Continuing my research programme into the growth of my
educational knowledge
Part Three: Living Inclusionality 2005 – To Death?
Developing the dynamic boundaries of living standards of
judgement in educational enquiries of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am
doing?'
Summary
This third phase of my educational
enquiry into the growth of educational knowledge is focused on the educational
influence of inclusionality in my learning. An analysis of the first two phases (1973-1993; 1993-2004)
has already been published in the October 2005 issue of Action Research
Expeditions at http://www.arexpeditions.montana.edu/articleviewer.php?AID=80
.You might like to contribute your response in the Discuss This Article section
of this e-journal. The analysis of these phases shows the educational influence
of economics, politics, philosophy, sociology, psychology, aesthetics, ethics,
life-affirming energy, being, scientific and educational research
methodologies, compassion, relationships, love and social justice in my account
of my learning. I am calling such accounts of learning, in which individuals
explain this learning in terms of their enquiries into living the values which
give meaning and purpose to their existence, living educational theories.
I think of an educational theory,
following Kilpatrick (1951) in the first issue of Educational Theory, as a form
of dialogue that has profound implications for the future of humanity. This account
is focused on the educational influence of inclusionality in my understanding
of living standards of educational judgement. Through narratives I seek to
communicate an understanding of these standards of judgement as relationally
dynamic boundaries that are being formed between the living educational
theories of practitioner-researchers whose enquiries serve to enhance the flow
of co-created values that carry hope for the future of humanity and for our own
humanity.
Introduction
This presentation is in two Parts.
In Part One I explain
transformations in my thinking and learning as I integrate Rayner's idea of
inclusionality within my living educational theory. The transformations
include, insights about the flow of communications that are opened up through
the interconnecting and branching channels of the internet (Tesson 2003),
insights about i-we human relationships drawn from the African cosmology of
Ubuntu (Murray, 2003), insights about a celtic spirituality of webs of
betweenness (O Donohue, 2003; Farren, 2004) and insights from social theory
that extend my contextualised understandings. In drawing insights from social
theories I do want to emphasise that my living educational theory draws on a
life-affirming cosmological energy and space that comes from a source(s)
outside social practice.
In Part Two I focus on
communicating through visual narratives, inclusional meanings of some living
standards of educational
judgement. These meanings have emerged in a process of co-creation that
involves my understandings of the expression of the originalities of mind and
critical judgements of others in their research enquiries into their own
professional practices. My connection with each enquiry, lasted a minimum of
five years and, in the case of the inclusional meaning of scientific living, scientific enquiry
and methodology, some 40 years. Most accounts have already been accredited by
the University of Bath for either a doctorate or an M.Phil. degree Others are
in the process of writing up their doctoral thesis and in each case I have
supported the enquiry, as a research degree supervisor. Before I present the narratives I want
to say a few words about the significance I attach to each.
Scientific living, enquiry and
scientific methodology
Since my first degree in the
physical sciences (1962-1965) I have been interested in the nature of
scientific enquiry and scientific methodology. The knowledge generated through
science is given high status in many cultures. Because I want educational
knowledge to be highly valued across different cultures I want to be able to
show that the contributions being made to educational knowledge by living
educational theories can be valued
for their inclusion of scientific enquiries and methodology.
Contextualised understandings
Between 1973 and 1985 I conducted
my educational enquiry, 'How do I improve what I am doing?' as if the
understandings of my 'I' were independent of the political, economic and other
social influences of my social context. Experiences of the politics of
knowledge and the disciplinary power of the University moved me to extend my
understandings of contextual influences in the growth of my educational
knowledge. Working with Jackie Delong on her research programme How Can I Improve My Practice As
A Superintendent of Schools and Create My Own Living Educational Theory? transformed my understandings by
introducing me to the significance of understanding one's system's influence in
the creation of a culture of enquiry. A further transformation is now underway
as I learn how to show the co-created nature of an inclusional meaning of
contextualized understanding and explore its significance for the flow of such
meanings through space and along and through the relational dynamic boundaries
of individuals and their social formations.
Originality
of Mind
Every individual who is awarded a doctoral degree by the
University of Bath must have satisfied examiners that the University's criteria
of originality of mind has been met. The reason I value originality of mind so
much is that it seems to me to be a human capability, like learning, that is a
defining characteristic of human existence. It is the quality that prevents me
from saying that I have educated anyone other than myself. I can say that I
have influenced the learning of others. What prevents me from saying that I
have educated someone else is the mediation of an individual's originality of
mind in mediating between what I do and what the other learns. For me to
recognise my educational influence in the learning of another I must be able to
discern that what I do has been mediated through the others' originality of
mind and critical judgement in what they learn.
Critical Judgement
Critical judgement is another criteria that must be met by
those awarded a doctoral degree by the University of Bath. I value critical
judgement because it seems to me to be at human capability, like originality of
mind and learning, that is a defining characteristic of human existence.
Without critical judgement I cannot understand how we could distinguish between
the values that carry hope for the future of humanity and our own humanity and
those that do not. Without critical judgement I cannot see how we could
recognise the errors in our practices, beliefs and values that can evoke the
feelings that something needs improving. The desire to communicate and see
legitimated in the Academy, inclusional meanings of living standards of
judgement, stems from a belief that it will be the exercise of these critical
judgements, in the validation and legitimation of educational knowledge, that
will enhance the flow of life-affirming values in individuals and their social
formations. The narrative below, on the development of inclusional meanings of
critical judgement, is based on the educational influence, in my own learning,
of Paulus Murray's postcolonial critical pedagogy and insights into the
postcolonial values of we-i relationships in the African cosmology of Ubuntu
with its central value of 'a person is a person because of other people'.
Passion for Compassion
The feeling of distress and pity for the suffering or
misfortune of another, together with a desire to alleviate it is what I
understand as the inclusional value of a passion for compassion. Marian Naidoo
has shown, in her doctoral enquiry, how the experience of this embodied values
can be transformed in the process of its lived expression and clarification in
practice, into the inclusional meaning of a living standard of judgement. In
the co-creation of this inclusional meaning as a living standard of judgement
in accounts of my own learning, I feel in an embryonic phase of showing that
the boundaries of my self-identity are becoming more permeable to my passion
for compassion. I am thinking of an enhanced permeability to feelings of
distress and pity for the suffering and misfortune of another. I am thinking of
a permeability that is enhancing the flow of a passion for compassion through the boundaries in a way
that is mobilising in action a desire to alleviate the suffering and
misfortune.
A loving flow of life affirming
energy
The signature to my e-mails reads:
When Martin Dobson, a
colleague, died in 2002 the last thing he said to me
was 'Give my Love to the
Department'. In the 20 years I'd worked with
Martin it was his loving warmth
of humanity that I recall with great life
affirming pleasure and I'm
hoping that in Love Jack we can share this
value of common humanity.
In the co-creation of the
experience of this loving flow of life-affirming energy a couple of days before
Martin died I felt the inclusional flow of this energy between us. I know that
I am connecting the experience of a 'life-affirming energy' with 'loving flow'.
