Continuing my research programme
into the growth of my educational knowledge
Part Three: Inclusionality 2005 -
?
Developing the dynamic boundaries
of living standards of judgement in educational enquiries of the kind, 'how do
I improve what I am doing?'
The present phase of my
educational enquiry is focused on the educational influence of inclusionality
in my learning. I am thinking of the educational influence of inclusionality in
relation to my sense of vocation in education. This sense of vocation moved me
from teaching science in secondary schools in London (1967-1973) to a
Lectureship in Education in the University of Bath (1973- ). I moved from being
a teacher in a school to becoming an educational researcher in a University to
accomplish my purpose of contributing to the reconstruction of educational
theory into forms of understanding that could account for educational
influences in the learning of individuals and for their educational influences
in the education of their social formations. It was a mistake in the dominant
'disciplines' approach to educational theory, that moved me into educational
research at the University of Bath in 1973. This mistake was well put in 1983
by Paul Hirst, one of the major proponents of the 'disciplines' approach, when
he acknowledged that much understanding of educational theory will be
developed:
"É in the context of
immediate practical experience and will be co-terminous with everyday
understanding. In particular, many of its operational principles, both explicit
and implicit, will be of their nature generalisations from practical experience
and have as their justification the results of individual activities and
practices.
In many characterisations of
educational theory, my own included, principles justified in this way have
until recently been regarded as at best pragmatic maxims having a first crude
and superficial justification in practice that in any rationally developed
theory would be replaced by principles with more fundamental, theoretical
justification. That now seems to me to be a mistake. Rationally defensible
practical principles, I suggest, must of their nature stand up to such
practical tests and without that are necessarily inadequate." (Hirst, 1983, p. 18)
In my enquiry into the growth of my
educational knowledge, I have analysed transformations in my logics, values and
methodologies in my explanations for my own learning in enquiries of the kind,
'How do I improve what I am doing?' (Whitehead, 2004). In this present enquiry
I see myself working towards a clearer comprehension and communication of the
implications of inclusionality for my research programme into the nature of
educational theory. Following Rayner (2004), by inclusionality I mean the
relationally dynamic awareness of a complex self, of space and boundaries that
are connective, reflexive and co-creative. By a complex self I am meaning a
fully contextualized understanding of self-identity as being formed with the
reciprocal coupling of inner and outer special domains through an intermediary
self-boundary. My reason for focusing on the meanings of standards of judgement
is because of their role in the validation and legitimation of claims to
educational knowledge. As my learning is being transformed through the practice
and understanding of inclusionality in my educational relationships I am
focusing my research programme on developing my understanding of the nature of
the living standards of judgement that are flowing in the labyrinthine channels
and boundaries of communication and that are opening and closing through the
internet
The conversation that is focusing
my enquiry into the implications of inclusionality for my understanding of
these living standards of judgement is one between Alan Rayner and Ted Lumley
(2005)
"Alan - There is a process
of explicit cognition involved in understanding that space and boundaries are
necessarily connective, reflective and co-creative, rather than divisive, in a
dynamic, heterogeneous Universe. And this explicit cognition can undermine the absolute
closure (rather than relative opening and closing) imposed by rationalistic
thought, hence opening up the possibilities for relating with the
ever-transforming shape of the space of the now."
Ted - Òi would see this
more as relational intuition, rather than explicit cognition. i don't
know about you, but everytime i write about inclusionallity, i cannot do it
from explicit foundations but must continually ask myself whether what i've
written 'feels right'.Ó (e-mail 8 January
2005)
What I now want to do is to see if
I can communicate my meanings of living standards of judgement that have formed
in the flow of the boundaries of my educational relationships. Their
formation involved both relational intuitions that felt right and their explicit
cognition of the following narratives. These are now flowing through the
labrythine channels and boundaries of communication of the internet. I see this
flow as open to your intersubjective agreement, criticism, rejection or
amendment and hence part of a validation process which can help to establish
the legitimacy of such standards of judgement.
To communicate my meanings of the
living standards of judgement flowing with and through the boundaries of
educational relationships in awareness and understanding, I will start by using
images of flow forms from biology and geology before moving to the video-images
of educational relationships.
My understanding of inclusionality
and flow-forms was moved on by Karen Teeson's diagram of the interconnecting
and branching channels of communication opened up by the tubular channels of
connection between tubular structures in anastomosis in fungi. I have added
some spaces to the closed lines in the second diagram to emphasise the relative
permeabilities of the boundaries.
The first image began the
transformation of my understanding of communications through the internet. From
thinking of such communications as following linear pathways it moved to seeing
an interconnecting and branching labyrinth of channels and boundaries of
communication. The second image serves as a metaphor for understanding
flow-forms of living standards of judgement. The flow of water, with the
boundaries of the sand is forming patterns.
The second image of flow-form was
provided to me by Maggie Farren:
I am seeing the water as flows of
communication in which living forms of judgement include both relational
intuitions of the living flows of meaning in educational relationships and
their explicit meanings. I now want to consider the possibility that such
living meanings of inclusional standards of judgement can be expressively
distinguished in intuitive and explicit communications through the following
narratives. The five narratives focus on the practical activities which
clarified inclusional meanings of, a loving flow-form of life-affirming energy,
scientific enquiry, contextual understandings, originality of mind, critical
judgement and educational enquiry, in the course of their emergence in practice.
My choice of narratives was influenced by the intuition that demonstrating the
possibility of intersubjective agreement about these inclusional meanings from
ostensive definitions would be a significant contribution to a new epistemology
for a new scholarship of educational enquiry.
1) Can a loving flow-form of
life-affirming energy in educational relationships be distinguished as a living
standard of judgement in educational relationships?
One of my most vivid recollections
of a flow of life-affirming energy was on a gloriously sunny day in Newcastle,
as a 22 year old student in 1966. I was aware of a flow of cosmic energy that
flowed through and around me and that continues to resonates for me in what
Bataille refers to as assenting to life to the point of death and what Tillich
refers to as a state of being grasped by the power of being itself. I continue
to find the source of this cosmic flow of energy is a mystery to me and while I
experience the flow of this energy as having personal and social expression, I
see that the flow existed before my own experience of it and I believe it will
continue to flow, outside myself, when I am dead. I know that any explanation
of what I do would be incomplete and invalid without the inclusion of an acknowledgement
of the significance of my experience of this energy. I see such energy flowing
through individuals as they express what really matters to them and I usually
distinguish what really matters to people, what they care about, in terms of
their values.
I identify such a flow of
life-affirming energy in the life and work of Salvador Dali. I imagine that we
will have different responses to the following quotation. You may feel that
there is an unbearable ego at work here. I am identifying with the idea that
one can experience a supreme pleasure that I experience as a flow of
life-affirming energy, in being oneself together with the humour of my response
to 'Modesty is not exactly my speciality'!
