ESRC RESEARCH SEMINARS COMPETITION  2004/5

 

Applications should be returned together with 20 copies to The Registrar, ESRC, Polaris House, North Star Avenue, Swindon, SN2 1UJ, BY 14 FEBRUARY 2005 (applications postmarked by 5pm on this date will be accepted).

 

Applications must be completed in typescript and signed in black ink.  Handwritten applications will not be accepted.

 

PLEASE NOTE: This form is to be used for the Research Seminars Competition 2004/5 only.  Prior to completing this form, please read through the guidance notes on page 9 and the current edition of the ESRC Research Funding booklet, available from http://www.esrc.ac.uk/esrccontent/ResearchFunding/rf_rules.asp

 

PRINCIPAL ORGANISERÕS DETAILS

Title:

Dr.

Initials:

A.J.

Surname:

Whitehead

Date of birth:

29/08/44

E-mail:

edsajw@bath.ac.uk

Telephone no:

01225 385571

Post held:

Lecturer in Education

Signature:

 

 

 

ADMINISTERING INSTITUTION

ApplicantÕs department:

Department of Education

Institution:

University of Bath

Address:

Claverton Down

Bath BA2 7AY

 

 

Authorising signature:

 

Date:

 

Name:

 

Official designation:

 

E-mail:

 

Official stamp of administering institution:

 

 

 

 

 

CO-APPLICANT DETAILS (see note 3)

 

 

 

TITLE OF PROPOSED SEMINAR SERIES/GROUP

Inclusionality, Learning and The Growth of Educational Knowledge

 

           

Start date (on or after 1st September 2005)

1st September 2005

End date

1st April 2007

Proposed duration in months (maximum duration 24 months)

19 months

Number of events (4-6 per series)

5

Proposed location(s) of activity

University of Bath

Total funds requested (see note 9)

£14,597.50

 

 

Discipline codes: in order of priority (see note 6)

EDUC

SOC

PSY

20

19

 

 

Is the seminar group ÔnewÕ or ÔestablishedÕ (see note 4)

NEW

 

Have the seminar group received ESRC funding before (see note 5)

NO

 

Have the organisers received ESRC funding before (see note 5)

NO

 

 

 

FUNDING REQUESTED (see notes 7,8 and 9)

 

FEES  (Fees to speakers and organisers will only be paid in exceptional circumstances and such requests must be strongly justified)

DETAILS

AMOUNT

Year 1                   Year 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

TRAVEL AND SUBSISTENCE: UK (Payable at institutional rates.  Please break down by seminar and indicate approximate dates that expenses will be incurred)

DETAILS

AMOUNT

Year 1                   Year 2

Speakers

Seminar Two (February 2006)

Seminar Three (2006)

 

 

150

100

 

Participants

Seminar One (October 2005)

Seminar Two (February 2006)

Seminar Three (June 2006)

Mini-conference (October 2006)

Seminar Four (February 2007)

1500

1500

1500

 

 

 

 

 

2500

1700

 

TRAVEL AND SUBSISTENCE: OVERSEAS (Please break down by seminar and indicate approximate dates that expenses will be incurred)

DETAILS

AMOUNT

Year 1                   Year 2

Speakers

Seminar Three (June 2006)

Seminar Four (February 2007)

1000

 

1500

Participants

Mini-conference (October 2006)

 

 

 

 

 

2500

 

SECRETARIAL (Please indicate number of hours x £ per hour.  Indirect costs are ineligible)

DETAILS

AMOUNT

Year 1                   Year 2

Seminar One  5 hours         £9.20

Seminar Two 5 hours          £9.20

Seminar Three 5 hours        £9.20

Mini-conference 10 hours    £9.20

Seminar Four 5 hours         £ 9.50

46

46

46

 

 

 

 

 

92

47.50

 

 

 

 

 

STATIONERY, POSTAGE, PHOTOCOPYING, TELEPHONE  (Please cost each item separately)

