Generating
Educational Theories That Can Explain Educational Influences In Learning:
living logics, units of appraisal, standards of judgment.
Jack Whitehead, University of Bath, UK.
DRAFT 16 August 2007
A presentation in the Symposium on Generating Educational Theories That Can Explain Educational Influences In Learning, at the Annual Conference of the British Educational Research Association on the 5 September 2007 at the Institute of Education of the University of London.
Abstract
This presentation is an answer to the call made in 1995 by
Donald Schon to develop a new epistemology for the new scholarship of
educational knowledge. The answer given here depends on a values-laden
understanding of what counts as 'educational'. It includes the living expressions
of a loving, life-affirming energy, of justice, of compassion, of freedom, of
gift and knowledge creation as values that give meaning and purpose to a human
existence through education. It includes responses to power relations that
sustain and transform sociohistorial and sociocultural influences in the
reproduction and transformation of individual and social formations. It also
includes an original synthesis of ideas about living logics, units of appraisal
and standards of judgement in explanations of educational influences in
learning. The
explanations have emerged from educational enquiries of the kind, 'How do I
improve what I am doing?' These explanations, of practitioner-
researchers from the UK, China, Japan, the USA, Canada, South Africa and
Ireland, are related through collages of video-clips of educational
relationships in a visual narrative of educational influences in learning. The
video-collage is used to show that an educational relationship from one context,
such as China, can be placed alongside educational relationships in different
international contexts in relationally dynamic and responsive educational
communications through the boundaries of the video-clips. The relationally
dynamic and responsive nature of the living standards of judgment, together
with the living logics and unit of appraisal of the individual's explanation
for their educational influence, is what distinguishes the new epistemology.
The explanations of educational influence are distinguished as living
educational theories. In a stipulative definition these are the explanations
that individuals give for their educational influence in their own learning, in
the learning of others and in the learning of the social formations in which
they live and work.
Introductory framing
In this introductory framing I explain why I have focused so
much time and energy over the last 40 years on the creation of valid
educational theories that can explain educational influences in learning. I
explain the significance of making clear distinctions between education and
educational research and between the generation of theories of education and
educational theories. I explain the epistemological significance of focusing on
the living logics, units of appraisal and standards of judgement in
explanations of educational influence.
To emphasise the importance of visual narratives in the
expression and communication of living standards of judgment I am presenting
this short video-clip of Nelson Mandela talking about Ubuntu. I include it here
to bring the visual communication of the life-affirming energy in the
expression of embodied values into this introduction. Ubuntu ways of being,
enquiring and knowing are relationally dynamic and flow with life-affirming
energy. This relational dynamic is stressed by Mandela in the clip. I believe
that you already have some historical understanding of Mandela's life and
response to 27 years in prison under the Apartheid regime. Narratives of Mandela's life are now
part of a global culture that represents for me and others some of the highest
achievements of the life of an individual. As you watch the video I believe it
will evoke resonances between the life-affirming energy and the values I am
seeking to communicate in this presentation and your own.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODQ4WiDsEBQ
I have focused much of my professional life in education on
the generation of educational theories that can explain educational influences
in learning in terms of extensions in cognitive range and concern and in
expressions of recognition of the value of the other and of oneself. The reason
for this is that I believe it important in living a loving and productive life
to explain to oneself why one is doing what one is doing, in a way that takes
account of one's educational influence in one's own learning. I am thinking of
these influences in relation to the expression and evolution of one's values
and understandings. This assumption is at the heart of my professional life in
education and I understand that I might be mistaken. I may be mistaken in
thinking that the creation and sharing by individuals of their living
educational theories is a vital contribution to making the world a better place
to be. If you think that I am mistaken I would appreciate learning your reasons
for this as quickly as possible so that I can refocus my activities, values and
understandings in a more meaningful way before I pass on! If however you believe that the new
epistemology for educational knowledge is valid I do hope that you will help me
to spread its influence. If, like me, you believe that valid educational theories
have profound influence for the future of humanity, perhaps we could work
together to spread the influence of a valid epistemology for educational
knowledge. The meanings of the inclusional values, in the accounts of the
practitioner-researchers below, have emerged from responses to the experiences
of their denial, in similar experiences to my own in the evolution of my
vocation in education. A fuller explanation of why I have chosen to focus on
educational theory in my vocation in education is in Appendix One.
In this presentation I am making a clear distinction between
education researchers and educational researchers. I hope my reasons for making
a distinction are clear from my rejection of the disciplines approach to
educational theory (Appendix One). In my experience adherents to a discipline of
education, tend to colonise educational theory by identifying their theory of
education with educational theory. The importance of making a distinction
between education and educational research has recently been made by Geoff
Whitty in his 2005 Presidential Address to the British Educational Research
Association:
One way of handling the distinction might be to use the terms 'education research' and 'educational research' more carefully. In this paper, I have so far used the broad term education research to characterise the whole field, but it may be that within that field we should reserve the term educational research for work that is consciously geared towards improving policy and practice..... One problem with this distinction between 'education research' as the broad term and 'educational research' as the narrower field of work specifically geared to the improvement of policy and practice is that it would mean that BERA, as the British Educational Research Association would have to change its name or be seen as only involved with the latter. So trying to make the distinction clearer would also involve BERA in a re-branding exercise which may not necessarily be the best way of spending our time and resources. But it is at least worth considering. (Whitty, 2005)
My own response to the distinction is to advocate keeping
the name of the British Educational Research Association and to reserve
educational research for research that is consciously geared towards generating
explanations with the intention of improving educational practice. I do not
agree that education research can contain educational research in the sense of
explanations of individuals for their educational influences in their own
learning in the learning of others and in the learning of social formations.
