How are living
educational theories being produced and legitimated in the boundaries of
cultures in resistance?
Jack Whitehead,
Department of Education, University of Bath
Visiting
Professor at Ningxia Teachers, University, Guyuan, China.
Presentation for
the Cultures in Resistance Conference. The 7th Conference of the
Discourse, Power, Resistance Series, 18-20 March 2008 Manchester Metropolitan
University.
Abstract
A critique of the languages, logics and standards of
judgment in contemporary cultural practices for the legitimation of educational
knowledge in the Academy will reveal, using multi-media narratives, how they
deny the educational significance of the recognition of educational
responsibility towards the other in educational relationships.
An approach to the generation of living educational
theories in boundaries of cultures in resistance will be presented. This
includes a self-study of persistence in the face of pressures over a working
life in education at the University of Bath. The self-study includes a visual
narrative of pressures over a 34 year research programme into the nature of
educational theory. The pressures could have breached the principle of
academic freedom and other values of academic responsibility. Theoretical
insights from psychology, sociology, theology, philosophy, educational research
and inclusionality will be integrated into the analysis. The data-base includes
some 30 living theory theses legitimated in the Academy over the past twenty
years.
Introduction
I was attracted to submit a proposal for the 7th
conference of the Discourse, Power, Resistance series because of the focus on
Cultures in Resistance. My interest in culture is because of my recognition
that while good ideas can be generated in a specific context they must become a
cultural influence if they are to have a widespread influence in the education
of social formations. The good ideas I have in mind have emerged from a
34 year old research programme into the nature of educational theory at the University
of Bath. Whether they are good ideas is open to your questioning. They inform
my critique below of the languages, logics and standards of judgment in
contemporary cultural practices for the legitimation of educational knowledge
in the Academy. The critique is made from the perspective of a living
educational theory approach in boundaries of cultures in resistance that
includes the following ideas from my research programme:
á
that 'I' exists as a living contradiction in enquiries
of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?' in the sense that 'I' holds
together the experience of embodying certain values while experiencing their
denial in practice.
á
that the expression of embodied values as distinctive
of educational relationships carry a life-affirming and/or a dynamic loving,
energy.
á
that the meanings of these energy flowing values can
be clarified and developed through their emergence in the practice of action
reflection cycles.
á
that in the process of clarification in their
emergence in practice they are formed into explanatory principles of
educational influences in learning and into living epistemological standards of
judgement.
á
that individuals can generate their own living
educational theories as explanations for their educational influences in their
own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of social
formations in enquiries of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?'
á
that living educational theories already legitimated
in the Academy have generated a new epistemology for educational knowledge with
living units of appraisal, energised and values-laden standards of judgement
and living logics of inclusionality.
á
that generating living educational theories in the
boundaries of cultures in resistance carries hope for the future of humanity.
My interest in understanding cultures in resistance is
because of my experience of working in the boundaries of such cultures that
serve both reproductive and transformatory interests in the legitimation of
living educational theories. My interest in generating living educational
theories in these boundaries, is in enhancing the transformatory power of
education in the lives of individuals and social formations.
Because I make a distinction between social actions
and educational actions in terms of energised values in educational
relationships I will clarify this distinction after I have explained how I am
using my meanings of culture, resistance and inclusionality.
Culture
I draw my understanding of culture from Said (1993)
when he writes:
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)
The first meaning of culture can be associated with
transformation, the second with reproduction. I think of cultures as living
phenomena that are social constructions sustained by collective communications
in forms of life. Particular individuals may die and the culture can continue.
If all the individuals sustaining a culture die, the culture dies. Hence my
stress on the living and my interest in the influence of living educational
theories in sustaining and or transforming cultures in resistance.
Resistance
Writing about resistance, in the tertiary level of
education in Japan, McVeigh distinguishes a form of social malaise as
'resistance':
By 'resistance' I do not mean a conscious,
organized, and systematic insurrection against the sociopolitical order.
Rather, I employ this term to designate actions and attitudes that do not
directly challenge but scorn the system.
This form of subtle resistance ignores rather than threatens and is a type of
diversion (if only temporary) from, rather than a subversion of, the dominant
structures. (McVeigh 2002: 185-186).
I can understand this notion of resistance, but it is
not the way I am using the idea of resistance when I write from a position in
the living boundaries of cultures in resistance. By the 'living boundaries of
cultures in resistance' I am meaning that that there is something expressed in
the boundary sustained by one culture that is a direct challenge to something
in the other culture. For example, in education there is a political culture
that has been imposing a regime of testing in schools. There is a professional
culture that has been stressing the importance of creativity. There continues
to be tensions in the boundaries of these cultures that can be understood
through the perspective of inclusionality.
Inclusionality
In my research programme into the nature of
educational theories I work from the perspective of inclusionality developed by
Rayner (2005) and Lumley (2008) and described below. I am particularly
interested in the logics of educational theories.
