How are we as professional educators, using ethical guidelines in our self-study, multi-media accounts to explain our educational development and our influence in the education of other individuals and social formations?

Sarah Fletcher, Department of Education, University of Bath

Jack Whitehead, Department of Education, University of Bath

Notes for a presentation on 12/09/03 at BERA 2003, Herriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.

In keeping with what we said we would do in our original proposal:

We will analyse our educational influence in terms of the transformation of embodied knowledge into public knowledge by explaining Whitehead's educational influence in the learning of others as a MA/PhD supervisor and Fletcher's influence as a research mentor and MA tutor. We will also present an analysis of our educational influence in the social formation of networks of teacher-researchers in the UK, Canada and Japan. This analysis will focus on our use of our embodied values in the ethical guidelines (Fletcher 2002) in the self-studies that explain our educational development and our influence in the education of other individuals and social formations?

Whiteheadπs contribution

My introduction to ethical guidelines in educational practice and research came in 1966 through reading Richard Petersπ (1966) Ethics and Education on my initial postgraduate teacher education programme at Newcastle University. My interest in ethics and embodied values continued with a close study of this text with Richard Peters and the team of philosophers of the London Institute of Education for the Academic Diploma in Education between 1968-1970. More recently I have benefited from working with Sarah Fletcher and the åloving eyeπ she brings to her video-taping of educational practice as we have helped each to explain our educational development and influence in our educational relationships with other individuals and social formations.

To avoid misunderstandings it might be helpful if I try to communicate clearly my ethical guidelines and their relationship to both the embodied values I express in my educational practice and my explanations of my learning in my educational enquiry, åHow do I improve what I am doing?π

Clarity in communication is important to me. I still value highly the educational experiences of over 30 years ago when the philosophers of education at the Institute of Education would focus on the importance of clearly communicating, through language, the meanings of such ethical principles as freedom, justice, consideration of interests, worth while activities, respect for persons and the procedural principle of democracy for those engaged in seriously asking themselves questions of the kind, åWhat ought I to do?π I continue to value highly clarity of communication through such conceptual uses of language.

However, the growth of my educational knowledge over the last 30 years of educational research in my enquiry, åHow do I improve what I am doing?π has included a different process for clarifying the meanings of the ethical guidelines I use in my explanations for my educational development and for my influence in the education of others and in the education of social formations.

All I have time for in a ten minute presentation is to focus your attention on this process of clarification firstly from the ground of my educational practice and secondly in the development of web-based and multi-media, interconnecting branching networks of educational conversation stimulated by the educational enquiries of ourselves and others.

Firstly, let me see if I can engage your interest and imagination as well as your critical judgement by starting with my educational practice in the here and now. What I am doing now is my educational practice in the sense that it is part of a process of my own learning in which I am seeking to live my values more fully in my practice. Part of this learning involves offering for public criticism my claims to know my own learning in my educational development. As I am speaking at this moment I believe that I am expressing my life-affirming energy in the spiritual sense that I am experiencing meaning and purpose in my life in education in what I am doing as I seek to communicate the significance of clarifying the meanings of embodied spiritual values as these are clarified in the course of their emergence in practice and form explanatory principles in my accounts of my own learning and educational influence in the learning of others and in the education of social formations. If the technology is working I should now be able to play back a short clip from my present practice as part of the process of showing how embodied values can be transformed into ethical guidelines and explanatory principles in accounts of educational influence and development. The transformation from the experience of embodied values into the ethical guidelines and explanatory principles takes place as the meanings of the values are clarified in the course of their emergence in the research practice of making public the embodied knowledge of a professional educator.

Secondly I want to draw your attention to multi-media, web-based analyses of the use of embodied values in ethical guidelines that explain:

i) the educational development and influence of individuals in the education of other individuals.

ii) the influence of individuals in the education of social formations of networks of teacher-researchers in the UK, Canada, Japan, Ireland and China.

The following url takes you to the first issue of the Wiltshire Journal of Education (Vol. 4, No. 3, 2003) to be made available with the interconnecting and branching networks of web communications of live links to the above analyses:

http://education.wiltshire.gov.uk/docs/volume_4_number_3_autumn_2003.html

The live links from Simon Ridingπs (2003) account of his practitioner-researcher to those of his colleagues at Westwood St. Thomas School contain evidence of the educational development and influence of individuals in the education of other individuals. The live links to analyses of our work with teacher-researcher networks in the UK (Fletcher, 2003; Murray, 2003; Whitehead, 2003), with Jean McNiff in Ireland (McNiff 2003), with Jackie Delong and Cheryl Black in Canada (Delong & Black, 2003), with Je Kan Adler-Collins in Japan (Adler-Collins 2003) and with Moira Laidlaw in China (Laidlaw, 2003), show how each individual has transformed their embodied values into the ethical guidelines they use as explanatory principles in the generation and testing of their own living educational theories. The most recent addition to these web-based resources is åPaulus Murray's Home Page, Living Postcolonial Educational Theoryπ (Murray 2003). Paulusπ ideas are most significant in my own learning as they have influenced my perception of the mistake in the old ådisciplinesπ approach to educational theory acknowledged in 1983 by Paul Hirst in relation to principles justified from immediate practical experience:

≥ä.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.≤ (Hirst, 1983, p. 18)

I now see such åreplacementsπ of the embodied knowledge of educators as acts of colonisation by researchers who conduct åeducationπ research while claiming that it is åeducational researchπ.

If you would like to participate in our on-going research-based educational conversations you might like to join the living action research forum provided by Je Kan Adler-Collins (2003). You can access this from the front page of http://www.actionresearch.net

References

Adler-Collins, J. (2003) Living Action Research. Retrieved on 6 September 2003 from http://www.living-action-research.net

Delong, J. & Black, C. (Ed.) (2003) Passion in Professional Practice, Vol. 2. Retrieved on 6 September 2003 from http:www/schools.gedsb.net/ar/passion/index/html

Fletcher, W. (2003) Welcome toTeacherResearch.Net. Retrieved on 6 September 2003 from http://www.teacherresearch.net

Hirst, P. (Ed.) (1983) Educational Theory and its Foundation Disciplines. London;RKP

Laidlaw, M. (2003) Action Research in China with Dr. Moira Laidlaw. Retrieved on 6 September 2003 from http://www.actionresearch.net/moira.shtml

Murray, P. (2003) Paulus Murray's Home Page, Living Postcolonial

Educational Theory. Retrieved on 6 September 2003 from http://www.royagcol.ac.uk/~paul_murray/Sub_Pages/FurtherInformation.htm

Peters, R. S. (1966) Ethics and Education, London. Allen & Unwin.

Riding, S. (2003) Living myself through others. How can I account for my claims and understanding of a teacher-research group at Westwood St Thomas School? Retrieved on 6 September 2003 from http://education.wiltshire.gov.uk/docs/volume_4_number_3_autumn_2003.html

Whitehead, J. (2003) Accounting for ourselves and to each other/chat room/conferences archived conversations with living-action-research.net and Je Kan Adler-Collins. Retrieved 6 September 2003 from http://www.actionresearch.net