However, I want to stress that educational research can draw insights from
education research in the creation of living educational theories.
In my experience, education researchers who seek to include
educational research within their conceptual frameworks, risk the colonising
influences of the old disciplines approach (Appendix One). I see this distinction as vital in the
generation of valid educational theories that can explain the educational influences
of individuals in their own learning, in the learning of others and in the
learning of social formations. To emphasise the importance of the distinction I
am making, beween learning and educational influences in learning, I use
Biesta's (2006) response to the question 'What is learning?' and his point that
education is not just about the transmission of knowledge, skills and
values, but is concerned with the individuality, subjectivity or personhood of
the student, with their 'coming into the world, as unique singular beings (p. 27):
"What is
learning? Learning theorists of both an individualistic and a sociocultural
bent have developed a range of accounts of how learning – or more
precisely, how the process of learning – takes place. Although they differ in their
description and explanation of the process, for example, by focusing on
processes in the brain or legitimate peripheral participation, many of such
accounts assume that learning has to do with the acquisition of something
"external," something that existed before the act of learning and that, as a
result of learning, becomes the possession of the learner. This is what many
people have in mind when they say that someone has learned something." (p. 26)
"We can,
however, also look at learning from a different angle and see it as a response.
Instead of seeing
learning as an attempt to acquire, to master, to internalize, or any other
possessive metaphors we can think of, we might see learning as a reaction to a
disturbance, as an attempt to recognize and reintegrate as a result of disintegration.
We might look at learning as a response to what is other and different, to what
challenges, irritates, or even disturbs us, rather than as the acquisition of
something we want to possess. Both ways of looking at learning- learning as
acquisition and learning as responding – might be equally valid,
depending, that is, on the situation in which we raise questions about the
definition of learning. But as I will argue in more details in subsequent
chapters, the second conception of learning is educationally the more
significant, if it is conceded that education is not just about the
transmission of knowledge, skills and values, but is concerned with the
individuality, subjectivity, or personhood of the student, with their "coming
into the world" as unique, singular beings."(p. 27).
So, in
distinguishing what is educational in terms of both the transmission of
knowledge, skills and values and the coming into the world of unique singular
beings, and wishing to enhance the validity of living educational theories, I
accept James' (2007) idea of transformational validity. I mean this in the
sense that I look for the evidence, in these theories, that the individual
shows how they are coming into the world as unique singular beings who are
responding to the cultural processes of the transmission of knowledge, skills
and values. I look for the evidence that in these responses they are
transforming their existing knowledge, skills and values through the expression
of their life-affirming energy and with the values and understandings they use
to give meaning and purpose to their lives.
I now want to focus on the originality in this presentation.
This originality is in the visual narrative for communicating the meanings of
the living logics, units of appraisal and standards of judgment that can
characterise a new epistemology for educational knowledge. The development of
these logics, units and standards evolved from the two transformations of
epistemological understandings described below. These transformations are
described in terms of extensions of the logics in my explanations of
educational influence from propositional, into dialectical and then into
inclusional modes of thought. In the presentation of these extensions and
transformations I use Rayner's (2005) understanding of inclusionality. This is
a relationally dynamic awareness of space and boundaries as connective,
reflexive and co-creative. The significance of a relationally dynamic
awareness in generating a living logic,
unit of appraisal and standards of judgement will be considered in some detail
later as I consider the philosophical transformations in the genesis of my
living educational theories.
The methodological contribution to educational knowledge includes the
use of action research cycles to clarify the meanings of educational values in
the course of their emergence in practice. The research programmes in Appendix
Two have influenced my understandings of the expression of the meanings of values such as love, compassion,
justice, ubuntu and knowledge and gift creation (Hymer, 2007, Huxtable and
Whitehead, 2007). They have influenced my understandings of how the unique
constellation of an individual's values can be formed into living and
communicable, epistemological standards of judgment. It has been a privilege to
supervise many of these research programmes and I do hope that you will find
the time to read the abstracts and that these will entice you into the
contents.
The methodological contribution also includes the use of visual
narratives with web-based e-media to represent the complex relational dynamics
of educational influences in learning. Some of these educational influences are
related to sociohistorical and sociocultural influences using insights from
critical social theories in the generation of living educational theories that
engage with issues of power and privilege in society (Noffke, 1997). Such issues
of power and privilege can be related back to a BERA symposium of 1985 on Action
Research, Educational Theory and The Politics of Educational Knowledge in which Eames (1996)
Larter (1987) and myself (Whitehead, 1999) presented our self-study research
into improving our educational practices. The work of these researchers,
together with the researchers of Holley (1997) and D'Arcy (1998) Austin (2001)
Finnegan (2000) and Cunningham (1999) (See Appendix Two) have been most
significant in the creation of the professional knowledge-base of educational
knowledge flowing from http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/living.shtml
. More recently Sullivan (2006) and McDonogh (2007) have made the gifts of
their doctoral theses freely available through web-space. These gifts include
similar methodology contribution to those described above and focus on:
A
living theory of a practice of social justice: Realising the right of Traveller
Children to educational equality. Bernie Sullivan's PhD
thesis, 2006, graduated from Limerick University.
