How do I live more fully the values that continue to energise my life-long learning and influence in the education of myself, others and social formations?

Jack Whitehead, Department of Education, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY.

Draft 16 December, 2003

I am writing this to clarify for myself the nature of the embodied values that continue to energise what I do in my educational relationships. I also want my ideas to communicate to you in a way that engages your attention and stimulates a creative response in your own ideas and learning.

The most energising value that I bring into my educational relationships flows from a source outside myself that I do not understand. I can simply affirm my experience of a life-affirming energy that flows through me with the feeling of being included and belonging in the cosmos. The language that gets closest to expressing this experience is the state of being grasped by the power of being itself.  These are the words Paul Tillich (2000), a Christian Theologian, has used to express his meanings. While his meanings are different to my own his words captivated my imagination and enabled me to express my own meaning.

I am grateful to Martin Buber (1970), a Jewish Theologian for the poetic power of his book 'I and Thou' in which he communicated meanings of I-You relationships that continue to inspire and energise me as well as enabling me to understand and describe the embodied value of I-You in my educational relationships.

I also value the meaning and purpose I give to my life in responding to contexts in which I feel my embodied values are denied, violated or not lived as fully as I believe they could be. In seeking to live my values more fully I feel the life-affirming energy of these values in the face of the power and influences that constrain or violate their realisation. I am thinking of my embodied values such as freedom, justice, respect, care, love, democracy, enquiry, learning, life-affirming energy, I-You /inclusional relationships and educational conversation. I value clarity of communication and have benefitted greatly from my two years of part-time study of the philosophy of education at the Institute of Education of the University of London between 1968-1970. I was initiated into a care for the expression of clear meanings in the words we use. I still carry this care with me. Through my study of the truth of poetry and video-tapes of my educational relationships I am also aware of a limitation of words. I am thinking of a limitation in expressing the meanings of embodied values through words whose meanings are only defined in terms of other words without connecting the meanings of the words to lived experience through ostensive definition. I am seeking to overcome this limitation by including the four video-clips below to help me communicate my understandings of inclusionality, educational conversation, enquiry learning, life affirming energy, I-You relationships and the nature of my influence in the education of myself, others and of social formations..

The first clip of 5.00 minutes shows Alan Rayner explaining his ideas of inclusionality and identity within and between living boundaries. It shows Alan explaining the severing of inclusional relationships in terms of ways of knowing and believing that relate to individuals as if they were discrete and independent forms of life.

When I say that I identity with Alan's meanings I would appreciate it if you would question my meanings in terms of the word scepticism of Paul Valery and the idea of communicating meaning through enactment. This is how Michael Hamburger expresses Valery's meanings:

Outside his poetry Valéry, like Hofmannsthal, was a 'word-sceptic'; and the 'word-scepticism' arose from the same awareness of the uniqueness of that which art seeks to express, and the inescapable commonness of words, 'If words could express it,' 'Le Solitaire' says about his own icy habitat:

'…it wouldn't be much. Everything that can be said is nothing. You know what humans do with what can be expressed. All too well. They turn it into a base currency, an instrument of imprecision, a lure, a trap for mastery and exploitation. Reality is absolutely incommunicable. It resembles nothing, signifies nothing; nothing can represent of explain it; it has neither duration nor place in any conceivable order or universe…..'

Like Hofmannsthal and other post-Symbolists, Valéry turned to mixed media - the fusion of words with music, décor, gesture and dance in Amphion and Sémirais, of words with music only in the Narcissus Cantata - out of an aversion to the 'base currency' of words. These media did not describe or relate; they enacted: and Valéry's aversion extended to the epic and descriptive modes: 'What can be recounted cannot count for much!' (Hamburger, 1972,  p.69)

In his enactment of his meanings Alan communicates to me insights about inclusional forms of life that I understand as an embodied value and a living standard that I use in accounts of my own learning and to which I hold myself accountable in both personal and professional contexts.