DETAILS

AMOUNT

Year 1                   Year 2

Photocopying

Telephone

400

100

450

120

 

 

 

HIRE OF ROOMS, EQUIPMENT, FACILITIES (Please indicate basis of cost and state venue of seminars.  Please note that claims cannot be made against the cost of hiring facilities belonging to the organising HEI)

DETAILS

AMOUNT

Year 1                   Year 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TOTAL COST  (Please ensure that this is the total cost of the amounts requested in each of the above sections)

£

 

 

OTHER SOURCES OF SUPPORT: Please give details of other support or co-funding (see note 7).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



A          Justification for funding:

 

The justification for funding is focused on the creative potential of bringing together the researchers below to share their research into inclusionality in the growth of educational knowledge. Inclusionality is a newly emerging awareness of the evolutionary relationship between physical space and boundaries, which shapes the fluid dynamical form of living and universal systems. It has profound scientific, social, psychological and educational implications for understanding how human beings relate with one another and their environmental living space as distinct but necessarily interdependent identities. The aim of this seminar series is to develop shared understandings of the inclusional meanings of living standards of critical judgement in the educational theories of practitioner and other researchers.

 

The need for ESRC funding is because the inclusional, social, educational and interdisciplinary nature of the seminar series, while integrating understandings from different disciplines, does not fit easily within any existing disciplinary associations or learned societies.

 

The majority of the participants in the seminar series have already obtained their doctorates and other higher degrees for self-studies of their educational influences in learning in their professional contexts. These contexts include schools, universities, the police, heath visiting, commerce and local authorities. The research programmes of the practitioner-researchers from these different contexts have already lasted a minimum of 5 years and resulted in the original contributions to knowledge of each doctoral and contribution to knowledge in each masters degree. These theses and dissertations are the accounts of individuals of their educational influence in their own learning, in the learning of others and in the education of social formations. The educational enquiries of the participants are continuing into doctoral and post-doctoral phases in China, Japan, Australia, Canada, USA and the UK

 

The aim of this seminar series is to clarify the meanings of inclusional, values-based standards of critical judgement. These meanings have been used in the self-study research programmes of participants to validate explanations of their educational influence in learning. The series will focus on understanding the processes through which the embodied values of participants have been clarified in the process of their emergence in practice. It will focus on understanding how the processes of clarifying the meanings of embodied values can transform them into the living standards of judgement that have been used in the Academy to accredit contributions to educational knowledge. It will also focus on research into learning how participants are enhancing the flow of these values through global channels and boundaries of communication in influencing the education of social formations.


B          Non-Technical Summary:

 

While learning is one of the most salient characteristics of what it is to be human there is still much to learn, through research, about living more fully the values that carry hope for the future of humanity. Human beings learn values through whatever counts as education in a particular society. Whatever is valued can be used to judge the outcomes of actions in terms of an improvement and in terms of error and mistake. What counts as education can be understood in terms of the educational theories that help to structure society. Hence the focus of the seminar series is on the educational theories individuals use to account for their lives as they research the implications of asking, ÔHow do I improve what I am doing?Õ in contexts where they are seeking to live their values as fully as they can.

 

There are differences within and between communities of social and educational researchers about the nature of the values that carry hope for the future of humanity. There are also some agreements that the growth of educational knowledge about this future is connected to researching the constellation of values associated with social inclusion and exclusion. Each participant in the proposed seminar series has researched his or her educational influence in the learning of others with an inclusional awareness. Their explanations for their own learning  have constituted their own living educational theories. The term ÔlivingÕ refers to their experience of existing as a living contradiction in their enquiries. A living contradiction refers to the experience of holding particular values together with the recognition that they are being denied in practice. This tension stimulates the imagination to form action plans that are intended to move the enquiry forward through living the values more fully in practice. This seminar series is focused on the inclusional standards used by the practitioner-researchers, in accounting for their lives and learning in their living theory theses and dissertations.