My living theory of
learning to teach for social justice: How do I enable primary school
children with specific learning disability (dyslexia) and myself as their
teacher to realise our learning potentials? Caitriona
McDonagh's PhD thesis, 2007, graduated from Limerick University.
Following
the above methodological points I now turn to philosophical transformations in
my thinking.
Philosophical transformations in the generation of my
living educational theories.
In focusing on the meanings of educational influences in
learning in the generation of living educational theories I find the following
idea useful in emphasising the vital significance of 'influence':
"As a poet indebted to and friendly with Mallarme, Valery was compelled to assess originality and derivation in a way that said something about a relationship between two poets that could not be reduced to a simple formula. As the actual circumstances were rich, so too had to be the attitude. Here is an example from the "Letter About Mallarme".
No word comes easier of oftener to the critic's pen than the word influence, and no vaguer notion can be found among all the vague notions that compose the phantom armory of aesthetics. Yet there is nothing in the critical field that should be of greater philosophical interest or prove more rewarding to analysis than the progressive modification of one mind by the work of another." (Said, 1997, p. 15)
In his work on Culture and Imperialism Said makes the point:
As I use the word, 'culture' means two things in
particular. First of all it means all those practices, like the arts of
description, communication, and representation, that have relative autonomy
from the economic, social, and political realms and that often exist in
aesthetic forms, one of whose principal aims is pleasure. Included, of course,
are both the popular stock of lore about distant parts of the world and
specialized knowledge available in such learned disciplines as ethnography,
historiography, philology, sociology, and literary history.....
Second, and almost imperceptible, culture is a concept that includes a refining and elevating element, each society's reservoir of the best that has been known and thought. As Matthew Arnold put it in the 1860s.... In time, culture comes to be associated, often aggressively, with the nation of the state; this differentiates 'us' from 'them', almost always with some degree of xenophobia. Culture in this sense is a source of identity, and a rather combative one at that, as we see in recent 'returns' to culture and tradition. (Said, pp. xii-xiv, 1993)
Said (1993) has analysed the way narratives (novels) can
exercise a cultural influence in sustaining colonial power relations. His
analysis heightened my awareness of the significance of ensuring that the
narratives constituting living educational theories serve an emancipatory
interest while acknowledging the persistence of colonising influence in
cultural formations and social practices. The doctoral research programme of
Eden Charles (2007), with his understandings of the emancipatory possibilities
of Ubuntu ways of being, enquiring and knowing, is also helping me to exploring
the postcolonial implications of including a focus on societal
re-identification in the education of social formations. The importance of
educating social formations through the spread of the societal
re-identification offered by Charles is related to the recognition of the
importance of sustainability. It is possible for individuals to enhance the
flow of life-affirming energy with values and understandings in a particular
context, such as a classroom or other workplace context. However, unless the
economic, political, cultural and other social conditions are supportive of the
activities of the individuals, the improvements in one context are unlikely to
have a systemic influence in other contexts. This is why Delong's (2002) research
programme is so important as she engages with the systemic processes that
can create and sustain a culture of enquiry that can support practitioner-researchers
in enhancing their practice in their particular contexts. In the opening to the
Abstract to her thesis Delong stresses the importance of philosophy in saying
that, One of the basic
tenets of my philosophy is that the development of a culture for improving
learning rests upon supporting the knowledge-creating capacity in each
individual in the system. Thus, I start with my own. This thesis sets out a
claim to know my own learning in my educational inquiry, 'How can I improve my
practice as a superintendent of schools?'
In the evolution of my inclusional explanations of
educational influence in learning between 1967-2007 I can distinguish three
philosophical transformations that are focused on my logics and standards of
judgment. Through my first degree in physical science I came to the belief that
I should eliminate 'I' from my 'scientific' accounts on the grounds that
scientific knowledge was objective and required the elimination of the
subjectivity of the 'I'. During my studies of the philosophy of education
between 1968-70, I shared the views of my tutors that matters of fact and
matters of value formed independent realms of discourse and that contradictions
between statements should be eliminated from correct thought. During this time
my epistemology can be characterised as 'positivist'.
In 1971 as I used a video to analyse my teaching, I
experienced myself as a living contradiction in the sense that I could see that
I was not doing what I believed I was doing. I thought that I had established
enquiry learning in my classrooms, where the pupils were forming their own
questions and that I was making a serious response to their questions. The
video showed that I was actually forming the questions for them and that the
way I had structured the learning resources was too rigid to be responsive to
any questions that the pupils might ask, other than the ones I had pre-defined.
Through the experience of myself as a living contradiction and the help of
Polanyi's (1958) insights into personal knowledge my understandings evolved. By
this I mean that I followed Polanyi's decision to understand the
world from my point of view, as a person claiming originality and exercising
his personal judgement responsibly with universal intent.