My reason for doing this in an inclusional standard of educational judgement is
that I think both are required in educational relationships. Moira Laidlaw appears to me to express
this loving flow of life-affirming energy in her educational relationships. In
the visual narrative below I show the co-creative meanings of this inclusional
standard, together with my learning from her doctoral research programme, as a
living standard of judgement.
I have also learnt to recognise
love at work through the doctoral programme of Eleanor Lohr.
The practitioner-researchers I
have worked with tell me that they recognise and have felt my expression of a
flow of life-affirming energy as affirming of themselves, their embodied
knowledge and their enquiries. They see that I love what I do in my vocation of
education as I seek to enhance my educational influence in their learning in a way
that helps them to create their own form of life through their educational
enquiry. Hence the vital significance I give to recognising a loving flow of
life-affirming energy as an educational standard of judgement and to enhancing
its flow through the channels and boundaries that influence our own education
and the education of social formations.
Social Justice
A passion for social justice
permeates through the educational enquiries of the practitioner-researchers I
have worked with. They all appeared moved by a desire to help those who are
living and learning in conditions that have been brought about by an unjust
distribution of resources, power and opportunities for education and work.
James Finnegan's question, 'How can love enable justice to see rightly?'
continues to resonate with me and I focus on James' work in the narrative of
social justice. However, in the co-creation of an inclusional standard of
social justice, I see the choices of each practitioner-researcher in their
decisions on where to work and who to help with their learning as an expression
of their embodied values of social justice.
Educational Enquiry
My vested interest in elevating
educational enquiry as an inclusional standard of educational judgement is
related to the human capacity for learning and the importance for the future of
humanity of ensuring that individuals understand their educational influence in
their own learning and in the learning of others. My fascination with enquiry
is because of its focusing on the asking and answering questions in the process
of learning. I have focused my own educational enquiry so far on exploring the
implications for my learning of asking, research and answering questions of the
kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?'
There are many different kinds of question that can count as an
educational enquiry. There are many methodologies associated with the different kinds of question.
My choice of question emerged from my first day as a
teacher in 1967 when I found myself saying to myself, 'I must do this better',
'How do I do this better?' where
'this' referred to what I was doing in influencing the learning of my pupils.
Between 1968-1970 I studied educational theory with philosophers and
psychologists, sociologists and historians at the London Institute of
Education. With the influence of Richard Peters, a philosopher of education,
the students would explore the implications of asking questions of the kind,
'What ought I to do?' The explorations were based on what was known as the
disciplines approach to educational theory in which educational theory was held
to be constituted by the separate disciplines of education. In 1971 I rejected
the assumptions in this approach to educational theory and decided to see if I
could contribute to the reconstruction of educational theory through exploring
the implications of asking, researching and answering questions of the kind,
'how do I improve what I am doing?'
Living Educational Theories
I have based my belief in living a
productive life in education in the faith that the public expression of the
living educational theories of individuals is enhancing the flow of values that
carry hope for the future of humanity as well as my own humanity. The flow of
these ideas through the web-space, with the hope that they will engage the
permeable boundaries of your life, work and identity, is an expression of this
faith. I may be mistaken in this belief and in the belief that the inclusional
values in the living educational theories I am moving into our web-spaces are
values that carry hope for the future of humanity. The spread of the influence
of these theories, values and standards as evidenced in books, conferences and
other web-spaces is a major part of the sustaining of my belief in the
inclusional values and standards of living educational theories.
As I have said, and I think it
bears repeating, my reason for focusing on the meanings of these standards, is
because of my faith that they carry hope for the future of humanity and my own
humanity. The readers I have in mind, as I produce this account, are those who
have some influence in validating and legitimating the standards of judgement
that are used to decide what counts as knowledge in the global Academies of
Higher Education. I believe that a
transformation in the educational standards that are presently used in the
Academy, towards the living standards outlined in this presentation, would do
much to help with the pedagogisation of the living educational theories that
carry hope for the future of humanity.
Much of this paper is related to
my learning from practitioner-researchers, whose research programmes are
related to my productive life in education as a supervisor of research degrees.
You might like to connect to their living theories through the web-space at http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/living.shtml
I see my educational enquiry as a
continuing expression of my desire to contribute to the development of valid
educational theory which can 'stand up' to practical tests in living. I am
thinking of the practical tests described by Paul Hirst, one of the major
proponents of a 'disciplines' approach to educational theory, when he
acknowledged a mistake in his thinking and moved on with the insight that much
understanding of educational theory will be developed in relation to these
tests:
"É 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)
In Phases One and Two of my
enquiry into the growth of my educational knowledge between 1973-2004, I
analysed transformations in the practical principles of my logics, values and
methodologies as I generated explanations for my own learning in enquiries of
the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?' (Whitehead, 2004). In this
present enquiry I see myself working towards a clearer comprehension and
communication of the implications of inclusionality for my research programme
into the growth of my educational knowledge. It took me months to understand the articulated meanings of
Alan Rayner when he talked of a 'relationally dynamic awareness of space and
boundaries' and 'a fully contextualised
understanding of self-identity'. Because
of this I am wondering if it would be helpful to my communication of these
meanings to first show you the video-clip of Alan Rayner expressing his
meanings of inclusionality through an illustration of what happens in the
experience of severance from inclusionality. Others who have seen the clip have
commented on how helpful they found it in developing their own understandings of
inclusionality.
My desire to communicate the
meanings of a 'relationally dynamic awareness of space and boundaries' and
'fully contextualised understanding' in the following paragraphs is grounded in
the feelings of value and significance that accompanied the transformation in
my thinking as I felt the emergence of my intuitive understandings of
inclusionality in this experience of Alan Rayner's communication:
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/rayner1sor.mov
(a 39 Mb clip)
In my experience of Alan's
communication, a communication I experienced with Paulus Murray, I felt the
emergence of a new understanding of space and boundaries that resonated with
Rayner's (2004) articulation that they are connective, reflexive and
co-creative. Through further reading of Rayner's ideas on inclusionality I
shared his view of a complex self as meaning a fully contextualized
understanding of self-identity. I need to give further thought to his idea of
complex self before I feel clear that I have fully understood his idea that a
complex self forms with the reciprocal coupling of inner and outer spatial
domains through an intermediary self-boundary.
My reason for focusing on the
dynamic boundaries of the meanings of living standards of educational judgement
is because of their role in the validation and legitimation of the claims to
educational knowledge that are made from within different perspectives as to
what counts as educational theory. As I write this I am aware of the different
way, to my own, in which Erica Holley writes about inclusionality and which
resonates with a point Peter Mellett highlighted from the 1993 obituary for
John Wisdom which emphasises the priority of 'mother's method' over 'father's
method':
(Wisdom) argues for the
fundamental character of the particular case in all forms of reasoning, such as
a mother refers to in explaining things to her child. He argues for the
priority of "mother's method" over "father's", where the
father resorts to general principles in his explanations. It is the mother who
has to come to the rescue when the child asks for an explanation of the
father's general principles - what they mean and why the child should believe
them.
