me that I should be able to communicate the meanings of a living logic
of educational enquiry through making more explicit the mode of thought that is
enabling the above account to express the rationality of what I am doing in
responding to and continuing to work with my enquiry, How do I improve my educational relationship with Louise
Cripps in the creation of my living educational theory? An educational enquiry.
Love Jack.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
When
Martin Dobson, a colleague, died in 2002 the last thing he said to me was
'Give my Love to the Department'. In the 20 years I'd worked with Martin
it was his loving warmth of humanity that I recall with great
life affirming pleasure and I'm hoping that in Love Jack we can share this
value of common humanity.
References.
Buber, M. (1947) Between Man and Man. London; Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trubner
& Co. Ltd.
Polanyi, M.
(1958) Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy . London ; Routledge and Kegan Paul.Fukuyama,
F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man, London; Penguin.
Rayner, A. (2007) Essays and Talks about Inclusionality by Alan Rayner. Retrieved 7 June 2007 from http://people.bath.ac.uk/bssadmr/inclusionality/
Whitehead, J. (1976) Improving learning for 11 to 14 year olds in Mixed Ability Science Groups. Swindon; Wiltshire Curriculum Development Centre. Retrieved on 7 June 2007 from http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/writings/ilmagall.pdf
Whitehead, J. (1989) How do we
Improve Research-based Professionalism in Education? A question which includes
action research, educational theory and the politics of educational knowledge.
1988 Presidential Address to The British Educational Research Association.
Retrieved on 7 June 2007 from http://www.bera.ac.uk/addressdownloads/Whitehead,%201988.pdf
Whitehead, J. (2006) Living
Inclusional Values in Educational Standards of Practice and Judgment, Ontario
Action Research, Vol. 8.2.1. Retrieved on 7 June 2007 from http://www.nipissingu.ca/oar/new_issue-V821E.htm
Whitehead, J. & McNiff, J. (2006) Action
Research Living Theory. London; Sage.