I like Marcuse's (1964, p. 105) idea of logic as a
mode of thought that is appropriate for comprehending the real as rational. In
the generation of living educational theories I use three forms of rationality,
the propositional, the dialectical and the inclusional. There is a 2,500
history of conflict between adherents to propositional
and dialectical logic in which the adherents to one position deny the
rationality of the other (Popper, 1963, p. 313-17). Within a living educational
theory, insights from both propositional and dialectical theories are included
as I show below. The living logics of inclusionality that permit this inclusion,
without denying the rationality of propositional and dialectical thinkers, are
grounded in Rayner's (2005) understanding of inclusionality as a relationally
dynamic awareness of space and boundaries as connective, reflective and
co-creative. I like the way Lumley expresses inclusionality in his
fluid-dynamical world view as:
"...an inspiring pooling-of-consciousness that
seems to include and connect all within all in unifying dynamical communion....
The concreteness of 'local object being'... allows us to understand the
dynamics of the common living-space in which we are all ineluctably included
participants. (Lumley, 2008, p.3)
I am working with the living logics of inclusionality
in the critique below. The critique rests on distinguishing the languages of
educational and social actions through the expression of a dynamic loving
energy in educational relationships.
Distinguishing educational and social actions
through a dynamic loving energy.
I like the recent developments in the social sciences regarding
autoethnographies. I think that much of what I am going to say can be seen as
an autoethnography in the sense of an explanation for the life of an individual
that takes account of cultural influences.
Where I think the educational explanations in living
educational theories go beyond limitations of explanations from social
sciences, of educational influences in learning, is in the recognition and
representation of a dynamic loving energy as an explanatory principle for
educational influences in learning. It may be that other participants in the
conference work with a different understanding of social action to the one that
I use. It may be that your understanding of social actions include flows of
life-affirming energy that have a social source. In his work on the
phenomenology of the social world Schutz draws attention to Weber's
understanding of a social action being that action which:
" ...by virtue of the subjective meaning
attached to it by the acting individual (or individuals), takes account of the
behaviour of others, and is thereby orientated in its course."
(Schutz, 1972, p. 29)
This is my understanding of a social action. In my
understanding of educational actions they go beyond this understanding of a
social action. An educational action includes a flow of life-affirming energy
with values. This life-affirming energy, that others describe as a dynamic
loving energy (Formby, 2007; Walton, 2008), while mediated by the individual
and the social, flows from outside the individual and the social. Hence the
distinction I draw between educational and social actions.
In the production of my own living educational theory
I draw on a language used by theologians to communicate meanings of a
life-affirming energy that is not grounded in a theistic faith of belief. I am
aware of a life-affirming energy that I am expressing in both the production of
this written text and in the communication of my performance text. I need
language to communicate the meanings expressed with the flow of this energy
through my body as I explain my educational influences in learning. I draw on
language whose meanings used by the originator are different to my own. For
example, I draw on the language of the Christian Theologian, Tillich (1973, p.
168), to refer to my experience of the expression of a life-affirming energy as
a state of being affirmed by the power of being itself. For Tillich this
power is intimately related to his God. For me, having no religious belief or
faith in God(s), the words are used to communicate a flow of life-affirming
energy with the power of being itself. In my understanding of how I recognise
my tendency to impose my view of the world on others and seek to avoid this, I
draw on the ideas of the Jewish Theologian, Buber, where he writes of 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,
1947, p. 122)
One of my main criticisms, of present cultural
practices for legitimating educational knowledge in the Academy, is focused on
differences between the explanatory principle of an embodied expression of a
dynamic loving energy in educational relationships and the language of academic
explanations of educational influences in learning. Here is a visual
representation of the expression of the dynamic loving energy I have in mind
from a video-clip on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/cvformby
The clip is taken from a visual narrative of a
teacher-researcher's enquiry from her master's programme:
How am I integrating my educational theorizing
firstly with the educational responsibility I express in my educational
relationships with the children in my class, but also with the educational
responsibility I feel towards those in the wider school community? (Formby,
2008, http://www.jackwhitehead.com/tuesdayma/cfee3draft.htm
)
The visual narrative that includes the video-clip
includes the context:
Recently I watched a video clip from my Yr 2 class
of myself with a little boy, J, who wanted to wear a Samuel Pepys' wig, a
history resource to bring The Great Fire of London to life. I knew immediately
that the video clip said something significant about me and about my
relationships with the children in my class.
The images below are the moments in the educational
relationship that resonate with Claire as expressing her flow of a dynamic
loving energy. They are placed side by side because in the first one Claire
feels that she is expressing most fully this energy and in the second is
receiving the recognition of her pupil.
The main point of the critique below is to
reveal omissions of the explanatory principle of a dynamic loving energy
(Walton, 2008) in the propositional languages, logics and standards of
judgement of much academic writings about education. These writings are
reproducing one polarity of a dialectic in the living boundaries of cultures in
resistance. In the other polarity the boundary is supporting the inclusion of
living educational theories with their energised, values-laden standards of
judgment, in the Academy.