Here is Erica Holley's perspective
on inclusionality in educational and social relationships with a comment on the
inclusional nature of our educational relationship that I find most affirming
and pleasurable to read:
"I have tried to
understand this word 'inclusionality' but am finding it hard. And what is this
' inclusional meaning of living standards of judgement'? I would not wish to
disappoint you with my limited understanding but I have always found that
debate inpenetrable.
I do know what I'd like
inclusion to involve - and it's the way you work with me ( and I know with many
others).You offer acceptance of me for what I am and push at the boundaries of
what I could become.You accept ideas, puzzlement and confusion from me as part
of a process of me coming to understand but the understanding reached seems
always a new understanding for us both. I think I've
seen our work as collaborative
parallelism ( I made that phrase up!)
As an aside, I saw a TV
programme last night of an English explorer in New Guinea who spent some time
with a tribe who were accepting of cannablism. What was intriguing was the way
two of the men in the tribe and the explorer communicated/ explored their
relationship through touch, laughter and a genuine desire to share and
understand their humanity – the generosity, care and acceptance of each
other was fascinating. Although they were often without an interpreter they
showed understanding through loud chanting, dancing, laughing, teasing, sharing
and hugging. They showed an
acceptance of each other and a delight in coming to know each other. Perhaps
inclusion could also mean understanding what binds us while accepting what
separates us. But does it depend on good intent/ shared values?" (e-mail 18/01/05)
My learning is being transformed
through the practice and understanding of inclusionality, in my educational
relationships, Hence I am focusing my research programme on my learning the
inclusional meanings of the living standards of judgement that are flowing in
the labyrinthine channels and boundaries of personal and professional
communication, through texts and the internet. In this generative and
transformatory third phase of my educational enquiry I want to show how my
learning has been influenced through connecting the following ideas:
i)
of Alan Rayner on inclusionality
ii)
of Karen Tesson on flow-form
and interconnecting and branching channels and boundaries of communication,
iii)
of Margaret Farren on the
spiritual connections in webs of betweenness
iv)
of Paulus Murray in the practice of his postcolonial critical
pedagogy and insights on the postcolonial value of we-i relationships in the
African cosmology of Ubuntu.
In Part Two I will explore my
learning in my educational relationships with the above ideas in mind. I am
thinking of my learning as I express and clarify some inclusional meanings of
the living standards of educational judgement of scientific living, scientific enquiry methodology,
originality of mind, critical judgement, contextual understanding, love and
life affirming energy. I am hopeful that these living standards will resonate
with the interests of those who: value a scientific approach to educational
enquiry; recognise the criteria of originality of mind and critical judgement
in the validation and legitimation processes of doctoral research programmes in
the Academy; value social theory in contextual understandings of social
practices; value their experience of a cosmological flow of life-affirming
energy; are open to the energising and creative power of loving relationships
in education.
I intend to communicate these
inclusional meanings through narratives of the educational influence in my
learning of working with Erica Holley, Paul Roberts, Paulus Murray, Kevin
Eames, Jackie Delong, Peggy Leong, Robyn Pound, Mary Hartog, Moira Laidlaw,
Eleanor Lohr, James Finnegan, Ben Cunningham, Ram Punia, Alon Serper, Marian
Naidoo. These
practitioner-researchers, along with others, have influenced my own learning as
I have worked in my educational relationships to support them in enhancing
their own educational influence in their own learning. I tend to stress the
importance of educational influence in learning, because I believe that we
cannot help learning. For me, the vital issue for humanity is to ensure that
the learning is focused on enhancing the flow of values that carry hope for the
future of humanity. I am including within these values their expression in the
living standards of critical judgement that include commitments to social
justice and compassion.
Part One
i) Alan Rayner on
Inclusionality
The conversation that is focusing
my enquiry into the implications of inclusionality for my understanding of
these living standards of judgement is one between Alan Rayner and Ted Lumley
(2005). Ted's use of 'i' in place of my normal use of 'I' is significant in the
development of my understanding of the nature of 'we-i' relationships in the
postcolonial values and theorising that characterise my inclusional meaning of
'being critical' described below.
"Alan - There is a process
of explicit cognition involved in understanding that space and boundaries are
necessarily connective, reflective and co-creative, rather than divisive, in a
dynamic, heterogeneous Universe. And this explicit cognition can undermine the
absolute closure (rather than relative opening and closing) imposed by rationalistic
thought, hence opening up the possibilities for relating with the
ever-transforming shape of the space of the now."
Ted - Òi would see this
more as relational intuition, rather than explicit cognition. i don't
know about you, but everytime i write about inclusionality, i cannot do it from
explicit foundations but must continually ask myself whether what i've written
'feels right'.Ó (e-mail 8 January 2005)
What I am seeking to do in this
presentation is to see if I can communicate my meanings of living standards of
judgement that have formed in the flow of the conscious boundaries of my
educational relationships. Their formation involved both the 'felt
rightness' of relational intuitions and their explicit cognition in narratives
of Part Two. By placing this account in the web-space of the internet, these
meanings are now flowing through the labrythine channels and boundaries of
communication of the internet and accessible to all who have the technology to
connect with this flow. I see this flow as open to your intersubjective
agreement, criticism, rejection or amendment and hence part of a validation
process which can help to establish the legitimacy of such standards of
judgement in the Academy and in the flow of our lives as global and environmental
citizens.
To communicate my meanings of the
living standards of judgement flowing with and through the conscious boundaries
of educational relationships, I think you will need to understand the meanings
of 'flow-form interconnecting and branching labyrinthine channels of
communication'.
ii) Karen Tesson on flow-forms
and interconnecting and branching channels and boundaries of communication
I have drawn my meanings of
'interconnecting and branching channels' and 'flow forms' from the work of
Karen Tesson. While the references to biological and geological images below
may feel strange in research that is concerned with the values of humanity, I
am writing from the perspective of a materialist 'I' who recognises his
connection to biological and geological powers in the cosmos as well as to
social influences in his social practices within his local context.
My understanding of inclusionality
in relation to the flow-forms of interconnecting and branching networks of
communication was moved on by Karen Tesson's diagram of the interconnecting and
branching channels of communication opened up by the tubular channels of
connection between tubular structures in anastomosis in fungi. I have added
some spaces to the closed lines in the second diagram to emphasise the relative
permeabilities of the boundaries.
The first image began the
transformation of my understanding of communications through the internet. From
thinking of such communications as following linear pathways it moved to seeing
an interconnecting and branching labyrinth of channels and boundaries of
communication. The geological image below serves as a metaphor for
understanding flow-forms spaces and boundaries in relation to living standards
of judgement. The flow of water, with the boundaries of the sand is forming
patterns.