(p.327).
This experience of being a living contradiction moved me
into a study of dialectics with contradictions as the nucleus (Ilyenkov, 1977).
My epistemology became that of a dialectician. I did not reject the insights I
gained from the study of propositional theories with their formal logic, but I
was aware of the arguments between formal and dialectical logics in which each
rejected the rationality of the other's assumptions (Marcuse, 1964, Popper,
1963).
In 2002 my understandings evolved from my dialectical
understandings and transformed through the recognition of Alan Rayner's
meanings of inclusionality. I felt this transformation occurring as Alan used
the demonstration, of what has become known as 'The Paper Dance', to explain
the importance of a relational dynamic understanding of space and boundaries.
The video-clip of 'The Paper
Dance' can be accessed below from the image of Alan, or the url. It emphasises
the severance from receptively responsive relationships that occurs in
propositional and dialectical thinking and that can be 'healed' in the
relationally dynamic awareness of space and boundaries of inclusionality.
Responses to the video have given an indication of its inspirational quality.
Responses have commented on the importance of the non-verbal communications in
the expression of the relationally dynamic awareness of space and boundaries.
Of great significance in the development of the new
epistemology of educational knowledge is the idea of a living logic. Following
Marcuse (1964, p.105) I see logic as a mode of thought that is appropriate for
comprehending the real as rational. My understanding of the significance of
developing a living logic, as a mode of thought for comprehending educational
influences in learning, came from my reflections on a limitation in Ilyenkov's
(1977) thinking about dialectical logic. I see this limitation in terms of
Ilyenkov's commitment to 'write' logic, rather than explore the implications
for the development of a living logic in his own form of life:
The concretisation of the general definition of Logic presented above must obviously consist in disclosing the concepts composing it, above the concept of thought (thinking). Here again a purely dialectical difficulty arises, Namely, that to define this concept fully, i.e. concretely, also means to 'write' Logic, because a full definition cannot by any means be given by a 'definition' but only by 'developing the essence of the matter'. (Ilyenkov, 1977, p.9)
I believe that his decision to 'write' logic, constrained Ilyenkov to work within the limitations imposed by the elimination of contradictions between statements in the Aristotelean Law of Contradiction, even while writing about contradictions. He became stuck with the problem of finding an appropriate from of representation for a living contradiction:
"Contradiction as the concrete unity of mutually exclusive opposites is the real nucleus of dialectics, its central category. On that score there cannot be two views among Marxists; but no small difficulty immediately arises as soon as matters touch on 'subjective dialectics', on dialectics as the logic of thinking. If any object is a living contradiction, what must the thought (statement about the object) be that expresses it? Can and should an objective contradiction find reflection in thought? And if so, in what form?" (Ilyenkov, 1977, p. 320)
What I am claiming for living educational theories, is that
the complex relational dynamics of the individual's responses to their context
and reflections, can be comprehended in explanations that are formed through
the unique living logics of each individual in their educational enquiries of
the kind, 'How do I improve my practice?' The explanations, when formed with
the help of visual narratives, are not constrained by limitations in the sole
use of pages of text to communicate the meanings of embodied values. In their
research programmes in Appendix Two, individuals are speaking for themselves in
the presentation of their research programmes. The doctoral programmes are
longitudinal studies of at least five years duration. The University of Bath
changed its regulations in 2004 for the submission of research to enable the
submission of e-media. Hence it is only from this date that the living theory
theses and dissertations have included the e-media of visual narratives.
What I now want to do briefly, is to share my understandings
of the significance of living inclusional logics and standards of judgment for
the generation of living educational theories in educational enquiries of the
kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?' What I mean by the unit of appraisal
in a living educational theory is the explanation offered by an individual to explain their
educational influences in learning.
Living logics, units of appraisal, standards of judgment
in educational theories that can explain educational influences in learning
In the extension and transformation of my epistemologies
with living standards of judgment (Laidlaw, 1996) I want to stress the
importance of Lyotard's insight about the postmodern condition in which we are
formulating the rules (living standards of judgment) of what will have been
done:
A postmodern artist or writer is in the position of a philosopher: the
text he writes, the work he produces are not in principle governed by
pre-established rules, and they cannot be judged according to a determining
judgement, by applying familiar categories to the text or to the work. Those
rules and categories are what the work of art itself is looking for. The artist
and the writer, then, are working without rules in order to formulate the rules
of what will have been done.
(Lyotard, p. 81, 1986)
I also want to stress
the significance, for the presentation below with its recognition of the
diversity of the uniqueness of each living theory, of Bateson's question about
a higher wisdom being related to women honouring multiple commitments in a new
level of productivity and new possibilities for learning:
But
what if we were to recognize the capacity for distraction, the divided will, as
representing a higher wisdom...? Perhaps Kierkegaard was wrong when he said that
'purity is to will one thing'. Perhaps the issue is not a fixed knowledge of
the good, the single focus that millenia of monotheism have made us idealize,
but a kind of attention that is open, not focused on a single point. Instead of
concentration on a transcendent ideal, sustained attention to diversity and
interdependence may offer a different clarity of vision, one that is sensitive
to ecological complexity, to the multiple rather than the singular. Perhaps we
can discern in women honoring multiple commitments a new level of productivity
and new possibilities of learning. (Bateson,
p. 166, 1989)
While the video clips below include both genders I shall draw attention
to the new possibilities for explaining educational influences in learning that
are offered by the multiple living theories flowing through web-space from http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/living.shtml
. In the flow of this BERA 07 presentation through web-space, there are
multiple channels of communication that are open for accessing the living
educational theories of most of the researchers (Appendix Two) who appear on
the video-clips below. While not wanting you to be overwhelmed by the
complexity of these communications, I want you to appreciate the diversity of
the interconnecting and branching channels of communication that are open to
you to access these living theories and for you to share your own.