In the analysis that follows I first critique the
languages, logics and standards of judgment in contemporary cultural practices
for the legitimation of educational knowledge in the academy.
I then offer a living educational theory approach to
boundaries of cultures in resistance.
Finally I present a performance text of a situated
analysis of cultural resistance as a self-study of persistence in the face of
pressures within boundaries of resistance. The self-study of persistence is
presented with a desire for recognition of an outstanding contribution to
educational knowledge. This persistence includes the pressures in the power
relations of cultural boundaries that can constrain the flow of values, skills
and understandings that carry academic freedom and other values of academic
responsibility. The performance text also includes an engagement with the ideas
of others from their propositional and dialectical theories and connects with
other living educational theories that are flowing freely through web-space as
gifts from their creators.
A critique of the languages, logics and standards
of judgment in contemporary cultural practices for the legitimation of
educational knowledge in the Academy.
At the beginning of my career in education, in 1966,
on the initial teacher education programme in the Department of Education of
the University of Newcastle, I produced my first special study on 'The Way To
Professionalism In Education?' I began teaching in 1967 as a teacher of science
at Langdon Park School in London's Tower Hamlets. Between 1967-72 I
believed that my main contribution to the profession would be as a science teacher
in secondary schools. However, in 1971 I began to question the validity of the
dominant view of educational theory. In this view, educational theory was
believed to be constituted by the disciplines of the philosophy, psychology,
sociology and history of education. I studied these disciplines for my Academic
Diploma and MA in Education at the University of London, Institute of Education
beween 1968-1972. I also studied my explanations for my educational influences
in my own learning and in the learning of my pupils. Comparing these
explanations I could appreciate that no explanation derived from any discipline
of education, taken individually or in any combination, could produce a valid
explanation of my educational influence in my own learning or in the learning
of my pupils.
My sense of vocation changed with the recognition of
this error in the disciplines approach to educational theory. I began to
believe that my greatest contribution to enhancing professionalism in education
might come from contributing to the reconstruction of educational theory in
Higher Education. I was fortunate to have my application for a post of lecturer
in education accepted by the University of Bath in 1973. This has enabled me to
spend the last 34 years, with economic security, on my research programme into
the nature of educational theory. I do not want to underestimate the importance
of this economic security and will return to its significance later.
Through the support of the University I have been able
to present at many international conferences in China, Japan, Australia, the
UK, Ireland, South Africa, Canada and the United States, and examine many
masters dissertations and doctoral degrees in different universities in
different countries. Hence I feel that I have some understanding of the
languages, logics and standards of judgment being used to legitimate
educational knowledge in different cultures.
My critique of the languages, logics and standards of
judgment in contemporary cultural practices for the legitimation of educational
knowledge in the Academy is similar to the critique given by Paul Hirst of his
original support for the idea of a disciplines approach to educational theory.
I am thinking of his point that much understanding of educational theory will
be developed:
"... in the context of immediate practical
experience and will be co-terminous with everyday understanding. In particular,
many of its operational principles, both explicit and implicit, will be of
their nature generalisations from practical experience and have as their
justification the results of individual activities and practices.
In many characterisations of educational theory, my
own included, 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. That
now seems to me to be a mistake. Rationally defensible practical principles, I
suggest, must of their nature stand up to such practical tests and without that
are necessarily inadequate." (Hirst 1983, p.
18)
Imagine experiencing at first hand the power relations
of this dominant cultural belief that your explanations of your educational
influences with your pupils or students were at best pragmatic maxims having a
first crude and superficial justification in practice that in any rationally
developed through would be replaced by principles
with more fundamental theoretical justification! While studying with
philosophers of education, who held the above belief, I felt a clash of
cultures. On the one hand I continued to value my understanding of philosophy
of education. On the other hand I felt the need to resist the dominant culture
of the philosophers that held that my explanations of my educational influences
with my pupils did not constitute an educational theory, but needed to be
replaced by explanations with more 'theoretical justification'. The
resistance came from participating in a professional culture that valued the
embodied knowledge of professional educators. I felt a resistance in the
boundaries between the cultures, where the dominant academic culture was
actively and explicitly seeking to replace the embodied knowledge of the
professional educator with the 'academic' theories of the philosophers,
sociologists, psychologists and historians of education. The differential power
relations in the boundaries of the cultures in resistance meant that attempts
to bring the embodied knowledge of professional educators into the academy as
academic knowledge, met a resistance from those who thought the explanatory
principles in this knowledge, needed to be replaced by principles with more
theoretical justification. The importance of bringing the embodied knowledge of
educators into the Academy has been highlighted by Snow (2001, p. 9).