This second image which
illustrates a flow-form was provided to me by Maggie Farren:
I am seeing the water as flows of
communication of living standards of judgement.
These judgements include both
relational intuitions and their explicit meanings. In Part Two I will be
claiming that such inclusional meanings of living standards of judgement can be
expressively distinguished in intuitive and explicit communications through narrative.
The narratives focus on the practical activities which clarified inclusional
meanings of, scientific enquiry, contextual understandings, originality of
mind, critical judgement, a loving flow-form of life-affirming energy,
compassion, social justice and educational enquiry, in the course of their
emergence in practices of educational enquiry.
My choice of narratives was
influenced by the intuition that demonstrating the possibility of
intersubjective agreement about these inclusional meanings from ostensive
definitions would be a significant contribution to a new epistemology for a new
scholarship of educational enquiry.
iii) Margaret Farren on the
spiritual connections in webs of betweenness
In her doctoral research Margaret
Farren introduced me to O'
Donohue's (2003) idea of a web of betweenness
In the intuitive world-view of the Celtic Imagination, the web of belonging still continued to hold a person, especially when times were bleak. In Catholic theology, there is a teaching reminiscent of this. It has to do with the validity and wholesomeness of the sacraments. In a case where the minister of the sacrament is unworthy, the sacrament still continues to be real and effective because the community of believes supplies the deficit. It is called the ex-opere-operato principle. From the adjacent abundance of grace, the Church fills out what is absent in the unworthiness of the celebrant. Within the embrace of folk culture, the web of belonging supplied similar secrete psychic and spiritual shelter to the individual. This is one of the deepest poverties in our times. That whole 'web of 'betweenness' seems to be unravelling. It is rarely acknowledged any more, but that does not mean that it has ceased to exist. The 'web of betweenness' is still there but in order to become a presence again, it needs to be invoked. As in the rainforest. A dazzling diversity of life-forms complement and sustain each other. There is secret oxygen with which we unknowingly sustain one another. True community is not produced;. It is invoked and awakened. True community is an ideal where the full identities of awakened and realized individuals challenge and complement each other. In this sense individuality and originality enrich self and others. (Donohue, 2003, pp. 132-133)
In seeing video-clips of Farren's
educational relationships in validation conversations with her students I could
feel and recognise such qualities in a web of betweenness. Not having any
theistic tendencies myself, or rather I should say that I have a resistance to
accepting any theistic tendency to submit to any unitary view of life involving
a God, I wondered about the spirituality in my own web of betweenness. The
image I use to communicate my own understanding is the courtyard in Nusa Dua in
Bali outside the five churches and temples that are side by side:
A synagogue added to the buildings
would help to make my point. My image of my web of betweenness is that of being
joined in the courtyard by others who wish to share their own sense of humanity
as they enquire into their own lives and learning. The picture I have in mind
of the divisiveness of different religions is that to worship their God within
their religious order each group leaves the courtyard in which I am expressing
my web of betweenness to enter their separate buildings and to express their
own form of worship of their own deity. I live in the hope, faith and
experience of the researchers I have worked with the faith that it is possible
to find a way of recognising and celebrating each others' humanity within a web
of betweenness that can be recognised by all. I am thinking of a recognition of
a shared humanity that does not require an act of worship to any deity. I am
thinking of a recognition of a shared humanity that can embrace a tolerance of
different acts of faith while resisting their severing practices for
individuals who do not share their faith in God.
Ram Punia (2004) in his thesis on
the making of an international educator with spiritual values provides me with
evidence that supports my faith in the possibility of this recognition. I can
bear witness to this recognition in the 6 years of my supervision of his
doctoral programme at:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/punia.shtml
Chapter Ten of his thesis on, 'My
Epistemology of Practice as a Consultant and an Emergent Living Educational
Theory' is the best illustration of his
writing that I experience as inclusive of the values of my own humanity. http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/punia/10.pdf
The educational enquiries of Je
Kan Adler-Collins have provided me with further evidence to support my faith in
the possibility of sharing a recognition that hope for the future of humanity
rests in human relationships that transcend the severed connections between
theistic religions. In my relationship with him, throughout our collaborations
that form part of my supervision of his masters and doctoral research
programmes, I have felt my humanity embraced in the outer courtyard without any
feeling of severance as he moved between his Buddhist communities in an inner
courtyard and his relationship with me. We both presented papers to the BERA
2004 Symposium "How are we contributing to a new scholarship of educational
enquiry through our pedagogisation of postcolonial living educational theories
in the Academy?" (UMIST, Manchester, 16
September, 2004 – see http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw//bera04/bera2all.htm)
The intellectual integrity with
which Je Kan faces contradictions in his own experience and his passion for
scholarship continues to inspire my hope that it is possible to recognise a
shared humanity that transcends any theistic submission in an act of worship.
You may see some of this evidence in his paper to the BERA 2004 Symposium on:
"What am I learning as I
research my life in Higher Education as a healing nurse, researcher and Shingon
Buddhist priest, and as I pedagogise a curriculum for healing nurses? Weaving the webs of consciousness". http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw//bera04/jacbera04.htm
Paulus Murray also contributed a
paper to this Symposium with a focus on postcolonial theory.
iv) Paulus Murray's practice of his postcolonial critical
pedagogy and my insights on the postcolonial value of we-i relationships in the
African cosmology of Ubuntu.
All I wish to do here, because I
explain the educational influence of Paulus Murray's postcolonial critical
pedagogy in Part 11, is to acknowledge this influence as I extend my
understandings, of the significance of Martin Buber's I-You relationship for my
educational relationships, into the we-i relationships of the meaning of Ubuntu
in 'A person is a person because of other people.' (see Paulus Murray's website
at http://www.royagcol.ac.uk/~paul_murray/Sub_Pages/FurtherInformation.htm)
I now want to present the
narratives which carry my inclusional understandings of the living standards of
judgement of scientific enquiry, contextual understanding, originality of mind,
critical judgement, compassion, a loving flow of life-affirming energy,
educational enquiry and living educational theories.
PART TWO
1) Can a flow-form of scientific living and
enquiry into educational influence in educational relationships be
distinguished as a living standard of judgement in educational research.
My meanings of scientific living and enquiry
have been influenced by my first degree in physical sciences where scientific
experiments were conducted using controlled experimental designs to detect the
causal influence of one variable on another. I conducted such experiments and
understood their significance in the testing of the validity of scientific
theories through the generation and testing of hypotheses from a theory. The
understanding of a scientific theory in my first degree programme was that it
was constituted by a set of determinate relationships between a set of
variables in terms of which a fairly extensive set of regularities could be
explained.
My meanings have also been
influenced by Karl Popper's understandings of the logic of scientific discovery
as involving problem formulation, a tentative theory, error elimination and the
reformulation of a problem. They have been influenced by Peter Medawar's point
that the biggest defect of Popper's hypothetic-deductive system for the growth
of scientific knowledge was its explicit disavowal of any competence to speak
of the creative acts in a scientific enquiry. For Medawar, as a nobel prize
winning scientist, the intuitive leaps of imagination were a necessary part of
his scientific enquiry.