Every morning upon awakening,
I experience a supreme pleasure:
That of being Salvador DaliÉ
And I ask myself, wonderstruck
What prodigious thing will he do
today,
This Salvador Dali
Modesty
Is not exactly
My speciality.
(Levi, 2000, p.122)
A value which seems to find
expression in every culture is love. In seeking intersubjective agreement about
the meaning of a 'loving flow-form of life-affirming energy in educational
relationships' I am thinking of inclusional meanings that hold together, while
at the same time distinguishing love and energy in a loving flow-form of
life-affirming energy in educational relationships.
Evidence for my belief that it is
possible to reach an intersubjective agreement on the meaning of such a living
standard of educational judgement is provided by the agreement between Moira
Laidlaw and me that the relational flows of meaning in the video clip below,
from which the following still image was taken, can be described through our
agreed ostensive definition as a loving flow-form of life-affirming energy in
educational relationships:
More still images from the
classroom with Moira Laidlaw at Guyuan Teachers College in China on the 15
October 2004 can be seen at:
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/moira151004/moira151004.html
The following 9 MB video clip will
take several minutes to download using Broadband (10 minutes on my system) and
opens in Quicktime.
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/mlendSorenson.mov
I am fascinated by the question of
whether it is possible and desirable to extend this agreement between Moira and
me, with your agreement that as we watch the video-clip we are
experiencing a loving flow-form of life-affirming energy in the channels of
space and dynamic boundaries of the educational relationships. So, one of the
tests of validity of my belief that it will be possible to enhance such loving
flows of life-affirming energy within our social contexts and educational
relationships, rests on this meaning resonating with your own, first through
the uniqueness of our intuitive responses and then into the explicit cognitions
of our shared language.
My curiosity about the possibility
of agreeing shared meanings such as a loving flow of life-affirming energy,
extends to thedevelopment of inclusional meanings of a living standard of
judgement of scientific enquiry in questions of the kind, 'How do I improve
what I am doing?'
2) Can a flow-form of a
scientific enquiry into educational influence in educational relationships be
distinguished as a living standard of judgement in educational research.
My meanings of scientific enquiry
have been influenced by my first degree in physical sciences where scientific
experiments were conducted using controlled experimental designs to detect the
causal influence of one variable on another. I conducted such experiments and
understood their significance in the testing of the validity of scientific
theories through the generation and testing of hypotheses from a theory. The
understanding of a scientific theory in my first degree programme was that it
was constituted by a set of determinate relationships between a set of
variables in terms of which a fairly extensive set of regularities could be
explained.
My meanings have also been
influenced by Karl Popper's understandings of the logic of scientific discovery
as involving problem formulation, a tentative theory, error elimination and the
reformulation of a problem. They have been influenced by Peter Medawar's point
that the biggest defect of Popper's hypothetic-deductive system for the growth
of scientific knowledge was its explicit disavowal of any competence to speak
of the creative acts in a scientific enquiry. For Medawar, as a nobel prize
winning scientist, the intuitive leaps of imagination were a necessary part of
his scientific enquiry.
My meanings have also been
influenced by John Dewey's logic of inquiry which resonated with my own
experience that I consciously experienced concerns or problems when my values
were not lived fully in my practice, I imagined ways forward in action plans,
acted on these and gathered data with which to make a judgement on my
effectiveness, I evaluated my actions in relation to my values and
understandings and modified my concerns, plans and actions in the light of my
evaluations. I first explicated this form of my understanding of scientific
enquiry in 1976 as I worked with a group of 6 teachers over two years to see if
we could develop enquiry learning with 11-14 year old pupils in their science
lessons (Whitehead, 1976). While it isn't necessary to access this for my
present purpose if you are interested in the evidence I am drawing on in this
account you can access it at:
http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/ilmagall.pdf
(It will take several minutes to
download with broadband and open as a PDF file)
What I am interested in here, is
whether it will help the flow of values that carry hope for the future of
humanity to validate and legitimate a living standard of judgement to
distinguish an inclusional flow-form scientific enquiry. The first stage in
this process is to see if I can distinguish and communicate the meanings of an
inclusional flow-form scientific enquiry as a living standard of judgement in
an educational enquiry.
During 1971 a major transformation
in my understanding of scientific enquiry in the generation and testing of
educational theory occurred. Working towards my masters degree in the
psychology of education I was researching what I called a preliminary
investigation of the process through which adolescents acquired scientific
understanding. As I was using a controlled experimental design with pupils
randomly allocated to different groups so that I could see if I could detect
the educational influence of using guided discovery or enquiry learning in
pupils' learning and also studying the mathematization of psychological space
in Kelly's Personal Construct Theory and Lazersfeld Latent Structure Theory of
Attitudes, I began to reject the assumption in my educational theory that it
was constituted by disciplines of education such as the philosophy, psychology,
sociology and history of education. I could see that non of these disciplines
either individually or collectively could answer my question, 'How do I help my
pupils to improve their scientific understandings?'
The problem for me seemed to rest
in my conception of educational theory and scientific enquiry. I needed to
develop a different approach to educational theory to the one that claimed that
it was constituted by the conceptual frameworks of disciplines such as
philosophy, sociology, psychology and history. I felt that I needed an
educational theory that was consciously emerging from educational practice. I
was helped by ideas in Michael Polanyi's personal knowledge to articulate the
new base in consciousness for the creation of my educational theory and
approach to scientific enquiry. I am thinking particularly of the decision to
understand the world from one's own point of view as a person claiming
originality and exercising judgement with universal intent.
Another event which helped to
transform my understanding of both educational theory and scientific enquiry
was being given a video-camera by the Inspectorate in Barking in London, to
explore its potential. Looking at video-tapes of my classroom startled me with
the revelation that I was existing as a living contradiction in believing that
I had accomplished certain things in my classroom with video evidence that I
had not accomplished what I thought I had. This experience that I felt as a
living contradiction moved me towards developing my understanding of dialectics
as a form of scientific enquiry because contradiction is at the nucleus of
dialectics. I know that for those, like Popper, who believe that dialectical
forms of theorising are entirely useless as theory because of their embrace of
contradiction, that they can use two logical laws of inference to demonstrate
that anything that contains a contradiction is entirely useless as a theory.
Using these two laws of inference any statement can be demonstrated to be true
even ones that are known to be false, once contradictions between statements
are accepted as true.
In answering his question, 'What
is Dialectic?', Popper (1963) rejects dialectical claims to knowledge as, 'without
the slightest foundation. Indeed, they are based on nothing better than a loose
and woolly way of speaking' (Popper, 1963,
p.316).