In critiquing the dominant languages, logics and
standards of judgment, in contemporary cultural practices for the legitimation
of educational knowledge in the Academy, I want to focus initially on a
difference between propositional and dialectical thinkers. I am thinking of the
difference that has led proponents of the different logics to deny the
rationality of the other's position. In the section below, on developing a
living educational theory approach to cultural resistance, I shall show how a
perspective of inclusionality can integrate insights from both propositional
and dialectical thinkers without denying their rationalities.
Karl Popper has provided a very clear rejection of
dialectical theorising from within the arguments of propositional logic.
In answering his question, 'What is Dialectic?', Popper (1963) rejects
dialectical claims to knowledge as, 'without the slightest foundation.
Indeed, they are based on nothing better than a loose and woolly way of
speaking' (p.316).
Popper demonstrates, using two laws of inference, that
if a theory contains a contradiction, then it entails everything, and
therefore, indeed, nothing. He says that a theory which adds to every
information which it asserts, also the negation of this information, can give
us no information at all. A Theory which involves a contradiction is
therefore entirely useless as a theory (p.317).
Popper is thinking of theory in the propositional
terms used by Pring:
" 'Theory' would seem to have the following
features. It refers to a set of propositions which are stated with sufficient
generality yet precision that they explain the 'behaviour' of a range of
phenomena and predict what would happen in the future."
(Pring, 2000, pp. 124-25)
Writing at the same time as Popper in the 1960s
Marcuse (1964), a proponent of Critical Theory, explains how propositional
theories are masking the dialectical nature of reality with its nucleus of
contradiction. One of the greatest dialectical thinkers of the last
century Evard Ilyenkov highlighted the problem of contradiction in dialectical
theorising. This problem emerged from his decision to 'write' logic:
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)
And the problem of contradiction remained at his
death:
"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)
The problem is that once a dialectician commits to
'writing' with the sole medium of communication being statements on words on
pages of printed text, the dialectician can become trapped in the logic of
propositions while trying to express the meanings of living contradictions that
are embodied in practice.
This is my central critique of the dominant languages,
logics and standards of judgment in contemporary cultural practices for the
legitimation of educational knowledge in the Academy. While propositional
theories can explain many significant events in the world, they cannot produce
valid explanations of the educational influences of individuals in their own
learning, in the learning of others or in the learning of the social formations
in which we live and work. When dialecticians seek to produce such explanations
in terms of living contradictions, and to present them in the sole medium of
words in statements of pages of printed text, they are trapped within a
propositional logic. Their form of representation and communication does not
permit the development of a valid explanation of the life of a living
contradiction. I shall now explain how a living educational theory approach in
the boundaries of cultures in resistance can avoid such criticisms with the
living logics of inclusionality.
A living educational theory approach to the
boundaries of cultures in resistance.
I began to use the idea of a living educational theory
(Whitehead, 1989) as an individual's explanation of his or her educational
influence in their own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning
of social formations, to distinguish these explanations from the explanations
derived from propositional theories of education. I liked Ilyenkov's (1977)
question about living contradictions and felt that the idea of living theory
could embrace and be produced with such contradictions. I am thinking of living
contradictions in terms of certain values being held together with their denial
in practice in the 'I' in such questions as 'How do I improve what I am doing?'
I have researched my working life at the University of
Bath as the life of a living contradiction (Whitehead, 1993, 1999 2004;
Whitehead & McNiff, 2006). I have experienced such contradictions in
responding to the following judgments that are cultural, in the sense of being
carried with systemic influence by the disciplinary power of the university.
The judgments span some 30 years. They continue to live in my participation in
the boundaries of cultural resistance. These are the boundaries between the
traditional representations of educational knowledge, in words in statements of
pages of printed text, and the expressions and representations of the embodied
knowledges of professional practitioners. The site of cultural resistance of
these living boundaries is most marked at the University of Bath because of the
University's mission to have a distinct academic approach to the education of
professional practitioners.
In looking at the judgments below, in terms of
boundaries of cultural resistance, I want to make the following distinction
between the privilege of working in a creative, educational space, provided by
my employment by the University of Bath, and the actions of some individuals who
because of institutional position can communicate with the disciplinary
pressure of the organisation. What I mean by this, in the communications below,
is that individuals have sent me communications on behalf of the University.
Because they are made 'on behalf of the University', their communications can
carry the disciplinary power of the culture of the University. You will see
that the communications and judgments below, now part of the history of the
university and the present culture, are focused on 'The University's' responses
to my contributions to educational knowledge. My own responses, in the cultural
form of my published papers, show my resistance to these judgments, just as the
University's responses to my contributions to educational knowledge show a
resistance to my own judgments.
Working within the boundaries of cultural resistance
means, to me, meeting and responding to both opportunities and constraining
influences in the power relations of the boundaries. I have been fortunate, so
far, that the flows of life-affirming energy, accompanying my creativity and
values of humanity, have enabled me to face and respond creatively to the
actions and judgments listed below from the dominant culture. These carry
constraining cultural pressures of institutional and disciplinary power
relations between 1976-2006. In the boundaries of resistance I have continued
with my research, writings and teaching in the University to support the
creation of cultures of enquiry (Delong, 2002). These cultures of enquiry
continue to be created through the expression of flows of life-affirming energy
with values that I distinguish as carrying hope for the future of humanity and
my own.
