For the Monday group and an invitation to colleagues;
5.00-7.00 1WN 3.17 26th February 2007
After we've caught up with each others' news of the week Margarida is going to share her ideas on proprioception in a video-taped presentation for some 7-8 minutes. This will give us an opportunity to evaluate her presentation from the 29th January with this one on the 26th February. Then we can focus on Moira's reflections as she moves between her five and a half years on Voluntary Service Overseas and working as Professor For Life at Ningxia Teachers University. During her period on VSO Moira received the most prestigious Friend of China award from Premier Wen Jiabao. You can access Moira's reflections 'From Supervision To Supervisor' at:
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/monday/mlsuptosup.htm
Je Kan's first complete draft of his thesis is now available for responses at:
http://living-action-research.org/PhD_index.htm
Bearing in mind that the criteria used in examining doctoral theses at Bath include originality of mind and critical judgment, extent and merit of the work and matter worthy of publication, I think that it might be most helpful to Je Kan to focus on the clarity of the connection between his Abstract and the way the thesis unfolds in communicating the meanings of his living standards of judgment.
As we continue to explore the implications of Alan's expression of inclusionality for the educational knowledge we are generating as practitioner-researchers I'm wondering if you would like to focus some of our conversation on what constitutes world leading standards of judgment for evaluating the quality/validity of this educational knowledge.
Here is a posting from this week's contribution to the BERA
Practitioner-Researcher SIG e-seminar on standards of judgment with the
question I've got in mind for our conversation:
From: edsajw@BATH.AC.UK
Subject: Re: Research based practice
Date: 18 February 2007 13:07:39 GMT
To: BERA-PRACTITIONER-RESEARCHER@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Reply-To: BERA-PRACTITIONER-RESEARCHER@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Dear All - a thought just came
to me during my morning swim in the University pool. I suddenly felt that I understood
a difference between Margaret's research and my own in terms of the criteria we
are working on of world leading, internationally excellent, internationally
recognised and/or nationally recognised in relation to the originality,
significance and rigour of the knowledge created by the practitioner
researcher. The difference is that Margaret's knowledge-creation is world
leading and mine is internationally recognised. The difference is that Margaret
has shown how an organisation can be influenced systemically to enable
practitioner-researchers to generate their own living educational
theories. So, not only has
Margaret shown how she has integrated ideas from my own research, from Jean's
research and from O Donahue's research, amongst others, in her own original
contributions. Margaret has also shown how to influence the systemic education
of a social formation (see http://webpages.dcu.ie/~farrenm/). I think Jacqueline Delong has made a
similar contribution in explaining how to form and sustain a culture of inquiry
to support practitioner-research (see http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/delong.shtml). Prof. Judi Marshall's paper on living
systemic thinking has helped me to articulate why I'm thinking Margaret's
knowledge-creation is world leading. You can access Judi's paper in Action
Research Vol.2 (3) Summer 2004 pp. 309-329 or access it directly from http://www.bath.ac.uk/carpp/people/judi/LivingSystemicThinking.pdf
How
does this sound - to be world leading as distinct from internationally
recognised or internationally excellent, the practitioner knowledge-creator must
explain their systemic influence in an organisation in a way that forms and
sustains a culture of educational enquiry and that supports individual
practitioners in generating and testing their own living theories?
I'm suggesting that Moira has the opportunity to contribute to this world leading educational research through her systemic influence in enabling Chinese action researchers to create their own living educational theories with Chinese characteristics.
Looking forward to our conversation,
Love Jack.