 

The aim of the seminar series is to test the possibility that the meanings of inclusional values can be both recognised by participants in the seminars and transformed into valid standards of judgement in the course of their emergence and clarification in practice. Such standards of judgement are necessary in any research community that is concerned with evaluating the validity of claims to knowledge. It further aims to develop understandings of the educational theories that can explain how to enhance the flow of such values in the education of social formations.

 

The objectives of the proposed seminars are:

 

i)                        To test the possibility of extending public recognition of the tacitly agreed inclusional standards of judgement that have been used to give academic legitimacy to self-study accounts of educational influences in learning.

ii)                       To provide evidence that shows how the embodied values individuals use, to account for their educational influence in their own learning, can be transformed into living standards of judgement.

iii)                     To analyse the evidence that shows the educational influence of web-based communications of living educational theories in the education of social formations.

 

The originality and relevance of the proposed seminar series is provided partly by the existing recognition of original contributions to the knowledge-bases of different professions in the legitimation of doctorates on the self-study of professional practice by the Universities of Bath, Glamorgan, West of England, and Edith Cowan University in Australia.

 

Other evidence of originality and relevance will be provided in the explication of the constellation of inclusional values that constituted the originalities of mind and critical judgements in these doctoral, auto-biographical accounts of learning.


C          Seminar Proposal:

 

The scientific context and content of the proposed seminar series has theoretical methodological and logical components. 

 

The main theoretical components draw on the ideas of Rayner (1997, 2003, 2004) on inclusionality and the complex self and of Whitehead (1989, 1999, 2004) on living educational theory.

 

Inclusionality is understood as a relationally dynamic awareness of space and boundaries that are connective, reflexive and co-creative. In this inclusional perspective a complex self is a contextualised understanding of a self-identity that is formed through the reciprocal coupling of inner with outer spatial domains through an intermediary self-boundary. In WhiteheadÕs idea of living educational theories, individuals produce their own educational theories as accounts of their educational influence in learning. These accounts focus on the individualÕs educational influence in their own learning, in the learning of others and in the education of social formations, as they seek to live their values more fully in their practice and to engage with the ideas of others.

 

One of the theoretical resources that will inform the seminar series is DreierÕs (1999) criticism of existing social theories (Burkitt, 1994; Giddens, 1991; Griffiths, 1995; Habermas, 1987; Kleinman, 1995; Leontiev, 1973; Markus & Herzog, 1995; Mos, 1996; Ricoeur, 1992; Strauss, 1993; Taylor, 1991) about the person, in his work on the personal trajectories of participation across contexts of social practice.

 

This critique of their shortcomings is part of my theoretical argument for why we need to develop theories about complex personal trajectories of participation in structures of social practice and offer persons analytic means for an adequate self-understanding. (Dreier, 1999, p.32)

 

An inclusional view of social and educational  enquiry will be adopted and critiqued through the seminar series. This will include critiques of a theory of methodological approaches to the social sciences (Mitroff and Kilman, 1978) a logic of educational enquiry (Whitehead, 1999) and an analysis of apparent incompatibilities between dialectical and formal logics (Ilyenkov, 1977; Popper 1959).

 

The formal seminar format includes 4, day seminars and a mini-conference, over 19 months at the University of Bath.

 

An informal seminar format will support the formal seminar programme. This will be based on the weekly Monday evening educational conversation meetings in the University of Bath (see http://www.actionresearch.net/monday.shtml) that sustain and extend the communications between practitioner-researchers who are engaged in self-studies of their own professional practices around the world. These include video-conferencing and on-line e-mail links with the participants.