In the second clip taken in May 2003 of 4.51 minutes, I am tutoring a 'Methods of Educational Enquiry Module' with staff at John Bentley School. I am seeking to engage in an educational conversation that considers the possibility that social science methods have limitations in educational enquiries. In valuing the originality of mind and critical judgement of educational enquiries I am suggesting the use of Marian Dadds' and Susan Hart's approach to methodological inventiveness as an appropriate approach for educational enquiry. To view the clip, click on the photograph:

In this educational context I feel inclusional in both Alan Rayner's sense of being conscious of living boundaries and my own embodied commitment to I-You relationships. I believe that my questions and expression of interest are responded to by others in an educational conversation that is both enquiring and has a pedagogical intent. I am thinking of the pedagogic intent of raising issues about some possible limitations of social science methods in relation to educational enquiry and some advantages in the creation and testing of living educational theories.

The third clip of 60 seconds. shows Gordon Trafford setting the context for a conversation with a colleague, Nick Stanton and three students at John Bentley School on the development of a school document, in the language of students on Values into Practice. To view the clip click on the photograph. This clip sets the scene for the clip that follows which embodies for me many of my insights and judgements about the values and practices that constitute an educational relationship and understanding of educational influence.

 

The fourth clip of 1 minute 30 seconds continues with a discussion around the values issues of pupils waiting outside a room before a lesson and about a teacher waiting for the pupils at the door. I see and feel the inclusive relationship of Gordon Trafford and Nick Stanton as they show an attentive interest in the views of the pupils that are expressed in the process of enquiry. I feel the openness of the pupils in that moment of conviviality at the end of the clip that communicates to me the shared pleasure in being together and the expression of what I refer to as 'life-affirming energy'.. I also hear the engaged contributions of the pupils as their views are taken seriously and included in a draft of Values into Practice.

 

I began my paper with a question, How do my values continue to energise my life-long learning and influence in the education of myself, others and social formations? I am increasingly aware that the expression of my life-affirming energy also flows through me from the embodied values of others. Joan Whitehead introduced me to the phrase 'making the possible probable' (Whitehead, 2003) and I understand much of my work in education in making such educational conversations and expressions of life-affirming energy more probable. I also understand my work in terms of supporting enquiry learning of the quality in the fourth clip where Nick Stanton and Gordon Trafford show their openness to learning from their students. I find it helpful in understanding what I am doing to think of my actions as improving my learning to be, my learning to do, my learning to know and my learning to live with others (Delors, 1996; Walker, 2002; Stoll, Fink & Earl, 2003). I am also continuing, in my educational enquiry, to understand better my educational influence in the learning of others and in the learning of social formations. As I write, on the 16th December, 2003, Saddam Hussein has been captured in Iraq, where the bloodshed continues. My hope for the future of humanity rests in the spreading influence of the values embodied in the fourth video-clip above, where values I can identify with are being lived, together. The web-technology is openning up new possibilities for the development of interconnecting and branching networks of communication. I hope that my own communications in the multi-media section of actionresearch.net serve as a heuristic in your own learning and stimulate a desire to respond in a way that might help me to strengthen my own enquiry and contribution to educational theory. I understand educational theory as a form of dialogue that carries hope for the future of humanity.

 

References

Buber, M. (1970) I and Thou, Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark.

Delors, J, et.al.  (1996) Learning: The Treasure Within – Report to UNESC of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century. Paris: UNESCO.

Hamburger, M. (1972) The Truth of Poetry, Harmondsworth; Penguin Books.

Stoll, L., Fink, D.  & Earl, L. (2003) It’s About Learning (and It’s About time): what’s in it for schools. London; RoutledgeFalmer.

Tillich, P. (2000) The Courage to Be. London; Yale University Press.

Walker, G. (2002) The language of international education in Hayden, M., Thompson, J. & Walker, G. (Ed.) International Education in Practice: dimensions for national and international schools. London; Kogan Page, 2002.

Whitehead, J. (2003) The Future of Teaching and Teaching in the Future: a vision of the future of the profession of teaching. Keynote address to the Annual Conference of the Standing Committee for the Education and Training of Teachers, Dunchurch, 4 Sept. 2003.