Supporting Statement

In relation to the timeliness of the research in the current educational context and its national and international significance, the contributions answer the call made in 1995 by Donald Schon to develop a new epistemology for educational knowledge from action research into teachers' professional practice. A new epistemology requires new standards of judgment. By focusing on the nature of appropriate standards of judgment for practice-based educational research they show how the concern that the knowledge generated by practitioner-researchers should be fairly assessed, could be met in the 2008 RAE. In doing this they answer Snow's (2001) call in her Presidential Address to AERA to develop procedures for systematizing and making public the knowledge-base of practitioners. The presentations are consistent with current ideas that show how narratives can communicate explanations of educational influence in living educational theories.

Drawing on research from Australia, China, Japan, Canada, South Africa, Ireland and the UK the contributions will explain the demonstrable impact of the research upon practice, policy and theory. To ensure the high quality of the research data as well as the quality of the analyses, only the research programmes of practitioner-researchers who have engaged in several years of educational enquiry into their practice for their doctoral degrees will be included. These include a three year longitudinal study into the efficacy of participatory action research for educational leadership in the US. Evidence of the high quality of the research data and analyses from international contexts are already publicly accessible at: http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/living.shtml from the UK; at http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/moira.shtml from China; at http://webpages.dcu.ie/~farrenm/research.html and http://www.jeanmcniff.com/reports.html from Ireland; at http://www.actionresearch.ca/ from Canada.

The research questions are focused on the nature of educational knowledge that produces valid explanations for educational influences in learning. Educational researchers are

viewed as distinct from education researchers and seek to contribute to forms of educational knowledge that can explain an individual's educational influence in their own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of social formations.

The research questions include:

What logics and standards of judgment, in valid explanations that individuals have produced for their educational influences in their own learning, have been legitimated in the Academy?

How are the ontological values and understandings of practitioner-researchers related to their epistemological standards of judgment?

How are critical social theories integrating in living educational theories that are generated through participatory action research?

What epistemological significance do the forms of representation opened up by e-media have for the representation and evaluation of educational theory?

The methods draw on the range of approaches that are appropriate for exploring the implications of asking, researching and answering questions of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?' They include autoethnographic, heuristic, living theory action research, participatory action research, narrative and visual-narrative forms of enquiry, using e-media.

The theoretical frame of inclusionality is formed from Rayner's idea of a relationally dynamic awareness of space and boundaries that is connective, reflexive and co-creative in the generation of living educational theories originated by Whitehead, with their living standards of judgment developed by Laidlaw and Farren. The contribution to educational knowledge is in the explication of a living logic of inclusionality with living standards of judgment for evaluating the quality and validity of the claims to explain an individual's educational influences in their own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of social formations. The methodological contributions to educational knowledge are focused on the use of action research cycles to clarify the meanings of educational values in the course of their emergence in practice and to form living and publically communicable, epistemological standards of judgment.