My meanings have also been
influenced by John Dewey's logic of inquiry which resonated with my own
experience that I consciously experienced concerns or problems when my values
were not lived fully in my practice, I imagined ways forward in action plans, acted
on these and gathered data with which to make a judgement on my effectiveness,
I evaluated my actions in relation to my values and understandings and modified
my concerns, plans and actions in the light of my evaluations. I first pedagogised this idea,
as a form of scientific living, in 1968 in an elective programme I called Scientific Living, at Loughton College of Further Education. I imagine that you will recognise
that you have worked at resolving difficulties, concerns and problems in a similar way. By this I mean that you will have expressed
concerns when you feel your values being denied in practice. This tension or living contradiction will stimulate your imagination to think
of ways of moving towards a fuller realisation of your values. You will form an action plan and act on it, probably intuitively gathering data as you live with
which to make a judgement on the effectiveness of your actions. If you still feel that there is more to do in living your values more fully, you will modify
your concerns, ideas and actions in the light of your evaluations. What transforms this experience of scientific living into research is an account of your learning in which you explain your learning
and engage in a public conversation or correspondence to evaluate the validity of your claims.
I first explicated this form of my
understanding of scientific living and enquiry as a form of educational action research in which 'I' exists as a living
contradiction in 1976 as I worked with a group of 6 teachers over two years to
see if we could develop enquiry learning with 11-14 year old pupils in their
science lessons (Whitehead, 1976). While it isn't necessary to access this for
my present purpose if you are interested in the evidence of my first
articulation of action-reflection cycles in my own educational research and explanations of educational influence you can
access it at:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/writings/ilmagall.pdf
(It will take several
minutes to download with broadband and open as a PDF file)
What I am interested in here, is
whether it will help the flow of values that carry hope for the future of
humanity to validate and legitimate a living standard of judgement to
distinguish an inclusional meaning of scientific living and enquiry. The first stage in
this process is to see if I can distinguish and communicate an inclusional
meaning of scientific enquiry as a methodology and living standard of judgement
in an educational enquiry.
During 1971 a major transformation
in my understanding of scientific enquiry in the generation and testing of
educational theory occurred. Working towards my masters degree in the
psychology of education I was researching what I called a preliminary
investigation of the process through which adolescents acquired scientific
understanding. As I was using a controlled experimental design with pupils
randomly allocated to different groups so that I could see if I could detect
the educational influence of using guided discovery or enquiry learning in
pupils' learning and also studying the mathematization of psychological space
in Kelly's Personal Construct Theory and Lazersfeld Latent Structure Theory of
Attitudes, I began to reject the assumption in my educational theory that it
was constituted by disciplines of education such as the philosophy, psychology,
sociology and history of education. I could see that non of these disciplines
either individually or collectively could answer my question, 'How do I help my
pupils to improve their scientific understandings?'
The problem for me seemed to rest
in my conception of educational theory and scientific enquiry. I needed to
develop a different approach to educational theory to the one that claimed that
it was constituted by the conceptual frameworks of disciplines such as
philosophy, sociology, psychology and history. I felt that I needed an
educational theory that was consciously emerging from educational practice. I
was helped by ideas in Michael Polanyi's personal knowledge to articulate the
new base in consciousness for the creation of my educational theory and
approach to scientific enquiry. I am thinking particularly of the decision to
understand the world from one's own point of view as a person claiming
originality and exercising judgement with universal intent.
Another event which helped to
transform my understanding of both educational theory and scientific enquiry
was being given a video-camera by the Inspectorate in Barking in London, to
explore its potential. Looking at video-tapes of my classroom startled me with
the revelation that I was existing as a living contradiction in believing that
I had accomplished certain things in my classroom with video evidence that I
had not accomplished what I thought I had. This experience that I felt as a
living contradiction moved me towards developing my understanding of dialectics
as a form of scientific enquiry because contradiction is at the nucleus of
dialectics. I know that for those, like Popper, who believe that dialectical
forms of theorising are entirely useless as theory because of their embrace of
contradiction, that they can use two logical laws of inference to demonstrate
that anything that contains a contradiction is entirely useless as a theory.
Using these two laws of inference any statement can be demonstrated to be true
- even ones that are known to be false - once contradictions between statements
are accepted as true.
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' (Popper, 1963,
p.316).
In developing my dialectical view
of a scientific enquiry in my educational research I embraced contradiction in
the sense that in my question, 'how do I improve what I am doing?', I existed
as a living contradiction in my embodied experience. This consciously
stimulated my imagination to move towards the realisation of some values rather
than others, for example freedom in preference to oppression and justice in
preference to injustice. By 1980 I could understand the significance of the
question asked by the Soviet logician Eward Ilyenkov , 'If an object exists as
a living contradiction what must the thought be that expresses it?'. My present
understanding of the history of dialectics follows Ilyenkov's analysis.
Developing this dialectical approach
to a scientific enquiry in my educational research helped me to clarify the
meanings of embodied values in the course of their emergence in my educational
enquiry. Using the dialectics of asking questions, expressing concerns,
imagining action plans, acting and gather data, evaluating action in relation
to values and understanding, modifying concerns plans and action and submitting
accounts of my learning in the educational enquiry to the mutual rational
controls of public criticism, I felt confident that I could show how embodied
values could be transformed into living and communicable standards of judgement
in the course of their emergence and clarification in practice. I think that I
achieved this in relation to the embodied value of academic freedom in my 1993
text on the growth of educational knowledge (http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/writings/jwgek93.htm
)
I set out the evidence for my
claim to have revealed a new scientific approach for educational enquiry in my
doctoral thesis:
How do I improve my practice?:
Creating a discipline of education through educational enquiry. (Whitehead,
1999 – Retrieved 20 January 2005 from http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/writings/phdok.pdf
- see also http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/jack.shtml
)
In the Abstract of this thesis I
set out my claims to educational knowledge:
This thesis shows how living
educational standards of originality of mind and critical judgement in
educational enquiries has created a discipline of education.
The meanings of these standards
emerged from an analysis of my research published between 1977-1999. The analysis
proceeds from the base of my experience of myself, my I, as a living
contradiction in the question, How do I improve this process of education here?
An educational methodology,
which includes I as a living contradiction, emerges from the application of a
four-fold classification of methodologies of the social sciences. Then the idea
of living educational theories emerges in terms of the descriptions and
explanations which individual learners produce for their own educational
development.
A logic of the question, How do
I improve my practice?, emerges from my engagement with the ideas of others and
from an exploration of the question in the practical contradictions between the
power of truth and the truth of power in my workplace.
A discipline of education, with
its standards of originality of mind and critical judgement, is defined and
extended into my educative influences as a professional educator in the
enquiry, How do I help you to improve your learning?.