Humour, working with creative students and colleagues
and the art of conversation have played their part in this transcending of the
constraining pressures and the identity challenging influences of the judgments
below. In the presentation of the performance text I will show what I mean by
living contradictions. The contradictions are holding together the experience
of flows of life-affirming energy, and values, and the experience of energy and
values sapping constraints. I will show the transcending and transformatory
influences of humour, values-based conversations and the understandings of the
most advanced social theories of the day.
My professional context is in working with creative
students and colleagues in keeping open the flow of life-affirming energy with
values of humanity in channels of communication. Because of the importance of
the art of conversation in transcending constraining pressures I want to
explain what I mean by this art.
Gadamer's ideas appealed to me because I could
identify with his emphasis on the importance of forming a question. For
Gadamer, questioning is a 'passion'. He says that questions press upon us when
our experiences conflict with our preconceived opinions. He believes that
the art of questioning is not the art of avoiding the pressure of opinion.
"It is not an art in the sense that the Greeks
speak of techne, not a craft that can be taught and by means of which we would
master the knowledge of truth".
Drawing on Plato's Seventh Letter, Gadamer
distinguishes the unique character of the art of dialectic. He does not
see the art of dialectic as the art of being able to win every argument. On the
contrary, he says it is possible that someone who is practising the art of
dialectic, i.e. the art of questioning and of seeking truth, comes off worse in
the argument in the eyes of those listening to it. (Gadamer,
1975. p.330).
According to Gadamer, dialectic, as the art of asking
questions, proves itself only because the person who knows how to ask questions
is able to persist in his questioning. I see a characteristic of this
persistence as being able to preserve one's openness to the possibilities which
life itself permits. The art of questioning is that of being able to continue
with one's questions. Gadamer refers to the art of conversation.
"To conduct a conversation requires first of
all that the partners to it do not talk at cross purposes. Hence its necessary
structure is that of question and answer. The first condition of the art of
conversation is to ensure that the other person is with us.... To conduct a
conversation.... requires that one does not try to out-argue the other person,
but that one really considers the weight of the other's opinion. Hence it is an
art of testing. But the art of testing is the art of questioning. For we have
seen that to question means to lay open, to place in the open. As against the
solidity of opinions, questioning makes the object and all its possibilities
fluid. A person who possesses the 'art' of questioning is a person who is able
to prevent the suppression of questions by the dominant opinion.... Thus the
meaning of a sentence is relative to the question to which it is a reply
(my emphasis), i.e. it necessarily goes beyond what is said in it. The logic of
the human sciences is, then, as appears from what we have said a logic of the
question. Despite Plato we are not very ready for such a logic." (pp.
330-333).
In the presentation that follows I am seeking to
express this art of questioning in continuing to respond to the following
judgments from the 'University' in the boundaries of cultures in resistance.
Here are the judgments, spanning thirty years in my
work at the University of Bath that have helped me to form my life as a living
contradiction and generate my living educational theory. They carry the
disciplinary power of the institution. Such judgments are the evidence I offer
of a sustained culture of resistance to the recognition of the
transforming cultural potential of the generation and testing of living
educational theories. My purpose here is not to analyse the particular judgments
in relation to the growth of my educational knowledge. I have done this in
detail elsewhere.
Whitehead, 1993 The Growth of Educational Knowledge.
Bournemouth; Hyde. Retrieved 19 February 2008 from http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/writings/jwgek93.htm
Whitehead, 1999 How do I improve my practice? Creating
a New Discipline of Educational Enquiry. Vol 1. of Ph.D, Retrieved 19 February 2008 from http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/jack.shtml
Whitehead, 2004 Do Action Researchers' Expeditions
Carry Hope For The Future Of Humanity? How Do We Know? Action Research
Expeditions, October 2004. Retrieved 19 February 2008 from http://www.arexpeditions.montana.edu/articleviewer.php?AID=80
My purpose here is to provide evidence that places
beyond reasonable doubt my claim that one polarity of the dialectic of the
cultures of resistance can be understood as a resistance to recognising the
validity of ideas from my research into living educational theories. In the
performance text below I am seeking to establish, the nature of the other
polarity of the cultures in resistance in extending recognition of the validity
and academic legitimacy of the transforming cultural potential of living
educational theories.
Here are the judgments that establish one polarity of
the boundaries of the cultures in resistance.
The judgments.
1976 Grounds for recommending that a
tenured appointment should not be offered, from the Academic Staff Committee,
approved by Senate:
You have not given satisfaction in the teaching of
prescribed courses.
There is an absence of evidence to suggest that you
have pursued research of sufficient quality for the assessors to be assured of
your ability to perform adequately the duties of a University Lecturer.
You have exhibited forms of behavior which have
harmed the good order and morale of the School of Education.
