Exploring the implications of ‘Living, Loving, Learning and the Evolutionary Creativity and Sustainability of Natural Energy Flow’ for creating a living educational theory: A response to Alan Rayner.

‘Living, Loving, Learning and the Evolutionary Creativity and Sustainability of Natural Energy Flow’ is the name of a paper that Alan Rayner (2009) presented to a meeting in the Senior Common Room of the University of Bath on the 23^rd February 2009. In responding to Alan’s paper I am exploring its implications for the generation of living educational theories. A living educational theory is an explanation that an individual produces for their educational influences in their own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of social formations. I imagine that you are like me in wanting to live as loving and productive life as possible and that you might want valid explanations of your influences in learning to help to ensure that you can look back with justifiable beliefs about your influence in the world. Hence the importance of creating your living educational theories.

In this response to Alan I am accepting the validity of the ideas he expresses in his paper. In exploring the implications of Alan’s ideas for the creation of my own living educational theory I include Alan’s statements to see if I can ensure that I am not distorting his meanings. Alan is writing from a perspective of a ‘transfigural understanding of inclusionality’. I am writing from a living theory perspective within which I am including insights from Alan’s paper. I focus on meanings of living and living standards of judgment; energy flow; values in the creation of my living educational theory; representing evolutionary creativity and sustainability of natural energy flow’ in creating living educational theories.

Living and Living Standards of Judgment

Alan writes from the perspective of a 'transfigural understanding of inclusionality':

“'living' means 'being a dynamic embodiment of natural energy flow'. What this implies for us as human beings is that our lifelong learning experience is continually shaping and being shaped by our natural neighbourhood in an ongoing evolutionary process. To attempt to impose definition on this process, or upon ourselves as inclusions of it, by way of fixed standards of judgement, is to curtail our creative capacity to learn, communicate and benefit from our own and others' experience in an ongoing improvisational exploration of nature and human nature. On the other hand, living standards of judgement that are malleable enough to sustain openness to evolving possibilities, whilst rigorous enough to be intellectually justifiable, maximize the potential for creative and far-reaching enquiry.”

I experience myself as living through being aware of my experience. I live with this mysterious capacity of awareness. I also live with the certainty of my own death. With this certainty I seek to live as loving and productive life as I can. I am aware that seeking to live this life is a source of pleasure, as well as some tension. My choice, or calling, to my vocation in education at the age of 22 in 1966, still seems to me to be a worthwhile form of life. The focus of my productive life on the generation and evaluation of living educational theories continues to motivate me. My present focus on expressing and communicating the meanings of relationally dynamic/living standards of judgment seems to me to be part of an epistemological transformation in educational knowledge and theorising. Contributions on this transformation, to the British Educational Research Association, Practitioner-Research Special Interest Group e-discussion between 16-22 February 2009, have been archived (BERA 2009). I began this e-discussion with the two video-clips below. One of Moira Laidlaw (1:03 mins) who originated the idea of living standards of judgment and one of Alan (5:07 mins) performing what has become known as ‘The paper dance of inclusionality’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1jEOhxDGno http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVa7FUIA3W8

In the first clip Moira can be seen expressing ‘a loving dynamic energy’ in her ‘gaze of recognition’ of her students, as they flow past her at the end of a lesson at Ningxia Teacher’s University in China. We have agreed this description of her expression and use both ‘a loving dynamic energy’ and ‘gaze of recognition’ as living standards of judgment in our explanations of educational influence. In the second clip Alan is expressing his understandings of boundaries in inclusionality with a life and vitality that has captivated the imaginations of many viewers. This is Alan’s original expression of inclusionality that helped to form my own.

Life-circulating and Life-affirming Energy

Alans asks the question 'what is natural energy flow?' He answers:

To address this question at its simplest and deepest requires a very fundamental kind of enquiry into what kinds of presence are needed both to account for the distinctiveness of natural form and to provide the possibility for such form to come into being. In short, we need to understand the fundamental responsive nature of 'Light' as what might these days be called 'electromagnetic information' and receptive nature of 'Darkness' as 'thermal and gravitational space', and how these relate with and to one another dynamically. Clearly, 'light alone' could not amount to more than a dimensionless point without the inclusion of space, and so it is obvious that light and space naturally include one another as distinct, but not discrete, co-creative presences. Every naturally occurring body, including every human body, can hence be understood not as a completely definable singular entity, but instead as a dynamic electromagnetic configuration of space.

My degree in physical sciences provides me with a way of comprehending Alan’s meaning of ‘a dynamic electromagnetic configuration of space’. I agree with Alan that to address the question as to ‘What is natural energy flow’ at its simplest and deepest requires a very fundamental kind of enquiry into what kinds of presence are needed both to account for the distinctiveness of natural form and to provide the possibility for such form to come into being.