My living educational theory
continues to develop in the enquiry , How do I live my values more fully in my
practice?. I explain my present practice in terms of an evaluation of my past
learning, in terms of my present experiences of spiritual, aesthetic and
ethical contradictions in my educative relations and in terms of my proposals
for living my values more fully in the future. (http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/jack.shtml
)
The thesis analysed the movement
in my understanding as I used four different social science methodologies of
the analytic scientist, conceptual theorist, conceptual humanist and particular
humanist (Mitroff and Kilman, 1978) in my educational enquiry, 'How do I
improve what I am doing?' In order
to explore some of the implications of asking, researching and answering this
question I found that I needed to develop a fifth methodological approach that
could be used to explain the transformations in my enquiry as I moved through
the other four approaches.
The present transformation into my
inclusional understanding of scientific enquiry in my educational enquiry is
closely related to the influence of Alan Rayner and Karen Tesson. I am thinking
particularly of the educational influence of their ideas in my learning about
inclusionality that I described in the first section of the paper. As I develop
my inclusional understanding of a scientific enquiry I am retaining the
Popperian Schema for the growth of scientific knowledge and Dewey's logic of
inquiry in my transforming understanding in my educational enquiry into
inclusional scientific enquiry.
The inclusionality I have in mind
is in the expression of the relational dynamics of experiencing concerns when
values are not being lived as fully as seems possible, of imagining ways
forward in an action plan, acting on the plan and gathering data on which to
make a judgement of accomplishment, evaluating one's actions and
accomplishments in terms of one's values, modifying concerns, ideas and actions
in the light of the evaluations, sharing accounts of one's learning in a
process of democratic evaluation of the validity of the account.
My transforming understanding is
connected with my identity in terms of being a complex self who can demonstrate
that his learning is extending his contextualized understanding of
self-identity as being formed with the reciprocal coupling of inner and outer
spatial domains through an intermediary self-boundary that engages with
artefacts in space. In my life I engage with such boundaries in my life as I
move between social practices in home, work, the schools I visit, the people I
work with, the university which pays me and the conferences at which I present
my papers and hear the presentations of others.
Because of the importance of such
contextualized understandings in the growth of my educational knowledge I want
to consider the possibility of reaching an intersubjective agreement on
contextual understanding in learning as a living standard of judgement.
2) Can a flow-form of
contextual understanding in learning be distinguished as a living standard of
judgement in both the education of a complex self and the education of a social
formation.
The context of my answer is in my
educational relationship with Jackie Delong as I work in doctoral supervision
sessions with her to clarify the nature of her thesis as it is being expressed
in draft abstracts of her thesis.
You can access a previously
published account of my educational influence in these supervision sessions at:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw//multimedia/jimenomov/JIMEW98.html
The video-clip at http://www.bath.ac.uk/multimedia/jimenomov/ajwsys.mov
is of a doctoral supervision in which I am
seeking to support Jackie in her submission of a thesis that expresses her
originality of mind and critical judgement. These are two of the standards of
judgement used by examiners of doctoral theses in the Universiy of Bath. In
Jackie's research these standards of judgement are related in an enquiry that
includes an explanation of her 'system's influence' as a Superintendent of
Schools. 'System's influence' is in Jackie's professional practice and research
as one of her standards of judgement. This system's influence was recognised in
an award for her leadership in action research by the Ontario Educational
Research Council in December 2000.
Hence I am working, in the
conversation, to enhance the clarity of a draft abstract in its communication
of originality of mind and critical judgement in relation to 'system's
influence'. I am also focusing on 'system's influence' because of a criticism
made by Susan Noffke, about a limitation she perceived in the lack of capacity
of theories generated from self-study to address:
""social issues in terms
of the interconnections between personal identity and the claim of experiential
knowledge, as well as power and privilege in society (Dolby, 1995; Noffke,
1991). The process of personal transformation through the examination of
practice and self-reflection may be a necessary part of social change,
especially in education; it is however, not sufficient." ( Noffke, 1997, p. 329)"
By focusing on 'system's
influence' in the context of social change and the development of cultures of
inquiry I believe that the theories of practitioner-researchers provide the
evidence to show that Noffke is mistaken as they learn to develop their own
inclusional meanings in the development of their contextual understandings.
The two drafts of the Abstract
were produced within 5 days of each other. I have placed them together so that
you may get a clearer understanding of the differences between them in the
clarity with which they express the precise nature of the claims to originality
of mind and critical judgement in relation to 'system's influence'. On reading
the first draft I could not see clearly the precise nature of the claims to
originality of mind and critical judgement in relation to 'systems influence'.
The second draft makes this influence explicit and the final abstract shows the
development of Jackie's contextualised understand in the creation of a culture
of inquiry. The final abstract and full thesis on 'How can I improve my
practice as a superintendent of schools and create my own living educational
theory?' can be accessed at http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/delong.shtml
First Draft of the Abstract
This thesis is a journey of
professional learning, reinvention and self-discovery through research-based
professionalism in asking the question, 'How do I improve my practice as a
superintendent of schools in a southern Ontario school district?' It represents
and demonstrates my originality of mind and critical judgment as I describe and
explain my living standards of practice for which I hold myself accountable.
The values that I am
articulating are grounded in my practice, in what I know from reading and
dialogue, from experience and from reflecting on that experience. Through
writing about my values that emerge in my practice, I am able to construct and
deconstruct the transformation that has taken place over the six years of the
research and to understand what has moved me forward.
Through narrative and
image-based research I describe and explain the birth and growth of an action
research movement in a school system that is restructuring amidst the negative
pressures of market policies.
I offer my story as my own
living theory of my educative influence as an educational leader and insider
researcher living in turbulent times - 1995-2001, not as a model or exemplar. I
do, however, want to encourage professional educators to consider the process
of practitioner action research as a means to self-assessment, renewal and
professional development
Second Draft of the Abstract
This thesis is my own living
theory of my learning about my educative influence as a superintendent of
schools, an educational leader and insider researcher living in turbulent times
- 1995-2001. It is a journey of professional learning and self-discovery
through research-based professionalism as I ask, research and answer the
question, 'How can I improve my practice as a superintendent of schools in a
southern Ontario school district?'
It represents and demonstrates
my originality of mind and critical judgement as I describe and explain my
living standards of practice that can be understood through my values for which
I hold myself accountable. My originality of mind is being expressed through
narrative and image-based form of communication in which I describe and explain
stories of myself, a self—discovery of my need for internal and external
dialogue, of how I hold together continuously in a living, dynamic way, a
plurality of actions. I describe and explain my work in my many portfolios
including the birth and growth of an action research movement in a school
system that is restructuring amidst the impact of economic rationalist
policies.
This thesis focuses my critical
judgements on the clarification and use of the values that have emerged in my
practice as I am able to construct and deconstruct the transformations that
have taken place over the six years of the research and to understand what has
moved me forward. The meaning of those values that I am articulating are
grounded in my practice and constitute my living standards of practice and
judgement in my explanations. They emerge through reading, dialogue and
reflection on my experience as I account for myself in my practice by ever
moving forward while holding on to the sanctity of personal relationships and
democratic evaluation within a hierarchical system and power relations.