In developing my dialectical view
of a scientific enquiry in my educational research I embraced contradiction in
the sense that in my question, 'how do I improve what I am doing?', I existed
as a living contradiction in my embodied experience. This consciously
stimulated my imagination to move towards the realisation of some values rather
than others, for example freedom in preference to oppression and justice in
preference to injustice. By 1980 I could understand the significance of the
question asked by the Soviet logician Eward Ilyenkov , 'If an object exists as
a living contradiction what must the thought be that expresses it?'. My present
understanding of the history of dialectics follows Ilyenkov's analysis.
Developing this dialectical
approach to a scientific enquiry in my educational research helped me to
clarify the meanings of embodied values in the course of their emergence in my
educational enquiry. Using the dialectics of asking questions, expressing
concerns, imagining action plans, acting and gather data, evaluating action in
relation to values and understanding, modifying concerns plans and action and
submitting accounts of my learning in the educational enquiry to the mutual
rational controls of public criticism, I felt confident that I could show how
embodied values could be transformed into living and communicable standards of
judgement in the course of their emergence and clarification in practice. I
think that I achieved this in relation to the embodied value of academic
freedom in my 1993 text on the growth of educational knowledge.
The present transformation in my
understanding of scientific enquiry in my educational enquiry is closely
related to the educational influence of Alan Rayner and Karen Teeson and their
ideas in my learning about inclusionality that I described in the first section
of the paper. As I develop my inclusional understanding of a scientific enquiry
I am retaining the Popperian Schema for the growth of scientific knowledge and
Dewey's logic of inquiry in my transforming understanding in my educational
enquiry of a flow-form scientific enquiry.
The flow-form I have in mind is
the relational dynamics of experiencing concerns when values are not being
lived as fully as seems possible, of imagining ways forward in an action plan,
acting on the plan and gathering data on which to make a judgement of
accomplishment, evaluating one's actions and accomplishments in terms of one's
values, modifying concerns, ideas and actions in the light of the evaluations,
sharing accounts of one's learning in a process of democratic evaluation of the
validity of the account.
My transforming understanding is
connected with my identity in terms of being a complex self who can demonstrate
that his learning is extending his contextualized understanding of
self-identity as being formed with the reciprocal coupling of inner and outer
spatial domains through an intermediary self-boundary. In my life I engage with
such boundaries in my life between home, work, the schools I visit, the people
I work with, the university which pays me and the conferences at which I
present my papers and hear the presentations of others.
Because of the importance of such
contextualized understandings in the growth of my educational knowledge I want
to consider the possibility of reaching an intersubjective agreement on
contextual understanding in learning as a living standard of judgement.
3) Can a flow-form of
contextual understanding in learning be distinguished as a living standard of
judgement in both the education of a complex self and the education of a social
formation.
The context of my answer is in my
educational relationship with Jackie Delong as I work in doctoral supervision
sessions with her to clarify the nature of her thesis as it is being expressed
in draft abstracts of her thesis.
You can access a previously
published account of my educational influence in these supervision sessions at:
http://www.actionresearch.net//multimedia/jimenomov/JIMEW98.html
The video-clip at http://www.bath.ac.uk/multimedia/jimenomov/ajwsys.mov is of a doctoral supervision in which I am seeking to
support Jackie in her submission of a thesis that expresses her originality of
mind and critical judgement. These are two of the standards of judgement used
by examiners of doctoral theses in the Universiy of Bath. In Jackie's research
these standards of judgement are related in an enquiry that includes an
explanation of her 'system's influence' as a Superintendent of Schools.
'System's influence' is in Jackie's professional practice and research as one
of her standards of judgement. This system's influence was recognised in an
award for her leadership in action research by the Ontario Educational Research
Council in December 2000.
Hence I am working, in the
conversation, to enhance the clarity of a draft abstract in its communication
of originality of mind and critical judgement in relation to 'system's
influence'. I am also focusing on 'system's influence' because of a criticism
made by Susan Noffke, about a limitation she perceived in the lack of capacity
of theories generated from self-study to address:
"Ésocial issues in terms
of the interconnections between personal identity and the claim of experiential
knowledge, as well as power and privilege in society (Dolby, 1995; Noffke,
1991). The process of personal transformation through the examination of
practice and self-reflection may be a necessary part of social change,
especially in education; it is however, not sufficient." ( Noffke, 1997, p. 329)"
By focusing on 'system's
influence' in the context of social change and the development of cultures of
inquiry I believe that the theories of practitioner-researchers provide the
evidence to show that Noffke is mistaken as they learn to develop their own
inclusional meanings in the development of their contextual understandings.
The two drafts of the Abstract
were produced within 5 days of each other. I have placed them together so that
you may get a clearer understanding of the differences between them in the
clarity with which they express the precise nature of the claims to originality
of mind and critical judgement in relation to 'system's influence'. On reading
the first draft I could not see clearly the precise nature of the claims to
originality of mind and critical judgement in relation to 'systems influence'.
The second draft makes this influence explicit and the final abstract shows the
development of Jackie's contextualised understand in the creation of a culture
of inquiry. The final abstract and full thesis on 'How can I improve my
practice as a superintendent of schools and create my own living educational
theory?' can be accessed at http://www.actionresearch.net/delong.shtml
First Draft of the Abstract
This thesis is a journey of
professional learning, reinvention and self-discovery through research-based
professionalism in asking the question, 'How do I improve my practice as a
superintendent of schools in a southern Ontario school district?' It represents
and demonstrates my originality of mind and critical judgment as I describe and
explain my living standards of practice for which I hold myself accountable.
The values that I am
articulating are grounded in my practice, in what I know from reading and
dialogue, from experience and from reflecting on that experience. Through
writing about my values that emerge in my practice, I am able to construct and
deconstruct the transformation that has taken place over the six years of the
research and to understand what has moved me forward.
Through narrative and
image-based research I describe and explain the birth and growth of an action
research movement in a school system that is restructuring amidst the negative
pressures of market policies.
I offer my story as my own
living theory of my educative influence as an educational leader and insider
researcher living in turbulent times - 1995-2001, not as a model or exemplar. I
do, however, want to encourage professional educators to consider the process
of practitioner action research as a means to self-assessment, renewal and
professional development
Second Draft of the Abstract
This thesis is my own living
theory of my learning about my educative influence as a superintendent of schools,
an educational leader and insider researcher living in turbulent times -
1995-2001. It is a journey of professional learning and self-discovery through
research-based professionalism as I ask, research and answer the question, 'How
can I improve my practice as a superintendent of schools in a southern Ontario
school district?'
It represents and demonstrates
my originality of mind and critical judgement as I describe and explain my
living standards of practice that can be understood through my values for which
I hold myself accountable. My originality of mind is being expressed through
narrative and image-based form of communication in which I describe and explain
stories of myself, a self—discovery of my need for internal and external
dialogue, of how I hold together continuously in a living, dynamic way, a
plurality of actions. I describe and explain my work in my many portfolios
including the birth and growth of an action research movement in a school
system that is restructuring amidst the impact of economic rationalist
policies.