My way of understanding natural energy-flow in living educational theories and living standards of judgment rests upon a mystery. It is a mystery at the heart of my being as I do not understand the source of the life-circulating and life-affirming energy that fuels my desire and motivation for what I do in life and education. I can however bear witness to the presence of this life-circulating and life-affirming energy.

The closest I can get to communicating this life-circulating and life-affirming energy is through the images below with my commentary. The first image helps me to recall an experience at the age of 22, when relaxing in the sun in a park near the Department of Electrochemistry at the University of Newcastle, where I was doing some research. I felt the energy of the sun and the cosmos. I felt unified in this flow of energy whilst being aware of my unique and distinguishable identity.

In this third image below Henry Lu, a colleague at the University of Bath is explaining his desire to enhance the flow of a life-circulating energy with colleagues in the University. Moira Laidlaw introduced me to the idea of Qi as a life-affirming energy in 2004 and Henry Lu introduced me to the idea of Qi, from Chinese Culture, as a life-circulating energy. I use this idea of life-circulating energy to emphasise the energy in a socio-cultural formation with its capacity to influence how and what we learn and do. I distinguish this life-circulating energy from a life-affirming energy with the help of the words of the Christian Theologian Paul Tillich (1962) where he writes about the state of being affirmed by the power of being itself (p. 168).

I feel a life-affirming energy flowing in my educational relationships as my students express the values that give meaning and purpose to their. I feel this energy flowing freely as they share with me the narratives of their lives through which they express values that carry hope for the future of humanity. I experience the free flow of this energy with the expression of values that carry this hope.

Here is the still image of Henry explaining his desire to enhance the flow of a life-circulating energy. You can access the 1:38 minute video by clicking on the url below this picture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0OmGR4v_6I&feature=channel_page

As Alan responds to Henry in the 5:19 minutes clip below (click on the live url below the picture) on the importance of the language of inclusionality I think that you will be able to see and feel Alan’s expression of his own life-circulating and life-affirming energy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUByppayZF0

Values

I am focusing on ontological values as these are the values that give meaning and purpose to life and form the practical explanatory principles we use to explain why we do what we do. I like the way Erich Fromm (1960) focuses on living a loving and productive life (p.18). I like the way Joan Walton (2008) generates a living theory which offers ‘spiritual resilience gained through connection with a loving dynamic energy’ as an original standard of judgment. (p.5).

Here is how Alan relates natural energy flow to loving self as neighbourhood and neighbourhood as self:

With this inclusional understanding of natural energy flow and its included flow-forms as a dynamic electromagnetic configuration of space comes a radical departure from the paradoxical definitive (rationalistic) systems of positivistic, dialectic and anti-materialistic thought that attempt to remove uncertainty by unilaterally or bilaterally excluding matter from space or vice versa, associated with fixed standards of judgement. Space is regarded as an infinite presence that can neither be cut nor contained and permeates everywhere (i.e. 'non-locally') as a receptive source of continuity that includes all, not a 'gap' or 'absence' that divides material subjects from material objects. We come to understand our individual bodily selves not as discrete local figures driven by Newtonian laws of active and reactive forces, but as distinctive receptive, reflective and responsive local inclusions of nonlocal influence - where all flows through one and one is in all. That is we understand our selves not as discrete objective or subjective entities, but as dynamic relational identities, local places somewhere as inclusions of everywhere. We come to love 'self as neighbourhood' and 'neighbourhood as self'.

I want to focus on the implications for the creation of living educational theories of Alan’s point that:

We come to understand our individual bodily selves not as discrete local figures driven by Newtonian laws of active and reactive forces, but as distinctive receptive, reflective and responsive local inclusions of nonlocal influence - where all flows through one and one is in all. That is we understand our selves not as discrete objective or subjective entities, but as dynamic relational identities, local places somewhere as inclusions of everywhere. We come to love 'self as neighbourhood' and 'neighbourhood as self'.

Some of the implications have been explored by Claire Formby (2007) in her master’s educational enquiry:

How do I sustain a loving, receptively responsive educational relationship with my pupils which will motivate them in their learning and encourage me in my teaching?

Because I felt that it had taken courage for Claire to ask, research and answer this question I asked her why she had felt able to form this question and explore its implications. Claire answered that it was because her Headteacher used the word love both in relation to colleagues and pupils. I think that Claire’s educational enquiry shows that she is loving ‘self as neighbourhood’ and ‘neighbourhood as self’. I’ll check out the validity of my interpretation with Claire.