The ideas of Karen Tesson have been significant in my recognition of this diversity of the uniqueness in each individual in the evolution of an inclusional approach to the creation, testing and communication of living educational theories. The diagram below changed my awareness of the nature of communications through web-space. The diagram was on a slide shown by Karen Teeson at a presentation in 2004 of her doctoral research programme at the University of Bath. It showed the natural connection between tubular structures or anastomosis (|Rayner, 1997). Before seeing this diagram I had been working with a linear sense of communication between a transmitter and receiver. The following diagram transformed my perception of communications through web-space into my present understanding of interconnecting and branching channels of communication where boundaries can act as guidelinings for the flow of life-affirming energy, values and insights. It helps to explain my present passion for enhancing the influence of living educational theories by placing them in the flow of communications through web-space.
I have modified the original diagram to open up channels of communication in the encircling boundary.
Because the understandings I want to share are of
inclusional ways of being, enquiring and knowing, I want to begin with visual
data that shows embodied expressions of values with space and boundaries that
are flowing with an inclusional, loving, life-affirming energy. In the
introduction I included a video-clip that seemed likely to have global appeal
because it is of Nelson Mandela speaking about an Ubuntu way of being. I
included this clip in the beginning because I think that the embodied values
expressed by Mandela will resonate with some of the values you recognise as
carrying hope for the future of humanity. As I watch the video, I feel Mandela
expressing what I understand by a loving, life-affirming energy. I am assuming
that enhancing the flow of this energy is a contribution to making the world a
better place to be. Bringing the idea of a loving, life-affirming energy as a
living standard of judgment into an epistemology of educational knowledge may
feel unusual. Yet I want to emphasise the importance of this idea in living
educational theories.
In saying that I love what I do in education I am relating
this love at work to Eleanor
Lohr's (2006) doctoral thesis on Love at Work. In affirming the vital
significance of a flow of life-affirming energy as a distinguishing quality of
educational relationships I feel this energy as an affirmation of being-itself.
I felt this energy and affirmation while reading Tillich's (1973) work on The
Courage To Be, while recognising that his meanings, because of his thesism,
would differ from my own. I also felt this energy and affirmation in reading
Bataille's (1987) work on Eroticism, where he writes of assenting to life to
the point of death.
I am not expecting you to access all the clips in this
presentation. Viewing one or two may be sufficient to communicate my meanings.
I have included them all because they serve to emphasise the significance of
developing an inclusional form of awareness that is not structured through the
lenses of propositional or dialectical forms of thought. In particular I am
thinking of the living logics in the relational dynamic awarenesses of space
and boundaries that hold together widely disparate, cultural, geographical and
social contexts in the generation by individuals of their explanations of
educational influence (Appendix 2). One respondent to an earlier draft of this
presentation stayed with the video-clips and my commentaries and made the
point:
"...there was initially a little me in me that might well have written
the story off part way through because of my own tensions (involuntary
preparing for conflict) but by 'staying with it' I came to the point where it
was not at all a case of the material redeeming itself, but a case of the
material dissolving my small-minded judgements based on involuntary bursts of
anticipated conflict by convincing me that there would be no conflict and that
I could relax."
My commentaries on the clips also allow me to offer you the
opportunity of accessing the living educational theories of most of the
individuals on the video-clips. Opening this access, through the
interconnecting and branching channels of communication provided by web-space,
also opens up possibilities of flows of meaning through boundaries between the
clips that are not organised in terms of time. They are atemporal in the sense
that while the video-clips were taken at different times and places they can be
related through the boundaries between the clips that enable resonant meanings
between the expression of values and understandings on the clips to be felt by
viewers. You can now test the validity of my claim that the collages of video-clips with their
atemporal relationship allows inclusional feelings and communications to be
experienced, acknowledged and influence learning. You can test my claims that
the visual narrative of the clips with the commentaries and the access to the
living theories, clarify my meanings of living logics and living standards of
judgment. For example, an
educational relationship in China with Moira Laidlaw has been placed alongside
an educational relationship in the UK with Alan Rayner with the potential to
create a relationally dynamic communication, with its living logic, through the
boundaries of the video-clips. Alan is communicating meanings of a living
standard of judgment of inclusionality through a demonstration. Moira is
expressing inclusionality in her educational relationships with her students. I
am hoping that your imaginations will reform the relationships between the clips
and their communications in ways that can influence your own learning. As I
write this I have in mind insights from the doctoral research programme
of Jacqui Scholes-Rhodes in her 'exquisite connectivity' in learning to 'presence my
aesthetic and spiritual being through the emergence form of a creative art of
inquiry':
I hold my changing
sense of the world clearly at the centre of my learning, my sense of spiritual
and aesthetic belonging expressed as a sense of 'exquisite connectivity'. I
develop a notion of 'live' and 'life' meanings as I begin to explore my
understanding of its emergent possibilities, holding a fragile sense of a
connected world side by side with the generative capacity of my dialogic voice.