This thesis focuses my critical
judgements on the clarification and use of the values that have emerged in my
practice as I am able to construct and deconstruct the transformations that
have taken place over the six years of the research and to understand what has
moved me forward. The meaning of those values that I am articulating are
grounded in my practice and constitute my living standards of practice and
judgement in my explanations. They emerge through reading, dialogue and
reflection on my experience as I account for myself in my practice by ever
moving forward while holding on to the sanctity of personal relationships and
democratic evaluation within a hierarchical system and power relations.
Here is the video-clip again, and
a transcript of the conversation. I want to focus on the additional meanings
which the visual record can communicate about the nature of our embodied values
that we are using and transforming into our educational standards of practice and
judgement.
(http://www.bath.ac.uk/multimedia/jimenomov/ajwsys.mov)
Jack É to show how I am
encouraging and supporting you, to make explicit in a way that is publicly
shareable your own understanding of your standard of practice as a
superintendent which is related to your system's influenceÉ.
Jackie "...there is a big
emphasis on relationships and connections. That's a common standard that runs
through almost everything I do - if I can see a way of helping people or ideas
or systems to connect I think it creates a more effective system to support
student learning. If you've got people or systems going in different directions
it is wasting the talent and the energyÉ the other thing is that when I see
people who can carry something forward I try to pull all the supports
behindthem so that they can do that. That's two pieces of it. It doesn't
capture it all but it captures two pieces of — And my need to see things
always getting better"
I want to focus both on the
embodied value of her contexualised understanding in Jackie's non-verbal
expressions as well as her statements about her 'system's influence'.
I am thinking of the embodied
values Jackie is expressing non-verbally when she is saying
i) if I can see a way of helping people or ideas or systems
to connect I think it creates a more effective system to support student
learning.
ii) when I see people who can
carry something forward I try to pull all the supports behind them so that they
can do that.
My own perception is that Jackie
is expressing passionately both her life-affirming energy and contextualised
understanding.
In her thesis Jackie writes about
the importance for extending her system's influence of supporting people, who
she believes have the talent, energy and commitment to improve student learning
in the development of a culture of inquiry. To understand what Jackie is
meaning by her value of pulling all the supports behind them it is necessary to
experience the sustained and inclusional commitment she expresses over time in
the organisation of this support. This in turn rests on her passion to improve
learning with students. The final abstract for the thesis emphasises the
importance of the development of a culture of enquiry in a further development
of contexualised understanding.
Abstract of successful
PhD Submission 2002
One of the basic tenets of my
philosophy is that the development of a culture for improving learning rests
upon supporting the knowledge-creating capacity in each individual in the
system. Thus, I start with my own. This thesis sets out a claim to know my own
learning in my educational inquiry, 'How can I improve my practice as a
superintendent of schools?'
Out of this philosophy emerges
my belief that the professional development of each teacher rests in their own
knowledge-creating capacities as they examine their own practice in helping
their students to improve their learning. In creating my own educational theory
and supporting teachers in creating theirs, we engage with and use insights
from the theories of others in the process of improving student learning.
The originality of the
contribution of this thesis to the academic and professional knowledge-base of
education is in the systematic way I transform my embodied educational values
into educational standards of practice and judgement in the creation of my
living educational theory. In the thesis I demonstrate how these values and
standards can be used critically both to test the validity of my
knowledge-claims and to be a powerful motivator in my living educational
inquiry.
The values and standards are
defined in terms of valuing the other in my professional practice, building a
culture of inquiry, reflection and scholarship and creating knowledge.
4) Can a flow-form of critical
judgement in learning be distinguished as a living standard of judgement in an
individual's education.
The flow-form critical judgement I
have in mind is connected to Paulus Murray's postcolonial critical pedagogy and
the individual's education I have in mind is my own.
Paulus
Murray describes himself as a mixed-race, postcolonial educator who, as I
write, is a senior lecturer in the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester,
England and writing up his doctoral thesis with my supervision. One of his
living standards of judgement is postcolonial critical pedagogy. This living
standard and the expression of its embodied value by Paulus Murray in our
educational relationship has influenced my own learning as I extended my
understanding of postcolonial values, practices and theories. I want to show a
flow-form inclusional meaning of critical judgement in my educational
relationship with Paulus Murray between 1999 – 2004 starting with his
influence in the problematisation of my whiteness. We marked this problematisation
in a joint paper for AERA in New Orleans in April 2000 which Paulus presented
for both of us. In the video-clip below, Paulus is relating in a way I identify
as inclusional and emphasising the importance of a language of hybridity. You
can access our paper on, White
and Black with White Identities in Self-Studies of Teacher Education Practices
at: http://www.actionresearch.net/A2/aerapj.htm
The paper begins with an
introduction from Paulus:
ÒMutse
atsi! To S-STEP colleagues and community: I wonder if you can help Jack Whitehead and
myself, Paulus Murray, in our learning? It is a special and peculiar kind of
learning that has erotic, spiritual, dialectical and dialogical textures that
characterise it as an authentic engagement or beginning in hybrid writing. Our
respective whiteness and Òmixed race" otherness is merged in this text as we
try to demonstrate within a community of teachers how our self-study can be
enhanced by speaking through a vocabulary of hybridity, a vocabulary that is
white, black and of colour. We are unable to make any claims about how this is
going to work. This is a Ònew vocabulary" [Smith, 1997]: it is experimental, uncertain,
unknowable and exciting. We hope that it is also radical and transgresses [hooks,
1994] while
remaining attractive and invitational to those who do not locate themselves in
a hybrid space."
In my
section of the paper I respond:
Paulus – Mutse atsi!
ÒSince the S-STEP meeting at AERA '99,
I have problematised my Whiteness. You have helped me to understand the
importance of doing this if I am to embrace, understand and use languages of
colour. Let me see if I can reflect back to you the languages of colour
you saw intuitively through my 'whiteness' and which I think you value in my
supervision of your research programme. I am thinking of my erotic, spiritual
and psychotherapeutic languages of colour.
I'm
going to focus on my understanding of the spiritual/erotic energy I believe
that I bring into my educative relationships with you. I think this is not only
based on a 'tolerance' (see note 1). I think it is based on my
exhuberance for life when I encounter other human beings who communicate their
own. I am thinking of exhuberance in the sense of a life affirming energy which
I associate with the erotic impulse to assent to life up to the point of death
(Bataille, p. 11. 1987). I link this erotic energy to Buber's (1947) I-You
relation where he writes that 'trust, trust in the world because this person exists,
this is the most inward achievement of the relation in education'."