 

The Four Formal Seminars and Mini-conference

 

1) 15 October 2005, University of Bath. Keynote – Alan Rayner on Inclusionality and The Complex Self – 30 participants

 

The day will focus on the ideas of Inclusionality in Alan RaynerÕs writings and an analysis of the artefacts produced for assessment by undergraduate students in the ÔLife, Environment and People Unit. This unit is based on the principles of inclusionality. It is taught by Alan Rayner and being researched by Richard Williams, a psychologist, during the 2004-05 Academic Year.

 

2) 4 February 2006, University of Bath. Keynote – Margaret Farren and Jack Whitehead on Inclusional Meanings of Living Standards of Judgement in the Creation and Testing of Living Educational Theories - 30 participants

 

The day will focus on making explicit the inclusional meanings of living standards of judgement theses and dissertations at  http://www.actionresearch.net/living.shtml . It will include a response to debates between Gorard (2004a & b) and Nash (2004) in the Journal of Educational Enquiry.

 

3) 10 June 2006, Keynotes - Erica Holley on Accounting for Ourselves with Inclusional Meanings of Embodied Values. Dr. Jackie Delong on Transforming Embodied Values into Living Critical Standards of Judgement in the Development of a Culture of Enquiry.  - 30 participants

 

4) 14 October 2006, Mini-conference.

Speakers:Paulus Murray on Postcolonial Critical Pedagogy - 100 participants.

 

The day will include ideas developed by Paulus Murray from the workshop he convened on the 10th March 2005 on "Translating Diversity Policy into Practice: Responsibilities and Opportunities for Transforming Our Living Practices in British Higher Education" for the University of Sussex Diversity Week. It will be grounded in the paper presented to the 2004 British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, on, Speaking in a Chain of Voices ~ crafting a story of how I am contributing to the creation of my postcolonial living educational theory through a self study of my practice as a scholar-educator, to the Symposium: How Are We Contributing To A New Scholarship Of Educational Enquiry Through Our Pedagogisation Of Postcolonial Living Educational Theories In The Academy?

 

5) 10 February 2007 - Keynote Dr. Moira Laidlaw. Analysing Evidence of the Educational Influence of Inclusionality in the Education of Social Formations- 30 participants plus on-line participants linked through the informal seminar programme.

 

The evidential focus for the day will be provided by the accounts of practitioner-researchers from ChinaÕs Experimental Centre for Educational Action Research in Foreign Languages Teaching at Guyuan Teachers College (see http://www.actionresearch.net/moira.shtml ) and from the research of Je Kan Adler Collins on his pedagogisation of living educational theories in the curriculum of the healing nurse in the Faculty of Nursing at Fukoaka University.

 

Expected outputs and plans for dissemination.

 

The action research process underlying this seminar series integrates outputs and processes of dissemination. The expected outputs include a collaboratively produced e-book on Developing the dynamic boundaries of living standards of judgement in educational enquiries of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing? This process is already underway from the informal Monday evening seminars in the University of Bath   and the embryonic text can be viewed at http://www.jackwhitehead.com/jwartl141015weba.htm

 

Participants in the seminars include regular presenters at the British and American Educational Research Association and they intend to disseminate their learning in seminars and presentations at the Annual Conferences of these Associations.

 

The accounts of learning from the seminar series will be accessible from http://www.actionresearch.net with a dedicated section to the outcomes from the seminars. The 90,000 logins to the resources in this web-space give some indication of its popularity.

 

 


D         Involving Research Users:

 

As all the participants to the seminar series will be practitioner-researchers who are engaged in self-studies of their own professional practices as they ask, research and answer questions of the kind, ÔHow do I improve what I am doing?Õ they are both the creators and users of the research findings as they produce their own living educational theories as accounts of their learning. The practitioner-researchers participating in the seminars include individuals from Health, Education – Schools and Universities, Local Authorities, Housing Associations, Police. This range of participants is already reflected in the living theory doctoral research programmes legitimated by the University of Bath.