I create an intricate patterning of personal stories and dialogic
inquiry process, forming a sense of coherence from the juxtaposition of
emotional images with the clarity of a reflective and cognitive dialogue.
I
develop a style of written text that reaches beyond the boundaries of
presentational knowing, creating a new understanding of a living expression of
an emergent sensibility to a connective world.
And I allow
generative questioning to take my inquiries into new and unanticipated places,
holding open the boundaries of a woven truth to qualities of relational
sense-making and learning to listen attentively to the richness and creative
possibilities of the responses. (Scholes-Rhodes, 2002 – see
Abstract)
My
commentaries to the video-clips are intended to assist in the communication of
the meanings of relationally dynamic standards of judgment, the living logics
of living educational theories and the ways in which insights from traditional
propositional and dialectical theories can be integrated within the living
theories. I believe that the communication will be helped if you could
approaching the relationships between the clips with a similar quality of
'exquisite connectivity' expressed by Scholes-Rhodes.
A visual narrative of living logics and relationally
dynamic standards of judgment
The first three clips are of:
Moira Laidlaw non-verbal communications in teaching in China
Alan Rayner on Inclusionality, Boundaries and Space
Eden Charles and Alan Rayner with Ubuntu and Inclusionality
You can
access the clips from the streamed server by either clicking on the live url
above or the image below. As I look at them I am aware of the relational
dynamic presence of both my local self as photographer and the non-local
socio-historical and socio-cultural influences that are present within the space.
For example:
In 2003 as
I took the clip in a classroom of Guyuan Teachers College (Now Ningxia Teachers
University) Moira Laidlaw has completed 3 years of her 5 years as a VSO
Volunteer in China. In 2004 she received the Friend of China award from Premier
Wen Jiabao. Moira is aware of the historical influence of the Chinese culture
that has emphasized a Confucian conformity at the expense of individual
questioning and creativity. At the end of the clip Moira draws a student to her
to congratulate her on showing the courage to question something that Moira had
done in the class and to emphasise the importance of individual questioning and
creativity. Moira's doctoral enquiry can be accessed from http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/moira2.shtml
.
In the
second clip Alan Rayner is showing his awareness of the non-local influence of
forms of thought embedded in the culture as a form of addiction to Aristotelean
Logic with it lack of awareness or explicit rejection of dialectical and
inclusional forms of thought. He demonstrates, on the video-clip how this
addiction sustains a severance between mind/body/emotion. He offers a way of
'healing' this severance through inclusional ways of being, enquiring and
knowing. Alan's writings on inclusionality can be accessed from http://people.bath.ac.uk/bssadmr/inclusionality/
The third
clip shows Alan preparing for a radio interview for an American radio-show.
Eden is showing an awareness of both the local presence of Alan's anxiety over
the presentation and the non-local influence of the kinds of communication that
might be heard by an American audience. Eden is expressing his Ubuntu way of
being, enquiring and knowing in his relationship with Alan. He has evolved and
communicated his meanings of Ubuntu in his doctoral research programme that
answers his question, How Can I Bring
Ubuntu As A Living Standard of Judgement Into The Academy? Moving Beyond
Decolonisation Through Societal Reidentification And Guiltless Recognition? You can access Eden's thesis at http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/edenphd.shtml
. Through this multi-media narrative with its living logic, Eden communicates
the meaning of Ubuntu as it is expressed as a living standard of judgment in
his life as a father, educator and international consultant. This includes his
responses to some difficult and painful experiences in Africa and elsewhere.
Through
placing this presentation in the flow of communication in web-space I believe
that I am enhancing the possibilities that the lives, understandings,
life-affirming energy, love, anger, pain and pleasure of those on the
video-clips can contribute to this flow of energy and understanding.
Continuing with the first of the three clips below I am
explaining my understanding of the African notion of Ubuntu, to a workshop at
the University of the Free State in South Africa in 2006. It is my belief that
amplifying the flow-form communication of qualities that distinguish an Ubuntu
way of being, enquiring and knowing, through the interconnecting and branching
communication channels of communication provided by web-space, is helping to
bring more fully into the world the values and understandings that are contributing
to the future of humanity. It is my belief that if we
could find ways of enhancing the flow of this Ubuntu way of being the world
would be a better place to be. I do not mean to imply that the unique
constellation of values and understanding that constitute an Ubuntu way of
being, exclude the contributions to the future of humanity of other
constellation of values. Each individual can account for themselves as a unique
human being, within the diversity of the constellations of values and understandings
that constitute each individual's living theory.