1980/82 Following two
rejections of doctoral submissions I could not, within the university
regulations of the time, question the competence of my examiners' judgements.
The letter from the Secretary and Registrar of the University informing me that
I was not permitted to question these judgements, under any circumstances,
stated:
Once the examiners have been appointed, their
competence cannot in any circumstances be questioned.
1987 Following complaints about my
activities and writings from two Professors of Education a disciplinary meeting
was held which included the University Solicitor and I was informed in writing
by the University Registrar that:
Your activities and writings are a challenge to the
present and proper organisation of the University and not consistent with the
duties the university wish you to pursue in your teaching and research.... You
must be loyal to your employer.
1991 The letter from the Registrar was
used as evidence in 1990 by a Board of Studies in a recommendation to Senate
that there was prima facie evidence of a breach of my academic freedom. Senate
established a working party on a matter of academic freedom. They reported in
1991:
The working party did not find that... his academic
freedom had actually been breached. This was however, because of Mr Whitehead's
persistence in the face of pressure; a less determined individual might well of
have been discouraged and therefore constrained.
2006 An application for a Readership was
rejected by the Academic Staff Committee on the grounds that:
For a promotion to Reader, the Committee needs to
establish that a candidate has made an outstanding contribution to the
advancement of knowledge. In this regard the Committee considered that the case
for this level of contribution was not yet made and in order to develop the
case further it will be necessary for you to focus on producing articles which
can be disseminated via established and renowned international refereed
journals.
To communicate the nature of the other polarity of the
dialectical tension in the boundaries of cultures in resistance I now want to
answer my question, 'How are living educational theories being produced and
academically legitimated in the boundaries of cultures in resistance?'
and to so do through a performance text of a situated analysis of living
educational theories in the boundaries of cultures in resistance.
My interest in performance texts is because of their
potential to communicate meanings of flows of life-affirming energy with values
in a way that gets closer to these meanings than can be carried through words
in statements on pages of printed text. Returning to the 1991 judgment above,
this performance text includes a video-clip re-enactment of my meeting with a
Senate Working Party on a Matter of Academic Freedom. In the video I am
expressing meanings of my expression of life-affirming energy with values of
academic responsibility. The expression of life-affirming energy emerged
through a feeling of humiliating and energy sapping defeat with a lack of
recognition, in a draft report from the Working Party, of pressures on my
academic freedom.
The performance text also includes my engagement with
some of the most advanced social theories of the day from Bourdieu, Sen, Yunus,
McGregor and Bernstein, amongst others.
It includes my educational influence in the
development of other living educational theories that have been legitimated for
their doctorates. These are flowing through web-space in boundaries of cultures
of resistance that deny that the idea of living educational theory is an
outstanding contribution to educational knowledge.
Life-affirming energy with academic responsibility
In the process of contributing to the academic
legitimation of living educational theories with their life-affirming energy
and academic responsibility I have encountered a culture of resistance,
represented in the above judgments made on behalf of 'The
University'.
When the Senate Working Party on a Matter of Academic
Freedom, described above, produced their draft report I was invited to meet the
Working Party to respond to the report. The report's conclusion was that my
Academic Freedom had not been breached. I agreed with this conclusion. What
disturbed me about the draft report was that it contained no reference to the
pressure to which I had been subjected as illustrated in the judgments above
about my persistence in the face of pressure. Here is my re-enactment, in
the video-clip below, of my meeting with the Working Party from the point where
I was leaving the room feeling defeated that the pressure had not been
recognised. As I was about to leave the room, with this powerful feeling of
defeat, I felt an even more powerful feeling of resistance to the feeling of
defeat. This energy, I characterise as life-affirming. It moved me to
turn again to face the committee. Here is my recollection of what I said
and the way I said it. The final report to Senate recognized the
significance of my persistence in the face of pressure in the fact that my
Academic Freedom had not been breached. It had not been breached because
of my persistence in the face of pressure that could have discouraged and hence
contrained a less determined individual. My purpose in showing this clip is to
communicate something of the energy I have expressed in the boundaries of the
cultures in resistance that has helped me to contribute to sustaining and
extending the cultural influences of living educational theories in the
education of individuals and social formations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBTLfyjkFh0
In seeking to enhance the flow of living educational
theories in the boundaries of resistance I now want to make a public response
to the decision of the Academic Staff Committee of the University of Bath, not
to recommend, in 2006, my promotion from Lecturer in Reader. For those familiar
with promotions in a University I think it is fair to say, when judging the
accomplishments of others who have been promoted to a senior lecturer or a
readership, that to have remained a lecturer in education for 34 years at the
University of Bath might be seen as evidence of a less then outstanding
academic talent! Here is my story of how this was possible in my case.
You can access my application at:
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/jwreadership.pdf
The application was supported by a number of
internationally renowned academics who understand the field of my research.