I am hopeful that you will connect
this expression of my spiritual/erotic energy to the flow of life-affirming
energy I considered in one above. I experience all the embodied values and
living standards of judgement I am writing about as interconnected and
influencing my learning in ways that I see to account for in my analyses of the
growth of my educational knowledge. The growth I have in mind in this section
on critical judgement is focused on postcolonial values, practices and
theories.
I am clear that Paulus Murray's
postcolonial critical pedagogy is the most significant influence in the growth
of my understanding of my postcolonial values, practices and theories. You
might feel some of the power of this influence in the question he put to me and
which I addressed in my paper on, Do the values and living logics I express in my educational
relationships carry the hope of Ubuntu for the future of humanity? This was presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual
Conference in September 2004 in a Symposium on: "How Are We Contributing To A New Scholarship
Of Educational Enquiry Through Our Pedagogisation Of Postcolonial Living
Educational Theories In The Academy?" The paper can be accessed at:
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00003801.htm
Here is his critical question:
Where is
the evidence of the critical engagement with the ideas of critical race
theorists, critical non-racial theorists and post-colonial theorists in the
formation of the identities and practices of individuals you are working with?
Where is the evidence of your influence in respect of alerting them to
enhancing the quality of their work by making themselves familiar with these
epistemologies? (Why should you/they when they can get their PhDs/do their AR
writing without making reference to their critical knowledge?) (Murray, 2003 e-mail
correspondence)
I want to be clear at this point
that I am seeking to show a flow-form inclusional meaning of critical judgement
through the educational influence of Murray's postcolonial critical pedagogy in
my own learning, rather than directly answering his question in relation to my educational
influence in my students' learning. I am using the idea of flow-form to carry a
sense of a living, and hence changing, constellation of embodied values that
can be distinguished as sufficiently stable to use as a living standard of
judgement. For example, in our paper for AERA 2000, neither Paulus Murray nor I
show any engagement or understanding of postcolonial theories. In my case this
was because I had no engagement with the concept of postcolonialism. Murray's
articulation of postcolonial critical pedagogy as an articulate, living
standard of judgement emerged in 2003 in the flow of his life. As I view the video-clip of part of his
presentation at AERA 2000 I am feeling the flow-form inclusional meaning of his
embodied postcolonial values as he addresses our audience and emphasises the
importance of a language of hybridity in our presentation.
A still of Paulus Murray from the
video-clip
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/pmaera5sor.mov
(this is a 9 Mb clip taking some 15 minutes to download using a broadband
connection – it plays in Quicktime)
By September 2004 my paper for
BERA shows a growth in my educational knowledge from the AERA 2000
presentation. I have learnt to discriminate values of Ubuntu in 'we-i'
relations as postcolonial values and can explicitly articulate my engagement
and learning from the ideas of postcolonial theorists. The stimulus for my
engagement with the idea of Ubuntu, and the postcolonial literature I address,
came directly from the influence of Paulus Murray's postcolonial critical
pedagogy. When I say 'directly' I am meaning that it was an intentional action
of Paulus Murray to influence my learning. The papers in which I show this
influence have mediated his action through my own originality of mind and
critical judgement. I am meaning
'directly' in the sense of an intentional relationship rather than implying a
causal connection between his action and my response. Here is an extract from
the BERA 2004 paper which acknowledges and demonstrates the educational
influence of Paulus Murray's postcolonial critical pedagogy in my own learning
as I embrace, with understanding, his points about the significance of 'we-i'
relationships in Ubuntu.
ÒIn my educational enquiries I am seeking to
support the enhancement of the flow of the values of Ubuntu from the ground of
living my postcolonial spiritual values in my educational relationships.
However, I do understand Paulus Murray's point about my 'I' feeling very Western
and European while to get closer to the values of Ubuntu I will need to
understand a sense of self that is closer to African and Arab cultural
expressions of 'i in we'.
'I live within an extended
Arab/Omani/British family where 'we' is used only when 'I' see's the other in
Ubuntu, in extended family connection, in a solidary space where we feel at one
in terms of identity and integrity. This feels so very different to your
formulary above. For this 'we' to happen there has to be an eastern/southern
"solidary logic" at work which is fundamentally communicative, rather
than a Western/northern "atomistic logic" at work that is
fundamentally ex-communicative.' (Murray, 23/08/04, e-mail).
For Murray the practical spirit of Ubuntu flows
from a sense of ethno-community where 'we' comes into existence when my 'I'
alongside lots of other 'I''s is subordinated to 'we-i'. The moment 'we'
happens is when my 'i' fully understands (and values, appreciates and accepts)
the responsibilities for how my identity and integrity is embraced within the
'we' of the extended family, and this is the first step in an ethno-community
held in Ubuntu or similar cosmology. Murray believes that the 'i' in eastern
and southern cultures is an 'i' that is 'we-i'. He says that the Western and
European 'I' has to learn how to let go of 'I' as a procedure to be satisfied
before making the move to 'we', which usually entails agonising over one's
space, one's autonomy, one's sense of identity. In eastern/southern indigenous
cultures the movement in 'we-i' space is seamless.
For the evidence in the living theory section of
actionresearch.net to show that such values have been legitimated in the
knowledge-base of the Academy in the form of living epistemological standards
of judgement, I am sure that I will have to address the problem that the values
in a Western 'I' do not migrate easily across cultural borders, east and south,
and that the values of Ubuntu or similar cosmologies that hold the values of 'i
in we' do not migrate easily across cultural borders, north and west. My
belief in the educational possibility of the generativity of bringing
these values alongside (Pound, 2003) each other in speaking
'cross-culturally' is grounded in the evidence provided in the doctoral
thesis of Ram Punia (2004) and in Marian Naidoo's (2004) writings from her
doctoral enquiry 'I am because we are. How can I improve my practice? The
emergence of a living theory of responsive practice'. My belief in the
generativity of bringing these values alongside each other is also grounded in
the scholarship of educational enquiry of Peggy Leong, the Manager of the
Academy of Best Learning in Education (ABLE) in Singapore. Leong's dissertation
on The Art of an Educational Enquirer (Leong, 1991) remains one of the most
inspiring texts I have read from a practitioner-researcher who understands and
can live values of inclusionality while engaging with tensions and conflicts
between different cultural contexts.
