Tuesday evening's masters units on
educational enquiry and research methods in education (TTA funded for
teachers).
4.30-7.00 Room 1WN 3.8 (Department
of Education) University of Bath, 4 October 2005/
Here is my first test of our
Tuesday evening e-list. Mary, Marie Huxtable mentioned you might be interested
in the programme so I've just included you on this week's note. Whoever
receives this at Oldfield School please forward to Ms Rosie Culling and Dr.
David Robson because they have expressed an interest in joining the Tuesday
evening group. Bob - I'm not sure
if Claire, Gill and Juliet are wanting to join the group but do
please forward this to them in case
they want to come on Tuesday.
I'm posting my notes for each
session at:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/tuesday.shtml
so do please have a browse through
them. I'm including these notes in this e-mail, but in future I'll just post
them at the above url.
What I'd like to do each week is to
start the session with a catch up from each of us of experiences from the
previous week that we'd like to share.
What I'd like everyone to bring to
this Tuesday's session is some work from a pupil that particular pleases you
because of the significance of the learning. In our conversations I'd like us
to focus on our educational influences in the learning of our pupils that we
particularly value.
James has a visual narrative of the
educational influence of story from his classroom that I'd like us to focus on.
I'd like us to see if we can understand James' educational influence in the
learning of his pupils. In particular I'd like to concentrate on what we might
need to see in a valid explanation of our educational influences in our own
professional learning and in a pupil's learning.
Richard - those video clips were
very powerful in showing pupils learning and working together. If you want to
share an account that explains your influence in their learning I could copy it
for everyone before the session (if you want to do this and e-mail it to me -
that's fine).
What I'm doing is focusing
initially on your educational enquiries in which you are seeking to help pupils
to improve their learning. As we move through the educational enquiry, I'll
bring in a range of research methods in education that should help to
strengthen the quality, validity and rigour of your enquiry and the
explanations of your educational influences in learning. You can bring into
these explanations any theories from your previous learning that are
influencing what you do.
I think we all experienced the
value of Richard's willingness to share his video-clips. I often find the most
significant learning occurs in responding to something unexpected. If you have
any ideas from papers you have read or are reading that you are finding
significant do bring them along to refer to. I'd also be interested in
responses to any of the teacher-researcher accounts in the master's programme
section of http://www.actionresearch.net.
On Tuesday I'd like to agree a
deadline for the submission of your educational enquiry (sometime in March) and
for your Research Methods in Education (early September?). I'd also like to
organise two Tuesday evening sessions in February to strengthen the drafts,
instead of the 8th Nov. meeting and 20th Dec.
EXPLANATIONS OF
EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES IN LEARNING
Additional notes for Tuesday evening's MA session on the 4th October 2005 in response to James Payn's papers on 'Why do I teach' and 'I have had such a good year'
Explaining educational influences in one's own learning
about oneself as an educator
Here is an
interpretation of how I see James explaining his educational influences in his
own learning as an educator.
I feel a
flow of life-affirming energy with James that I am connecting to his responses
and learning in relation to his father:
Without
the presence of my father's absence (both in terms of his death, but also his
depression and sadness when he was alive) I would not be as passionate about
people losing or never being given their chance for a fulfilled, meaningful
life.
I think
that James has transformed a feeling of something being absent in living a
fulfilled and meaningful life into a passionate desire as an educator to enable
pupils to live fulfilled and meaningful lives:
Teaching
provides truly spiritual moments for me personally and the children should be
able to feel, comprehend and copy these wonderful moments if they believe in
them. As a teacher, I should also be very sensitive to these moments so that I
can talk about them and share them with anyone who wishes to take a part. My
analysis of great story telling and story listening is about highly sensitive
behaviour so that I might be able to share this behaviour with others.
James'
commitment to values of equal opportunity and honesty and his willingness to
account for his own life and learning in relation to these values are clear.
I am
still proud of how I put my ideas of equal opportunity and honesty in practice.......
Being a teacher gives me hope that I might
help to make a better society (if I seek to squeeze my child into the best
possible school regardless of its location within my community, I could not
claim for a moment that I really believed in creating a better society, no
matter what I did as a profession) and I am in favour of challenging
philosophies that do not seek to make all children's lives better......
So the
conviction that I might contribute to making society more equal and break down
some of the barriers that exist between and within people, provides me with
energy and direction for teaching. It informs the way I ask the children to
work in groups, identifying strengths and weaknesses within the group and also
when they consider their own development and progress without involving notions
of elitism and 'being in the top/bottom group' (very strong thoughts that
fundamentally effect children's self-esteem and are little talked about in
school). Patterns of understanding, respect and a belief in mutual
benefit can appear in the behaviour of the children as the direct result of
teaching (children also seem to have a natural understanding that this is the
right way to behave). I am also very interested in how traditional stories can
communicate these spiritual values to children and affect their behaviour. I am
not sure how I might record these patterns but I am hoping the application of
IT may provide the tools for serious analyses and lead me and others to
understand more about the dynamics that make classrooms 'spiritual' places to
be.
James has explained why he values
story in communicating spiritual values and in enabling an individual pupil to
construct his or her story from within, while seeking to create a space that
surrounds the pupils with continous patterns and rhythms of care, love and
beautiful teaching.
I now view learning as a
process of the individual constructing his or her own leaning from within;
excellent teaching now means a process of showing very beautifully something
which is highly complex and is surrounded by continuous patterns and rhythms of
care and love.
In the continuing process of
James' learning I'm wondering if we will be able to show, as James believes,
that these patterns and rhythms do have an educational influence in pupils'
learning.
These implicit values are felt
and appreciated by the learner and at times there are explicit experiences of
how these values are lived by the holder; if the learner feels enough
consistency then they believe in the teacher; these consistent patterns that
lead to a feeling of well being about learning allow the individual to access
immeasurably more from the teacher. If we believe in a world of measuring
learning we have to be careful we have not entered a paradigm of diminishing
return that undermines the infinite space created by beautiful teaching.
I'm wondering if it will be possible and desirable to:
Explain one's educational influences in pupils' learning
through the pupils' own voice.
Jack Whitehead 4 October 2005.