 

One of the potential users of the research are academic researchers working within the disciplinary frameworks and methods of validation of the social sciences. One of the intended outcomes of the seminar series is an inclusional theory of human existence that conceptualises persons as participants in local contexts of action in their concrete locatedness of social practice. Academic researchers who are not engaged in self-studies of their own practice, will be invited to the mini-conference to explore the possibility that an inclusional theory of human existence could help to overcome the present severance between theory and practice that seems to be a problem intrinsic to the language and logic of present  social theory.

 

 

 


E          Participation Policy:.

Participants:

Dr. Terri Austin, University of Fairbanks, Alaska.

Madeline Church. Doctoral student, University of Bath.

Je Kan Adler Collins – Assistant Professor In the Department of Mental Health of Fukuoka University. A Doctoral research student at the University of Bath.

Dr. Pat DÕArcy. Former English Adviser, Wiltshire L.E.A.

Dr. Jackie Delong, Superintendent of Schools, Grand Erie District School Board, Ontario.

Dr. Margarida Dolan, Learning Support Unit, University of Bath

Margaret Farren, Lecturer in Education, Dublin City University. Doctoral student, University of Bath.

Marie Huxtable, Educational Psychologist, Bath and North East Somerset LEA.

Erica Holley, Senior Lecturer in Education at Oxford Brookes University.

Professor Jean McNiff, Limerick University.

Peggy Leong – Manager of the Academic of Best Learning in Education at the Institute of Vocational Education in Singapore.

Eleanor Lohr. Doctoral student, University of Bath.

Ken Masters, former Lecturer in Sociology, Anglia Polytechnic University.

Professor Jean McNiff, University of Limerick, Ireland

Paulus Murray, Senior Lecturer at the Royal Agricultural College. Doctoral student, University of Bath.

Marian Naidoo, National Institute for Mental Health, England, Doctoral student, University of Bath.

Dr. Robyn Pound, Health Visitor, Bath.

Dr. Alan Rayner, Reader, University of Bath

Karen Riding, Head of a School Modern Languages Department, Research Student, University of Bath.

Simon Riding, School Deputy Head, Research Student, University of Bath

Dr. Joao Roe. Head of Sensory Support Service. Bristol L.E.A.

Alon Serper. Doctoral student, University of Bath.

Jane Spiro, Head of Applied Linguistics at Oxford Brookes University. Doctoral Student, University of Bath

Professor Mark Williams, Edith Cowan University, Australia.

Richard Williams, psychologist and educational researcher.

Dr. Jack Whitehead, University of Bath

Joan Whitehead, Policy and Liason Officer for the University Council for the Education of Teachers.

Ceri Williams, ICT consultant.

 

The participation policy is to involve participants from a range of professions as set out in the research users section. These include people who can be identified as full-time academics, as practitioner-researchers in the Health, Police and Education services, from Housing Associations and from Industry. They also include participants from the UK, Ireland, Japan, China, Canada and Australia. This should ensure intercultural learning about the educational influence of an intercultural approach to inclusionality.

 

The participation policy is to draw on the participants in the weekly face-to-face and on-line educational conversations in the Department of Education of the University of Bath.

The participants listed in Section C above, include young researchers, established academic researchers, users from local authorities and practitioner researchers from the range of professional contexts listed above.

 

The plans for publicity of the seminars will be largely web-based through the extensive global e-lists that participants use. These include the BERA Practitioner-Researcher Special Interest Group; the AERA Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) Special Interest Group; the AERA Action Research Special Interest Group; the Collaborative Action Research Network and the individuals and groups associated with the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice (CARPP) at Bath. The additional participants for the mini-conference will be draw from BERA Practitioner-Researcher SIG members and members of CARN.

 

The follow-up action for maintaining contact with the participants will be an extension of the informal network of educational conversations that have been sustained for the last 30 years between practitioner-researchers associated with the University of Bath.

 

REFERENCES

 

Burkitt, I. (1994) The Shifting Concept of the Self. History of the Human Sciences. Vol. 7, (2), pp. 7-26.