Since receiving notification of the rejection of my
application for promotion, in March 2006, I have wondered how to respond. One
easy response would have been to call into question the judgments and ask for
them to be reviewed. My history of responses in the boundaries of the cultures
in resistance to the above judgments have included my book on the The Growth of
Educational Knowledge, (Whitehead, 1993) where I named those responsible for
mobilised the disciplinary power of the University and provide the evidence of
the actions and my responses. The text was written with the forceful expression
of what I still experience as legitimate anger at a lack of recognition of
pressures that could have constrained my academic freedom. I have shown what I
mean by this forceful expression of legitimate anger with freedom and
responsibility in the video-clip above of my re-anactment of my response to a
draft report from a Senate Working Party on a Matter of Academic Freedom.
Keeping my desire, to enhance the flow of living
educational theories in boundaries of cultures in resistance, at the forefront
of my motivation has influenced my present response in this performance text. I
am thinking particularly of the rejection of a recognition of the contribution
to knowledge of living educational theories. I am feeling some pleasure in
writing this response in the paper for presentation at this conference on
Cultures in Resistance. This is a different emotional response to any other I
have made before to an issue of a lack of recognition in the University. Other
responses have always carried anger, some rage, and a sediment of embarrassment
and humiliation.
The pleasure may be partly due to the fact that I no
longer need to worry about my economic livelihood being threatened as I am
within 18 months of retiring from my tenured contract. My academic freedom is
not under pressure. I am feeling the pleasure of being motivated by a desire to
extend the influence of living educational theories. It has taken two years
from the initial receipt of the rejection of the application for promotion, for
me to feel the authentic flow of pleasure in my response. The pleasure is in
seeing the flow of influence of living educational theories in many different
contexts, with contributions or original ideas from my own research.
It isn't that I do not feel the rejection of
recognition by the individuals that constituted the Academic Staff Committee in
2006. It is that I am distinguishing this lack of recognition from the recognition
of the living educational theories already legitimated by the University of
Bath and other Universities. My feeling of wellbeing is also stemming from the
opportunities provided by the rejection to analyse that most interesting of
phenomenon pointed out by Habermas (1975) related to not-learning. In
2006 I believed that extending the influence of living educational theories
would benefit from the recognition of the significance of their contributions
to educational knowledge through a Readership. I now believe that this
recognition is likely to have a minor significance in extending the influence.
I believe that it is the recognition and understanding of the boundary that
created the rejection in a process of not-learning that will help most to
extend the influence of living educational theories.
What pleases me most about the expression and
development of my talents in my work at the University of Bath with its 34 year
old research programme into the nature of educational theory, is the gift I
have created, with the help of my students, of a repository of living
educational theories from http://www.actionresearch.net, accessible
internationally and now recording some 138,500 hits. In 2004, as a member
of the Senate working party on the regulations governing the submission of
research degrees, I was delighted with the acceptance of the recommendation
that e-media should be permitted in the submissions of research degrees.
Research students I supervised were amongst the first to submit e-media as part
of their original contributions to knowledge, drawing explicitly on ideas from
my own research programme into living educational theories. My point in
stressing this knowledge-base in the Library of the University of Bath and
elsewhere is that this continues to enhance what I claim to be an outstanding
contribution to the advancement of educational knowledge.
The University of Bath Library contains the
knowledge-base of these theses. These draw explicitly on my original work on
living educational theory. A further five doctoral theses at the University of
Limerick, with the supervision of Jean McNiff (2008), also draw explicitly on
original ideas from my own research into living theories.
M‡ir’n Glenn (2006) Working with collaborative projects:
my living theory of a holistic educational practice . PhD thesis, University of Limerick,
retrieved 2 February 2008 from http://www.jeanmcniff.com/glennabstract.html
Caitriona McDonagh (2007) 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? PhD thesis,
University of Limerick, retrieved 2 February 2007 from http://www.jeanmcniff.com/mcdonaghabstract.html
Mary Roche (2007) Towards a living theory of caring
pedagogy: interrogating my practice to nurture a critical, emancipatory and
just community of enquiry (2007) . PhD thesis, University of
Limerick, retrieved 2 February 2008 from http://www.jeanmcniff.com/MaryRoche/index.html
Bernie Sullivan (2006) A Living Theory of a Practice of Social Justice:
Realising the Right of Traveller Children to Educational Equality . PhD thesis,
University of Limerick, retrieved 2 February 2008 from http://www.jeanmcniff.com/bernieabstract.html
Margaret Cahill (2007) My living educational theory of
inclusional practice . PhD thesis, University of Limerick,
retrieved 2 February 2008 from http://www.jeanmcniff.com/margaretcahill/index.html
Other living theory theses have been legitimated in
the Universities of Kingston (Evans, 1995; Loftus, 1999) Plymouth (Follows,
2007), Warwick (Rawal, 2006) and Newcastle (Hymer, 2007).
The point I am making is that in working in the living
boundaries of cultures of resistance it has been possible to develop a living
educational theory approach to these cultures that has been legitimated in the
living theory doctorates in my workplace of the University of Bath.