In his 1993 Presidential Address to the American Educational Research Association, Eisner (1993) pointed to the importance of extending the forms of representation we used in communicating our meanings in educational research. I now want to explore the implications of Alan’s writings in relation to forms of representation.

Representing evolutionary creativity and sustainability of natural energy flow in creating a living educational theory.

Alan writes:

When we bring this understanding into our lifelong learning experience and educational practice, we include the 'passion' of responsive 'living light' with the 'compassion' of receptive 'loving darkness'. We become Sherpa guides to the inspirational territory of Nature, Love and Life, not authoritative instructors in the abstractive 'to be and/or not to be' logic of opposition and conflict. We speak of the evolutionary 'sustainability of the fitting' and natural dynamic relational kinship of life in all its diversity, not of the competitive 'survival of the fittest' on the road to cancerous monoculture.

One of my living contradictions is holding together the experience of a loving dynamic energy with the experience of crimes against humanity in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. I see that the socio-cultural formation in which I live and work holds such contradictions. I have worked at developing inclusional responses to such living contradictions by seeking to enhance the flow of values and understandings that carry hope for the future of humanity. I see many other individuals I live and work with, doing something similar. For example, Sonia Hutchinson, a manager with Young Carers in Bath and North East Somerset, has allowed me to use the following three images from her teenage-diaries to communicate her responses to these kinds of experience, and Andrew Henon, an artist who works with the organization NESA (North East Somerset Arts) has allowed me to share some of the images he created at the end of a failed attempt to give up smoking – an activity he engages in knowing that it is cancerous and life shortening whilst at the same time wanting to enhance the flow of life-circulating and life-affirming energy.

In the first two images Sonia is expressing experiences of ontological despair in the sense of feeling that life is losing its meaning and purpose. In the third image, of four people conversing with a pooled flow of co-created meaning and life-affirming energy, life is being expressed with meaning and purpose. I particularly like the third image because it helps me to show my meaning of a pooling of energy that can be experienced as individuals trust each other sufficiently to share their life-stories of critical incidents that have been significant in making them the unique individuals they are.

Here are the three images:

On 16 Feb 2009, at 13:08, Andrew Henon wrote:

Dear Jack

On seeing the attached images you sent, please find the attached. There appears to be some resonance, receptive and responsive dialogue, perhaps some shared meanings or communications through the visual text embodying shared meanings. The images are from my MA. They were produced during my ‘Quit smoking attempt cessation’. They may communicate the energies of heightened emotional expression, anger, frustration, repetition and energy flows. Please feel free to share with the discussion group as you wish.

Love Andy

Andy is now engaged in a new attempt to quit smoking and will be sharing his journey in the Monday evening educational conversation in the Senior Common Room of the University of Bath.

In concluding this response to Alan’s paper on ‘Living, Loving, Learning and the Evolutionary Creativity and Sustainability of Natural Energy Flow’ I want to stress my concern that in drawing insights from the paper as I explore their implications for creating a living educational theory, I do not want to distort or violate Alan’s ideas on a transfigural approach to inclusionality. What I want to do is to show how valuable I find the insights in creating my own living educational theory. In doing this I hope Alan feels the affirmation of seeing that his ideas are being used in helping another to give meaning and purpose to his productive life. Love Jack.

References

BERA (2009) Accessing the archives of the BERA Practitioner-Research Practitioner-Research Special Interest Group e-discussion, 22-26 February 2009. Retrieved on the 25 February 2009 from http://www.jackwhitehead.com/bera/beraarchives09.htm

Eisner, E. (1993) Forms of Understanding and the Future of Educational Research. Educational Researcher, Vol. 22, No. 7, 5-11.

Formby, C. (2007) How do I sustain a loving, receptively responsive educational relationship with my pupils which will motivate them in their learning and encourage me in my teaching? Master’s Educational Enquiry Unit, University of Bath. Retrieved 25 February 2007 from http://www.jackwhitehead.com/tuesdayma/formbyEE300907.htm

Fromm, E. (1960) The Fear of Freedom, p. 18, London; Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Rayner, R. (2009) Living, Loving, Learning and the Evolutionary Creativity and Sustainability of Natural Energy Flow. Retrieved 25 February 2009 from file:///Users/jackwhitehead/Documents/raynerLLLandcreativity.htm

Tillich, P. (1962) The Courage to be. London; Fontana.

Walton, J. (2008) Ways of Knowing: Can I find a way of knowing that satisfies my search for meaning? Ph.D. Thesis, University of Bath. Retrieved 25 February 2009 from http://www.actionresearch.net/walton.shtml