Dreier, Ole (1999). Personal Trajectories of Participation across Contexts of Social Practice. Outlines 1 (1), 5-32.

Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Late Modern Ave. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Gorard, S. (2004a) Sceptical or Clerical? Theory as a barrier to the combination of research methods. Journal of Educational Enquiry, Vol. 5, No.1. Retrieved 9 February 2005 from http://www.literacy.unisa.edu.au/JEE/Issue5.htm

Gorard, S. (2004b) Three abuses of ÔtheoryÕ: an engagement with Roy Nash. Journal of Educational Enquiry, Vol. 5, No.2. Retrieved 9 February 2005 from http://www.literacy.unisa.edu.au/JEE/Issue5.htm

Griffiths, M. (1995) Feminisms and the Self: The Web of Identity. London; Routledge.

Habermas, J. (1987) The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2: System and Lifeworld, Cambridge; Polity Press.

Ilyenkov, E. (1977) Dialectical Logic. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Kleinman, A. (1995) Writing on the Margins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Leontyev, A.N. (1979). The problem of activity in psychology. In J.V. Wertsch (Ed.). The concept of activity in Soviet psychology (pp. 37-71). Armonk, NY: Sharpe.

Markus, H. R. & Herzog, A. R. (1995) The Sociocultural Self-Concept. In: I. Lubek et. Al. (eds): Spatial Practices. London: Sage, 1-12.

Mitroff, I. & Killman, R. (1978). Methodological Approaches to Social Science. London; Jossey-Bass.

Mos, L. P. (1996) Comment: on Re-working Theory in Psychology. In: C. W. Tolman et. al. (eds.), 37-46.

Nash, R. (2004) Science as a theoretical practice: a response to Gorard from a sceptical cleric. Journal of Educational Enquiry, Vol. 5, No.2. Retrieved 9 February 2005 from http://www.literacy.unisa.edu.au/JEE/Issue5.htm

Popper, K. (1959) The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Hutchinson

Rayner, A. D. M. (2005) Inclusionality and the Role of Place, Space and DynamicBoundaries in Evolutionary Processes. Philosophicus (In Press)

Rayner, A. D. M. (2004a) Introduction to the Complex Self. Retrieved 25 January 2005 from http://www.bath.ac.uk/~bssadmr/inclusionality/complexself.htm

Rayner, A. D. M. (2004b) ÔLife, Environment and PeopleÕ (BB30108) - Encouraging creative and critical biological and scientific enquiry into issues concerning human relationships with the living world. Course notes, University of Bath.

Rayner, A. (2003) Rationality and Inclusionality. The ÒOutsÓ and ÒInsÓ of Biological and other Science. Retrieved 25 January 2005 from http://www.bath.ac.uk/~bssadmr/inclusionality/complexself.htm

A.D.M. Rayner (1997) Degrees of Freedom – Living in Dynamic Boundaries (Imperial College Press)

Ricoeur, P. (1992) Oneself as another. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Strauss, A. L. (1993) Continual Permutations of Action. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

Taylor, C. (1995) Irreducibly Social Goods. In: Taylor, C. 1995: Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 127-145.

Whitehead, J. (1989) Creating a living educational theory from questions of the kind, "How do I improve my practice?'. Published in the Cambridge Journal of Education, Vol. 19, No.1,1989, pp. 41-52

Whitehead, J. (1999) Whitehead, J. (1999) How do I improve my practice? Creating a New Discipline of Educational Enquiry. PhD Thesis, University of Bath. Retrieved 25 January 2005 from http://www.actionresearch.net/jack.shtml

Whitehead, J. (2004) Do action researchers' expeditions carry hope for the future of humanity? How do we know? An  enquiry into reconstructing educational theory and educating social formations. Retrieved 25 January 2005 from http://www.arexpeditions.montana.edu/articleviewer.php?AID=80