Here is the video-clip again, and
a transcript of the conversation. I want to focus on the additional meanings
which the visual record can communicate about the nature of our embodied values
that we are using and transforming into our educational standards of practice
and judgement.
(http://www.bath.ac.uk/multimedia/jimenomov/ajwsys.mov )
Jack to show how I am
encouraging and supporting you, to make explicit in a way that is publicly
shareable your own understanding of your standard of practice as a
superintendent which is related to your system's influence.
Jackie ..there is a big
emphasis on relationships and connections. That's a common standard that runs
through almost everything I do - if I can see a way of helping people or ideas
or systems to connect I think it creates a more effective system to support
student learning. If you've got people or systems going in different directions
it is wasting the talent and the energy the other thing is that when I see
people who can carry something forward I try to pull all the supports
behindthem so that they can do that. That's two pieces of it. It doesn't
capture it all but it captures two pieces of — And my need to see things
always getting better
I want to focus both on the
embodied value of her contexualised understanding in Jackie's non-verbal
expressions as well as her statements about her 'system's influence'.
I am thinking of the embodied
values Jackie is expressing non-verbally when she is saying
i) if I can see a way of helping people or ideas or systems
to connect I think it creates a more effective system to support student
learning.
ii) when I see people who can
carry something forward I try to pull all the supports behind them so that they
can do that.
My own perception is that Jackie
is expressing passionately both her life-affirming energy and contextualised
understanding.
In her thesis Jackie writes about
the importance for extending her system's influence of supporting people, who
she believes have the talent, energy and commitment to improve student learning
in the development of a culture of inquiry. To understand what Jackie is
meaning by her value of pulling all the supports behind them it is necessary to
experience the sustained and inclusional commitment she expresses over time in
the organisation of this support. This in turn rests on her passion to improve
learning with students. The final abstract for the thesis emphasises the
importance of the development of a culture of enquiry in a further development
of contexualised understanding.
Abstract of successful
PhD Submission 2002
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?'
Out of this philosophy emerges
my belief that the professional development of each teacher rests in their own
knowledge-creating capacities as they examine their own practice in helping
their students to improve their learning. In creating my own educational theory
and supporting teachers in creating theirs, we engage with and use insights
from the theories of others in the process of improving student learning.
The originality of the
contribution of this thesis to the academic and professional knowledge-base of
education is in the systematic way I transform my embodied educational values
into educational standards of practice and judgement in the creation of my
living educational theory. In the thesis I demonstrate how these values and
standards can be used critically both to test the validity of my
knowledge-claims and to be a powerful motivator in my living educational
inquiry.
The values and standards are
defined in terms of valuing the other in my professional practice, building a
culture of inquiry, reflection and scholarship and creating knowledge.
3) Can a flow-form of
originality of mind in learning be distinguished as a living standard of
judgement in an individual's education.
The examiners of doctoral theses
of the University of Bath are required to judge the work in terms of
originality of mind and critical judgement, extent and merit of the work and
matter worthy of publication. In this section of my paper I am focusing on
originality of mind. Evidence that living theory theses have met the criteria
of originality of mind for doctoral research at the University of Bath is in
the living theory space at:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/living.shtml
My understandings of both
originality and influence have been influenced by the work of Edward Said where
he draws on the work of Valery to make the points:
"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.
It often happens that the work acquires a singular value
in the other mind, leading to active consequences that are impossible to
foresee and in many cases will never be possible to ascertain. What we do know
is that this derived activity is essential to intellectual production of all
types. Whether in science or in the arts, if we look for the source of an
achievement we can observe that what a man does either repeats or refutes what
someone else has done – repeats it in other tones, refines or amplifies
or simplifies it, loads or overloads it with meaning; or else rebuts,
overturns, destroys and denies it, but thereby assumes it and has invisibly
used it. Opposites are born from opposites.
We say that an author is original when we cannot trace the
hidden transformations that others underwent in his mind; we mean to say that
the dependence on what he does on what others have done is excessively complex
and irregular. There are works in the likeness of others, and works that are
the reverse of others, but there are also works of which the relation with
earlier productions is so intricate that we become confused and attribute them
to the direct intervention of the gods. (Paul
Valery, 'Letter about Mallarme', in Leonardo, Poe, Mallarme, trans. Malcolm
Cowley and James R. Lawler (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), p.
241.
Valery converts 'influence' from a crude idea of the weight of one writer coming down in the work of another into a universal principle of what he calls 'derived achievement'. He then connects this concept with a complex process of repetition that illustrates it by multiplying instances; this has the effect of providing a sort of wide intellectual space, a type of discursiveness in which to examine influence. Repetition, refinement, amplification, loading, overloading, rebuttal, overturning, destruction, denial, invisible use – such concepts completely modify a linear (vulgar) idea of 'influence' into an open field of possibility. Valery is careful to admit that chance and ignorance play important roles in this field; what we cannot see or find, as well as what we cannot predict, he says, produce excessive irregularity and complexity. Thus the limits of the field of investigation are set by examples whose nonconforming, overflowing energy begins to carry them out of the field. This is an extremely important refinement in Valery's writing. For even as his writing holds in the wide system of variously dispersed relationships connecting writers with one another, he also shows how at its limits the field gives forth other relations that are hard to describe from within the field. " (Said, 1997, p.15)
Each of the living theory theses
at http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/living.shtml
shows a flow-form of originality of mind in the unique constellation of
embodied values that are clarified in the course of their emergence in the
practice of enquiry. I am seeing the flow-form of the originalities of mind in
the processes of forming theses that clarify and communicate, with language,
how a unique constellation of embodied values are transformed into living
standards of judgement that can be used to evaluate the validity of the claims
to knowledge in a thesis.
For illustration take Erica
Holley's M.Phil. account, How do I as a teacher-researcher contribute to the
development of a living educational theory through an exploration of my values
in my professional practice?, at
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/erica.shtml
This is what Holley says in the
Abstract of her thesis:
My thesis is a description and
explanation of my life as a teacher and researcher in an 11 to 16 comprehensive
school in Swindon from 1990 to 1996. I claim that it is a contribution to
educational knowledge and educational research methodology through the
understanding it shows of the form, meaning and values in my living educational
theory as an individual practitioner as I researched my question,
How do I improve what I am doing
in my professional practice ?
With its focus on the
development of the meanings of my educational values and educational knowledge
in my professional practice I intend this thesis to show the integration of the
educational processes of transforming myself by my own knowledge and the
knowledge of others and of transforming my educational knowledge through action
and reflection. I also intend the thesis to be a contribution to debates about
the use of values as being living standards of judgment in educational
research.
The flow-form of Holley's
originality of mind can be appreciated as she creates the form of the contents
of her thesis in accounting for herself and her learning in her educational
relationships with an individual pupil, a class, a colleague, school and
national policies:
Introduction
Chapter 1. My values and where
they come from.