However, as a living contradiction, this workplace has provided evidence of its
culture of not-learning in terms of its explicit lack of recognition of the
academic significance of living educational theories, through the rejection of
an application of promotion to a Readership. At the same time it has provided a
site that has supported the polarity of a culture in resistance for recognising
and legitimating living educational theories.
Many social theories exist within the boundaries of
cultures in resistance and I continue to extend my understanding of such
theories in seeking to contribute to the education of social formations.
Engaging with and using insights from social theories
In my rejection of the old disciplines approach to
educational theory I can sometimes be understood, mistakenly, as rejecting the
disciplines of education! Nothing could be further from the truth. I continue
to emphasise the importance of insights from the traditional disciplines of
education in the generation of living educational theories. Here are some
of the ideas I continue to use.
When I use the idea of a social formation I am drawing
on Bourdieu's point about the importance of the habitus in understanding
limitations in analysing social formations with the rules of social scientists
(Bourdieu, p. 145, 1990).
While appreciating the usefulness of the idea of
habitus in explaining social reproduction, I find it of limited use in
understanding educational transformations of the kind I am interested in. These
transformations are focused on the education of social formations through
enhancing the flow of living educational theories in the social actions of
individuals.
In drawing
insights from social constructivist theories, while recognising their
limitations in producing energy-flowing explanations of educational influences
in learning, I use the idea of social action as a distinguishing characteristic
of this perspective. I draw the following insights from social theories, such
as those of Sen (1999), Yunus (2007) McGregor (2008) and Bernstein (2000) that
focus on human capabilities, social goods, wellbeing and pedagogy respectively
as I generate my own explanations of educational influence in learning.
From Sen, I have
learnt a language of human capability that enables me to move beyond a language
of economic rationality of human capital that reduces explanations of human
action to the influences of capital (Sen, 1999, p.
293).
While recognising the importance of economic security
in sustaining a creative space for educational conversations in the University
of Bath, I have always felt a resistance to explaining my actions from within
the concepts of economic rationality. This resistance was due to the omission
of flows of life-affirming energy with values within economic rationality.
Sen's economic theory of human capability enables me to recognise both the
influence of economics and my passionately held value of freedom and
other values of human capability in my explanations of educational influence.
From Yunus I have learnt an inclusional language of
social business. This language and practice of social business is having a
global cultural influence in reducing poverty. It exists in the living
boundaries of cultures of resistance together with the language the economic
rationality that explains social action solely from within a concept of
'capital' (Yunus, 2007, p. 28).
From McGregor I have learnt a language of wellbeing
that includes the individual within the social: Wellbeing is a state of
being with others, where human needs are met, where one can act meaningfully to
pursue one's goals, and where one enjoys a satisfactory quality of life.
(McGregor, 2008)
Each week I enjoy the satisfactions of being with
colleagues and students at the University of Bath, together with Alan Rayner,
in educational conversations that tap into the life-affirming energy of
well-being (see http://www.bath.ac.uk/internal/scr/scr-news.html ). I find
McGregor's language of wellbeing provides me with a focus for this
life-affirming energy.
From Bernstein's (2000) social theory of pedagogy I
have learnt to show an awareness of the dangers of creating a mythological
discourse that could serve to separate conversations about well-being from
conversations that include a recognition of the power relations that are
reproducing unjust social hierarchies:
"This mythological discourse consists of two pairs
of elements which, although having different functions, combine to
reinforce each other. One pair celebrates and attempts to produce a united,
integrated, apparently common national consciousness; the other pair work
together to disconnect hierarchies within the school from a causal relation
with social hierarchies outside the school." (p. xxiii)
By emphasising the generation of living educational
theories of educational influences in learning within the boundaries of
cultures in resistance I am seeking to avoid the creation of a mythological
discourse that becomes disconnected from the hierarchies of power. I am
thinking of the power relations that sustain that polarity of the cultures in
resistance that is resistant to the legitimation and extension of the social
influences of living educational theories. I am thinking of the expression of a
life-affirming energy, in persisting in the face of the pressure of this
resistance, in seeking to extend the educational influences of living
educational theories.
In the development of my living educational theorizing
in my research programme, I have learnt much from the ideas of others. I am
thinking of ideas that have enabled me to understand and develop creative
responses to living in the boundaries of cultures in resistance. My earliest
readings were those of the critical theorist Erich Fromm. I remain influenced
by ideas from his books on The Fear of Freedom (1942), Man For Himself (1947),
The Sane Society (1956), The Art of Loving (1957), The Revolution of Hope
(1968) and To Have or to Be (1979). Fromm's (1942) point where he says that if
a person can face the truth without panic they will realise that there is no
purpose to life other than that which they create for themselves through their
loving relationships and productive work (p.18), remains a vital influence in
my own life.
Habermas is another critical theorist whose ideas have influenced my own. I like his conje