The second clip is of Je Kan Adler Collins preparing for his transfer seminar from an M.Phil. into a Ph.D. research programme. Je Kan successfully transferred and is now in the process of submission. His research is focused on an explanation of his educational influence in the development of a curriculum for the healing nurse at Fukuoka University in Japan. It is informed by his Buddhist faith and understandings. It draws on a living theory approach as he develops his inclusional pedagogy of the unique. I believe that the visual data enables Je Kan's presence to be felt as a flow of loving, life-affirming energy in his knowledge-creation that resonates with my own exploration of the meanings of Ubuntu in the first clip. You can access Je Kan's living action research web-space at http://www.living-action-research.org/ .
The third clip is of Jean McNiff at a seminar at St. Mary's College, Twickenham, UK in 2006. Jean is describing the global contexts in which she is supporting a living theory approach to teachers' professional development. These contexts include her work in South Africa, Iceland, the UK, Ireland and China (we are both visiting professors at Ningxia Teachers University in China). Jean was present at the workshop in South African in the first of the three clips below where I am exploring the meanings of Ubuntu. From the relational dynamic of the work we have done together and through Jean's passion for sharing ideas through writing, many publications have emerged on action research and living theory. These publications are having an acknowledged educational influence around the world. You can access some of Jean's writings from http://www.jeanmcniff.com/writings.html and explore her educational influence in the research programmes she has supervised at http://www.jeanmcniff.com/reports.html . Each time I access my own web-space at http://www.actionresearch.net I experience the pleasure of seeing:
"For beginning
practitioner-researchers see the action planner and see Jean McNiff's Action research for professional development: Concise advice
for new action researchers . A celebration of 21 years of collaboration with Jack Whitehead"
Here are the three clips:
Je Kan Adler Collins preparing for transfer to Ph.D.
Jean McNiff's support for action research in global contexts
The next set of three clips I did
not video. They were provided by Branko Bognar, a Croatian educator, working
with teachers and their pupils to develop an action research approach to
improving learning. I first watched these clips in 2005 with Moira Laidlaw and
we were both surprised by the capacities of the 10 year old pupils to
demonstrate their understandings of an action research approach to improving
their learning. Drawing the attention of
teachers in the UK to these capacities of 10 year old pupils in Croatia
has encouraged them to support their own pupils in the evolution of their own
action research. The influence of the interconnecting and branching channels of
communication and potential influenced opened through web-space can be seen in
Joy Mounter's account of her enquiry, Can children carry out action
research about learning, creating their own learning theory? (see http://www.jackwhitehead.com/tuesdayma/joymounterull.htm
with the Appendix of the video-clips of the 6 year old pupils). Through seeing
the video-clips provided by Branko Bognar I began to stress the importance of
teacher-researchers working with pupil-researchers. Karen Collins, in her
doctoral enquiries with pupils as researchers, had already alerted me to the
educational value of recognizing pupils as researchers. With the additional
motivation of the clips from Branko I began to encourage the teachers I
supervise to include their pupils as researchers in their educational
enquiries. Joy Mounter was already relating to her pupils with this
participatory intent and produced one of the most significant educational
enquiries I have had the pleasure of tutoring. It's significance can be
appreciated through the video-clips of the pupils as they respond to and offer
their reconstruction of a model of learning known as Thinking Actively in a
Social Context (TASC) (Wallace, 2002).
Branko
Bognar on action research with pupils in Croatia
Stimulating Creativity with 3rd and 4th Grade
10 year
old pupils in Croatia explaining action research
In the next set of four clips, the
first two show the dynamic of my supervisory relationship with Jacqueline
Delong in her doctoral research programme. In the first clip there is the
expression of tension when the Abstract needs improving. In the second there is
a therapeutic expression (in the sense of a flow of life-affirming energy) of
pleasure with humour. The third clip is included to emphasise that non-local
influences of socio-historical and socio-cultural boundaries can sometimes
constrain the expression of academic freedom and inclusional ways of being,
enquiring and knowing. The clip is a performance text in the sense of being a
re-enactment of my appearance before a Senate committee about a matter of
academic freedom. I am responding to a draft report by the committee in which
there is no mention of the pressures I have experienced that could have
constrained my freedom. Following my response the final report to Senate
acknowledged that I had been subjected to pressures that might have constrained
a less determined individual.
Love, pain, anger, pleasure and
life-affirming energy are in the title of this contribution. My love for what I
do in education, with a flow of life-affirming energy from the cosmos/universe,
has sustained my vocational passion. In the last 40 years of my professional
life I know that I have experienced much anger at what I perceive as injustice
in the world. Part of my passion for education emerged with the recognition of
what I perceived as a lack of recognition in schools and universities of the
desire of individuals to accept an educational responsibility for their own
learning. In managing my anger I value most highly the psychoanalytic insights
I gained from reading Anna Freud's work in 1966. I am thinking of her
descriptions, in her writings on normality and pathology in childhood, of some
13 defence mechanisms we can employ in responding to pain and anger. Over the
years I believe that I have used these to good effect in combining a
recognition of the legitimate expression of anger with the development of an
understanding that prevents the projection of inappropriate responses onto
others because of a pathologised response to anger and pain. Yaakub Murray has
recently understood how to prevent the projection of such inappropriate
responses through an awareness of the idea of narcissistic injury and I shall
reference this work as soon as it becomes available.