In meeting Murray's criticism above, I
recognise that I will need to offer for public criticism and validation the
evidence-based belief that I am moving towards the full realisation of my
postcolonial intentions in my pedagogisation of living educational
theories. Part of this realisation includes using Bernstein's insights on
the pedagogisation of knowledge in seeing the importance of recontextualising
living theory texts from their place in a university library into the
curriculum of organisations (Farren, 2004; Leong, 2004; Laidlaw, 2004; Murray,
2004, Adler-Collins 2004; Hartog, 2004). Another part of this realisation
includes the integration of insights from postcolonial theorists (Loomba, 1998;
Spivak, 1999) into my own living educational theory and practice. Although, in
doing this I will bear Loomba's point in mind:
A third result of the boom in postcolonial
studies has been that essays by a handful of name-brand critics have become
more important than the field itself – students feel the pressure to 'do'
Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak or Homi Bhabha or to read only the very latest
article. What Barbara Christian (1990) has called 'the race for theory' is
detrimental to thinking about the area itself. It is the star system of the
Western and particularly the United States academy that is partly responsible
for this, and partly the nature of theoretical work itself, which can be
intimidating and often self-referential. Thus although most students feel
obliged to take some note of postcolonial theory, not all of them are inspired
to be creative with it perhaps because they often lack expertise in colonial
and postcolonial histories and cultures. (Loomba, 1998, pp. xv-xvi).
In particular I am thinking of the insight that
the colonial aftermath calls for an ameliorative and therapeutic theory which
is responsive to the task of remembering and recalling the colonial past. I
associate this theory with the influence in educating social formations of
Adler-Collins' enquiry into the pedagogisation of a curriculum for the healing
nurse. I see that the work of this theory may be compared with what Lyotard
describes as the psychoanalytic procedure of anamnesis 'to elaborate their
current problems by freely associating apparently inconsequential details with
past situations - allowing them to uncover hidden meanings in their lives and
their behaviour' (1998:
8) (Murray e-mail, 21/08/04). I also see that Fletcher's contributions to BERA
2004 (Fletcher, 2004 –withdrawn 11/09/04; Fletcher & Adler-Collins,
2004 – withdrawn 11/09/04; Fletcher & Bognor, 2004) mark her moving
on from the University of Bath with her passionate commitment to educational
values restored from these cathartic and therapeutic accounts of her
experiences and learning, in the creation and testing of her own living
educational theory. As Gandhi (1998) says:
I also see that, postcolonial theory
inevitably commits itself to a complex project of historical and psychological
'recovery'. If its scholarly task inheres in the carefully researched retrieval
of historical detail, it has an equally compelling political obligation to
assist the subjects of postcoloniality to live with the gaps and fissures of
their condition, and thereby learn to proceed with self-understanding. (Gandhi 1998: 8) (Murray e-mail,
21/08/04)
It may help
you to evaluate the validity of my claim about moving towards the full
realisation of my postcolonial intentions by comparing the Appendix to my BERA
Presidential Address, where no practitioner-researcher had yet to receive a
doctorate for a self-study of their own educational practices, with the
Appendix to this paper which gives the web-based locations for accessing some
17 living theory doctoral theses of practitioner-researchers who have graduated
since 1995. These include the thesis of Punia (2004) in which he shows how his
spiritual sense of a cosmological unity can embrace together 'I-You' relations
with 'we-i' relationships in his work as an international educator in
Mauritius, Fiji, Western Somoa, Hong Kong, Singapore and the UK. I am
also hoping before too long to include within the living theory section of
actionresearch.net a successfully completed doctoral thesis from Marian Naidoo
(2004) whose ontological value and living epistemological standard of judgement
of 'passion for compassion' also holds together in a most creative and productive
tension, 'we-i' relationships with 'I-You' relationships. The addition of a
thesis by Paulus Murray (2004) with a standard of judgement of postcolonial
critical pedagogy and an analysis of the pedagogisation of postcolonial living
educational theories would also do much to enhance the educational knowledge
base in the Academy." (Whitehead, 2004)
5) Can a flow-form of
originality of mind in learning be distinguished as a living standard of
judgement in an individual's education.
The examiners of doctoral theses
of the University of Bath are required to judge the work in terms of
originality of mind and critical judgement, extent and merit of the work and
matter worthy of publication. In this section of my paper I am focusing on
originality of mind. Evidence that living theory theses have met the criteria
of originality of mind for doctoral research at the University of Bath is in
the living theory space at:
http://www.actionresearch.net/living.shtml
My understandings of both
originality and influence have been influenced by the work of Edward Said where
he draws on the work of Valery to make the points:
ÒAs a poet indebted to and friendly with Mallarme, Valery was compelled to assess originality and derivation in a way that said something about a relationship between two poets that could not be reduced to a simple formula. As the actual circumstances were rich, so too had to be the attitude. Here is an example from the ÒLetter About Mallarme".
No word comes easier of oftener to the critic's pen than
the word influence, and no vaguer notion can be found among all the vague
notions that compose the phantom armory of aesthetics. Yet there is nothing in the critical
field that should be of greater philosophical interest or prove more rewarding
to analysis than the progressive modification of one mind by the work of
another.
It often happens that the work acquires a singular value
in the other mind, leading to active consequences that are impossible to
foresee and in many cases will never be possible to ascertain. What we do know
is that this derived activity is essential to intellectual production of all
types. Whether in science or in the arts, if we look for the source of an
achievement we can observe that what a man does either repeats or refutes what
someone else has done – repeats it in other tones, refines or amplifies
or simplifies it, loads or overloads it with meaning; or else rebuts,
overturns, destroys and denies it, but thereby assumes it and has invisibly
used it. Opposites are born from opposites.
We say that an author is original when we cannot trace the
hidden transformations that others underwent in his mind; we mean to say that
the dependence on what he does on what others have done is excessively complex
and irregular. There are works in the likeness of others, and works that are
the reverse of others, but there are also works of which the relation with
earlier productions is so intricate that we become confused and attribute them
to the direct intervention of the gods. (Paul
Valery, 'Letter about Mallarme', in Leonardo, Poe, Mallarme, trans. Malcolm
Cowley and James R. Lawler (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), p.
241.
Valery converts 'influence' from a crude idea of the weight of one writer coming down in the work of another into a universal principle of what he calls 'derived achievement'. He then connects this concept with a complex process of repetition that illustrates it by multiplying instances; this has the effect of providing a sort of wide intellectual space, a type of discursiveness in which to examine influence. Repetition, refinement, amplification, loading, overloading, rebuttal, overturning, destruction, denial, invisible use – such concepts completely modify a linear (vulgar) idea of 'influence' into an open field of possibility. Valery is careful to admit that chance and ignorance play important roles in this field; what we cannot see or find, as well as what we cannot predict, he says, produce excessive irregularity and complexity. Thus the limits of the field of investigation are set by examples whose nonconforming, overflowing energy begins to carry them out of the field. This is an extremely important refinement in Valery's writing. For even as his writing holds in the wide system of variously dispersed relationships connecting writers with one another, he also shows how at its limits the field gives forth other relations that are hard to describe from within the field. Ò (Said, 1997, p.15)
Each of the living theory theses
at http://www.actionresearch.net/living.shtml
shows a flow-form of originality of mind in the unique constellation of
embodied values that are clarified in the course of their emergence in the
practice of enquiry. I am seeing the flow-form of the originalities of mind in
the processes of forming theses that clarify and communicate, with language,
how a unique constellation of embodied values are transformed into living standards
of judgement that can be used to evaluate the validity of the claims to
knowledge in a thesis.