During the course of 40 years
engagement in education I have encountered colleagues who have taken early
retirement on health grounds that are related to mental health issues related
to stress. I do not want to be seen to be ignoring the importance of sustaining
a feeling of well-being in the work place for one's productive work. The
focused emotion in the performance text of the third video below expresses, I
think, my legitimate anger at what I perceive as an injustice. I believe my
awareness of the dangers of pathologising the intense emotions associated with
anger has so far enabled me to avoid the pathologising influence of anger,
through the therapeutic expression of pleasure, as shown in the second clip,
and through feeling part of the extension of the support for the creation of
cultures of inquiry described by Jacqueline Delong in the fourth clip and in
her thesis (Delong, 2002) at http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/delong.shtml
. The thesis that has influenced most, my understanding of the power of a
visual narrative to communicate the meanings and educational significance of
emotion, is Marian Naidoo's exploration of a passion for compassion. Marian's DVD in her thesis
was the first doctorate to make extensive use of the 2004 regulation of the
University of Bath to permit the submission of e-media.
The following four clips, taken
together, share my understandings of a local influence in supporting the
generation of a living educational theory on the creation of a culture of
inquiry to support teacher-research (Delong, 2002). The space is not without
its creative tensions and flows with life-affirming energy and pleasure. The
atemporal alongsideness of the third clip enables the non-local influences of power
relations that needed facing and overcoming in the legitimation of living
theories in the Academy. These power relations and their constraining
influences have necessitated overcoming potentially pathologising responses to
anger, pain and humiliation.
Jacqueline Delong and Jack Whitehead with a Ph.D. Abstract
Jacqueline Delong and Jack Whitehead on Wisdom and Pleasure
Jack Whitehead Responding to
matters of power and academic freedom
The next three clips show the
non-verbal responses between Louise Cripps (a headteacher working for her
masters degree) and me. It was taken in 2007 at the end of a masters unit
session on educational enquiry that I tutor in the University of Bath. We both
experience the clip as showing that our educational relationship is one of
mutually receptive responsiveness in which we are communicating without any
violation of the integrity and identity of the other. I like this clip because
I feel a mutuality of inclusion with Louise that resonates in my understanding
what Buber means by 'the special humility of the educator':
"If this educator should ever believe that for the sake of education he has to practise selection and arrangement, then he will be guided by another criterion than that of inclination, however legitimate this may be in its own sphere; he will be guided by the recognition of values which is in his glance as an educator. But even then his selection remains suspended, under constant correction by the special humility of the educator for whom the life and particular being of all his pupils is the decisive factor to which his 'hierarchical' recognition is subordinated." (Buber, p. 122, 1947)
The second clip shows a similar
quality of mutually receptive responsiveness between Yaakub-Paulus Murray and
me. Yaakub is sharing ideas from a text on Progressive Islam and, as with the
clip with Jacqueline Delong, we are showing the pleasure in the expression of
the humour in the flow of life-affirming energy. The qualities of educational
relationship shown in this clip show two educators, one who self-designates as
a progressive muslim and the other who characterises his spirituality in terms
of a loving, life-affirming energy, engaged in an educational enquiry with the
other. While we had given permission for students in the session to video, we
were not aware that this clip was being made. The movement in the clip serves
to emphasise the relationally dynamic nature of the context in which the
conversation is taking place.
The third clip shows a similar
expression of life-affirming energy with pleasure and humour as Peter Mellett
leads the celebration on Jacqueline Delong's graduation day on the 18 December
2002 (the clip was taken by a camera set up by Sarah Fletcher, a colleague at
the time). It shows the relationally dynamic flows of receptive responsiveness
between the participants in the expression of affirmation for Jacqueline's
accomplishment. In explaining my educational influence in my own learning, in
the learning of others and the learning of social formations, I feel that a
flow of life-affirming energy helps to sustain my productive life in education.
As I look at the shared communications and mutual affirmations in the
video-clips below I am feeling the quality of affirmation that I associate with
the early writings of Marx:
Suppose we had produced things as human beings: in his
production each of us would have twice affirmed himself and the other.
In my production I would have objectified my
individuality and its particularity, and in the course of the activity I would
have enjoyed an individual life, in viewing the object I would have experienced
the individual joy of knowing my personality as an objective, sensuously
perceptible, and indubitable power.
In your satisfaction and your use of my product I would
have had the direct and conscious satisfaction that my work satisfied a human
need, that it objectified human nature, and that it created an object
appropriate to the need of another human being.
I would have been the mediator between you and the
species and you would have experienced me as a redintegration of your own
nature and a necessary part of yourself; I would have been affirmed in your
thought as well as your love.
In my individual life I would have directly created your
life, in my individual activity I would have immediately confirmed and realized
my true human nature. (Bernstein, 1971, p.
48)
Louise&Jack270307 Non-verbal Communication
Jack responding to Yaakub's enquiry into Progressive Islam
Peter Mellett celebrating on
Jacqueline Delong's Graduation
The collage of 6 clips below contains five clips of colleagues in the Bath and North East Somerset Authority who are working to enhance the quality of educational provision for all the children in B&NES. The first clip is of Nigel Harrisson, Manager of the inclusion support services in B&NES. He is at the 2006, British Educational Research Association (BERA) seminar, convened by Eleanor Lohr to enquire