For illustration take Erica
Holley's M.Phil. account, How do I as a teacher-researcher contribute to the
development of a living educational theory through an exploration of my values
in my professional practice?, at
http://www.actionresearch.net/erica.shtml
This is what Holley says in the
Abstract of her thesis:
My thesis is a description and
explanation of my life as a teacher and researcher in an 11 to 16 comprehensive
school in Swindon from 1990 to 1996. I claim that it is a contribution to
educational knowledge and educational research methodology through the
understanding it shows of the form, meaning and values in my living educational
theory as an individual practitioner as I researched my question,
How do I improve what I am
doing in my professional practice ?
With its focus on the
development of the meanings of my educational values and educational knowledge
in my professional practice I intend this thesis to show the integration of the
educational processes of transforming myself by my own knowledge and the
knowledge of others and of transforming my educational knowledge through action
and reflection. I also intend the thesis to be a contribution to debates about
the use of values as being living standards of judgment in educational
research.
The flow-form of Holley's
originality of mind can be appreciated as she creates the form of the contents
of her thesis in accounting for herself and her learning in her educational
relationships with an individual pupil, a class, a colleague, school and
national policies:
Introduction
Chapter 1. My values and where
they come from.
Chapter 2. What is educational
research? What is good quality educational research?
Chapter 3. How my research
started and how I reformulated my initial question.
Chapter 4. I can speak for
myself. My account of working with Poppy and how I struggled to come to terms
with what I saw as academic accounts of teaching?
Chapter 5. 'Accounting for
myself' - a description of my work with a whole class and an attempt to explain
what I mean by accountability.
Chapter 6. 'Accounting for my
work' - a description and explanation of what went on in the appraisal I did
with a member of my department and how it conflicted with the monitoring role I
was expected to have by the school management.
Chapter 7. 'Accounting for the
negative' - how the politics of oppression affected my work and how I found a
creative response.
Chapter 8. How I understood
that my educational knowledge was a living educational theory whose validity
could be judged by living standards of judgement.
Chapter 9. Conclusion
Bibliography
Each living theory thesis
demonstrates a similar originality of mind in the creative and unique
formulation of constellations of embodied values and their transformation into
living standards of judgement for use in the critical evaluation of the
validity of the claims to educational knowledge.
The next question has emerged from
my doctoral thesis on How do I improve my practice? Creating a discipline of
education through educational enquiry. You can access the focal analysis of my
thesis in Volume 1 at: http://www.actionresearch.net/jack.shtml with the Abstract that leads me into
question number 6 about a living standards of judgement of educational enquiry:
This thesis shows how living
educational standards of originality of mind and critical judgement in
educational enquiries has created a discipline of education. The meanings of
these standards emerged from an analysis of my research published between
1977-1999. The analysis proceeds from the base of my experience of myself, my
I, as a living contradiction in the question, How do I improve this process of
education here? An educational methodology, which includes I as a living
contradiction, emerges from the application of a four-fold classification of
methodologies of the social sciences. Then the idea of living educational
theories emerges in terms of the descriptions and explanations which individual
learners produce for their own educational development. A logic of the
question, How do I improve my practice?, emerges from my engagement with the
ideas of others and from an exploration of the question in the practical
contradictions between the power of truth and the truth of power in my
workplace. A discipline of education, with its standards of originality of mind
and critical judgement, is defined and extended into my educative influences as
a professional educator in the enquiry, How do I help you to improve your
learning? My living educational theory continues to develop in the enquiry, How
do I live my values more fully in my practice? I explain my present practice in
terms of an evaluation of my past learning, in terms of my present experiences
of spiritual, aesthetic and ethical contradictions in my educative relations
and in terms of my proposals for living my values more fully in the future.
6) Can a flow-form of
educational enquiry be distinguished as a living standard of judgement in an
individual's education.
The educational enquiries I have
in mind are those that focus on educational influences in learning in
explorations of implications of asking, researching and answering questions of
the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?'
In the flow of such an educational
enquiry, I experience myself as a living contradiction in the sense that the
intentions influencing my actions are often formed from a desire to live my
values more fully in my practice as I recognise that some of my values are not
being lived as fully as I desire. My most vivid experience of existing as a
living contradiction was seeing a video-tape of my teaching in 1972 where I
could see myself doing something that actually blocked the very thing I thought
I had established in my classroom. I thought my pupils were engaging in enquiry
learning in the sense that I was stimulating their questions to which I was
making a response. When I saw the video-tape I could see that the way that I
was structuring the learning resources and my talk with the class was actually
serving to stifle their enquiry learning! In this recognition I found my
imagination already working out ways of improving my practice. On moving to the
University of Bath in 1973 I began to offer professional development programmes
to support teachers who wanted to enable their pupils to engage in enquiry
learning. In 1975-76 I worked with a group of 6 teachers over two years on the
process of improving learning for 11-14 year olds in mixed ability science
groups. In an evaluation report on the work I explained the process of
improving learning in terms of explanations generated from models of
innovation, change in the teaching-learning process and evaluation. On showing
this to academic colleagues they appreciated the explanation in terms of the
models. On showing the report to the teachers they explained that they could
not see themselves in the explanation. I returned to the original data gathered
in the enquiry and, with the help of Paul Hunt, one of the teachers,
reconstructed the explanation in a way that the 6 teachers recognised
themselves in the explanation.
The form of the report
acknowledged that the process of improvement involved our shared expression of
each others' problems, our imagined possibilities in ideas for an action plan,
our actions and data gathering, our evaluations, our modifications of problems,
ideas and actions in the light of the evaluations and the sharing of our
accounts of our learning. You can access the full report at:
http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/ilmagall.pdf
(a couple of minutes to download using broadband)
This form of educational enquiry
can be seen to be expressed in many of the accounts produced by beginner
practitioner-researchers at China's Experimental Centre for Educational Action
Research (CECEARFLT). These can be viewed at:
http://www.actionresearch.net/moira.shtml
See for example the first action research report from Hao
Cailing, a teacher new to the profession in 2004 at CECEARFLT: 'How can I help
my students to build their vocabulary?' at http://www.actionresearch.net/moira/haocailing.htm
7) Can a flow-form of living
educational theories be distinguished as a living standard of judgement in the
education of individuals and their social formations.
a) In the education of individuals
By a living educational theory I
am meaning the explanations which individuals produce for their own learning as
they explore the implications of asking, researching and answering questions of
the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?' For example, if you study the
titles of the living theory theses at:
http://www.actionresearch.net/living.shtml
you will see that Ben Cunningham explored the
implications of asking, researching and answering his question, 'How do I come
to know my spirituality as I create my own living educational theory?' Ben has this to say about his living
educational theory thesis:
My thesis is a
narrative which offers the following distinct and original contributions to
educational knowledge, as I show originality of mind and critical judgment in
connecting the personal with the professional in my explanations of my
educative relationships with others:
I show how my living engagement with my
God is enabling me to author my life and is part of the interweaving of my
values in my educative relationships with others.
I show the meaning of my values as I
explain my educative relationships in terms of how I dialectically engage the
intrapersonal with the interpersonal.
I show how a dialectic of both care and
challenge that is sensitive to difference, is enabling me to create my own
living educational theory which is a form of improvisatory self-realisation.
I show how my leadership comes into
being in my words and actions as I exercise my ethic of responsibility towards
others.
Such living educational theories
are now flowing through the internet and accessible to those with the
appropriate technology which you already have access to if you are reading
this! They also reside in the library of the University of Bath in the
traditional form of bound theses.
b) In the education of social formations
Can a flow-form of living
educational theories be distinguished as a living standard of judgement in the
education of social formations?
In one sense part of my education
can be understood as a social formation. My understanding of a flow-form of
living educational theories was transformed, as part of my social formation, by
Alan Rayner's influence as he explained his understanding of inclusionality and
serverance. I video-taped his explanations and this can be accessed at:
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/rayner1sor.mov
(a 39 Mb clip)
Seeing and hearing Alan's
demonstration of his understanding of what happens when severance from
inclusionality occurs, I could feel my perceptions of space and boundaries
being transformed through a resonance with Alan's relationally dynamic
awareness of space and boundaries that are connective, reflexive and
co-creative.
The diagram of anastomosis above
helped me to visualise the implications of this perception for the flow of
living educational theories through the interconnecting and branching channels
and boundaries of communication of the internet. The questions that are fascinating me are whether a
flow-form of living educational theories can influence the education of social
formations and whether this flow of educational theories can be distinguished
as a living standard of judgement. The example I usually give to illustrate
what I am meaning by the education of a social formation concerns the social
formation of the University of Bath. Before 1991 the University regulations
were interpreted as explicitly refusing to permit the questioning of the
judgements of examiners of research degrees under any circumstances. For an
analysis of the way in which this influenced my own learning see Part 1 of the
October 2004 contribution to Action Research Expeditions at: http://arexpeditions.montana.edu/articleviewer.php?AID=80&PAGE=3
And Part 4 of The Growth of
Educational Knowledge on Living contradictions - I am a creative academic. I am not.I can question the
judgements of other academics. I cannot.
at: http://arexpeditions.montana.edu/articleviewer.php?AID=80&PAGE=3
In 1991 the University regulations
changed to permit questions to be raised on the grounds of bias, prejudice and
inadequate assessment. I am referring to the education of social formations in
terms of the changes in the regulations that govern the social order of a
social formation and which move in the direction of living more fully values
that carry hope for the future of humanity.
There is some evidence that a
flow-form of living educational theories be distinguished as a living standard
of judgement in the education of social formations. Consider for example the
living educational theories that have been legitimated at Dublin City
University, supervised by Margaret Farren and that are now flowing from her
web-space at http://webpages.dcu.ie/~farrenm/dissertations.html
. You can access the resources flowing from her web-space at http://webpages.dcu.ie/~farrenm/
and experience the flow of Margaret's research into webs of betweenness and a
pedagogy of the unique at:
http://webpages.dcu.ie/~farrenm/research.html
Maggie is on the far right of the
two pictures from a video-claip of a validation group meeting.
I am associating the legitimation of living
educational theory theses in the constituents of the Global Academy with the
education of their social formations. The flow of living educational theories
and their associated educational action research has been communicated most
extensively through the books written and edited by Jean McNiff , through her
educational influence with masters students at the University of the West of
England, with doctoral students at the Universities of Glamorgan and Limerick
and through her international presentations in China, Canada, Malaysia, South
Africa, Israel and the USA and through the resources flowing from her web-space
at http://www.jeanmcniff.com/home.php
Jean's ideas on the generative and
transformatory nature of educational action, flow with our ideas on the
generation and testing of living educational theories. Where Jean has been
particularly successful is in her ability to connect our ideas with the
experiences of practitioners who wish to research their own practice. I am
associating
the legitimation of the living
educational theory masters dissertations with Jean's supervision at the
University of the West of England with the education of this social formation.
You can access some of these accounts at:
http://www.jeanmcniff.com/reports.php
and should be able to obtain our latest book
(McNiff and Whitehead, 2005) on Action Research for Teachers by April 2005.
As the accessibility to high speed
internet connections spreads across national and institutional boundaries it is
my belief and hope that there will be an enhanced flow of living educational
theories influencing each other through the boundaries and carrying hope for
the future of humanity. For example, on the 13th January 2005 I was
tutoring a group of teacher-researchers at John Bentley School for their
educational enquiry unit for the masters programme at the University of Bath.
This was the first meeting in Vicky Kennedy's rooms which was equipped with a
white board and broadband connection to the internet. I opened the clip from
Moira Laidlaw's classroom at Guyuan Teachers' College in China (the clip above
from the 15th October 2004) and pointed to Chapter 4 on I can
speak for myself. My account of working with Poppy and how I struggled to come
to terms with what I saw as academic accounts of teaching? of Erica
Holley's thesis on, How do I as a teacher-researcher contribute to the
development of a living educational theory through an exploration of my values
in my professional practice? I opened the
masters programme section of http://www.actionresearch.net
and pointed to the educational enquiry accounts and methods of educational
enquiry accounts of local teachers who had successfully completed these modules
and their masters dissertations. As I was doing this, I was suddenly aware of
how permeable the boundaries between the flow of accounts of
practitioner-researchers legitimated by a University and the narratives of the
practitioner-researchers in a school-based teacher-researcher group had become.
As the opportunities to base web-servers in one's own home increases I can see
the flow of living educational theories becoming more extensive and the
boundaries between our interconnecting and branching channels of communication
becoming more permeable to each others' understandings. This could enhance the
flows of life-affirming energy and values that carry hope for the future of
humanity. I am feeling this hope in our sharing and responding to the living
educational theories of each others' learning as we each seek to make our own
contributions to well-being in the world through our educational enquiries.
References –
Incomplete.
Levi, B. (2000) The Dali
University, London; Inter Arts Resources.
Hirst, P. (Ed.) (1983) Educational
Theory and its Foundation Disciplines. London;RKP
McNiff, J. (2005) Action Research
for Teachers, David
Popper, K. (1963) Conjectures and
Refutations, Oxford: O.U.P.
Said, E. W. (1997) Beginnings: Intention and Method. London ; Granta.