Chapter 2. What is educational
research? What is good quality educational research?
Chapter 3. How my research
started and how I reformulated my initial question.
Chapter 4. I can speak for
myself. My account of working with Poppy and how I struggled to come to terms
with what I saw as academic accounts of teaching?
Chapter 5. 'Accounting for
myself' - a description of my work with a whole class and an attempt to explain
what I mean by accountability.
Chapter 6. 'Accounting for my
work' - a description and explanation of what went on in the appraisal I did
with a member of my department and how it conflicted with the monitoring role I
was expected to have by the school management.
Chapter 7. 'Accounting for the
negative' - how the politics of oppression affected my work and how I found a
creative response.
Chapter 8. How I understood
that my educational knowledge was a living educational theory whose validity
could be judged by living standards of judgement.
Chapter 9. Conclusion
Bibliography
Each living theory thesis
demonstrates a similar originality of mind in the creative and unique
formulation of constellations of embodied values and their transformation into
living standards of judgement for use in the critical evaluation of the
validity of the claims to educational knowledge.
4) Can a flow-form of critical
judgement in learning be distinguished as a living standard of judgement in an
individual's education.
The flow-form critical judgement I
have in mind is connected to Paulus Murray's postcolonial critical pedagogy and
the individual's education I have in mind is my own.
Paulus
Murray describes himself as a mixed-race, postcolonial educator who, as I
write, is a senior lecturer in the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester,
England and writing up his doctoral thesis with my supervision. One of his
living standards of judgement is postcolonial critical pedagogy. This living
standard and the expression of its embodied value by Paulus Murray in our
educational relationship has influenced my own learning as I extended my
understanding of postcolonial values, practices and theories. I want to show a
flow-form inclusional meaning of critical judgement in my educational
relationship with Paulus Murray between 1999 – 2004 starting with his
influence in the problematisation of my whiteness. We marked this
problematisation in a joint paper for AERA in New Orleans in April 2000 which Paulus
presented for both of us. In the video-clip below, Paulus is relating in a way
I identify as inclusional and emphasising the importance of a language of
hybridity. You can access our paper on, White and Black with White Identities in
Self-Studies of Teacher Education Practices
at: http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/A2/aerapj.htm
The paper begins with an
introduction from Paulus:
"Mutse
atsi! To S-STEP colleagues and community: I wonder if you can help Jack Whitehead and
myself, Paulus Murray, in our learning? It is a special and peculiar kind of
learning that has erotic, spiritual, dialectical and dialogical textures that
characterise it as an authentic engagement or beginning in hybrid writing. Our respective
whiteness and "mixed race" otherness is merged in this text as we try to
demonstrate within a community of teachers how our self-study can be enhanced
by speaking through a vocabulary of hybridity, a vocabulary that is white,
black and of colour. We are unable to make any claims about how this is going
to work. This is a "new vocabulary" [Smith, 1997]: it is experimental, uncertain,
unknowable and exciting. We hope that it is also radical and transgresses [hooks,
1994] while
remaining attractive and invitational to those who do not locate themselves in
a hybrid space."
In my
section of the paper I respond:
Paulus – Mutse atsi!
"Since the S-STEP meeting at AERA '99,
I have problematised my Whiteness. You have helped me to understand the
importance of doing this if I am to embrace, understand and use languages of
colour. Let me see if I can reflect back to you the languages of colour
you saw intuitively through my 'whiteness' and which I think you value in my
supervision of your research programme. I am thinking of my erotic, spiritual
and psychotherapeutic languages of colour.
I'm
going to focus on my understanding of the spiritual/erotic energy I believe
that I bring into my educative relationships with you. I think this is not only
based on a 'tolerance' (see note 1). I think it is based on my
exhuberance for life when I encounter other human beings who communicate their
own. I am thinking of exhuberance in the sense of a life affirming energy which
I associate with the erotic impulse to assent to life up to the point of death
(Bataille, p. 11. 1987). I link this erotic energy to Buber's (1947) I-You
relation where he writes that 'trust, trust in the world because this person
exists, this is the most inward achievement of the relation in education'."
I am hopeful that you will connect
this expression of my spiritual/erotic energy to the flow of life-affirming
energy I considered in one above. I experience all the embodied values and
living standards of judgement I am writing about as interconnected and
influencing my learning in ways that I see to account for in my analyses of the
growth of my educational knowledge. The growth I have in mind in this section
on critical judgement is focused on postcolonial values, practices and
theories.
I am clear that Paulus Murray's
postcolonial critical pedagogy is the most significant influence in the growth
of my understanding of my postcolonial values, practices and theories. You
might feel some of the power of this influence in the question he put to me and
which I addressed in my paper on, Do the values and living logics I express in my educational
relationships carry the hope of Ubuntu for the future of humanity? This was presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual
Conference in September 2004 in a Symposium on: "How Are We Contributing To A New Scholarship
Of Educational Enquiry Through Our Pedagogisation Of Postcolonial Living
Educational Theories In The Academy?" The paper can be accessed at:
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00003801.htm
Here is his critical question:
Where is
the evidence of the critical engagement with the ideas of critical race
theorists, critical non-racial theorists and post-colonial theorists in the
formation of the identities and practices of individuals you are working with?
Where is the evidence of your influence in respect of alerting them to
enhancing the quality of their work by making themselves familiar with these
epistemologies? (Why should you/they when they can get their PhDs/do their AR
writing without making reference to their critical knowledge?) (Murray, 2003 e-mail
correspondence)
I want to be clear at this point
that I am seeking to show a flow-form inclusional meaning of critical judgement
through the educational influence of Murray's postcolonial critical pedagogy in
my own learning, rather than directly answering his question in relation to my
educational influence in my students' learning. I am using the idea of
flow-form to carry a sense of a living, and hence changing, constellation of
embodied values that can be distinguished as sufficiently stable to use as a
living standard of judgement. For example, in our paper for AERA 2000, neither
Paulus Murray nor I show any engagement or understanding of postcolonial
theories. In my case this was because I had no engagement with the concept of
postcolonialism. Murray's articulation of postcolonial critical pedagogy as an
articulate, living standard of judgement emerged in 2003 in the flow of his
life. As I view the video-clip of
part of his presentation at AERA 2000 I am feeling the flow-form inclusional
meaning of his embodied postcolonial values as he addresses our audience and
emphasises the importance of a language of hybridity in our presentation.
A still of Paulus Murray from the
video-clip
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/pmaera5sor.mov
(this is a 9 Mb clip taking some 15 minutes to download using a broadband
connection – it plays in Quicktime)
By September 2004 my paper for
BERA shows a growth in my educational knowledge from the AERA 2000
presentation. I have learnt to discriminate values of Ubuntu in 'we-i'
relations as postcolonial values and can explicitly articulate my engagement
and learning from the ideas of postcolonial theorists. The stimulus for my
engagement with the idea of Ubuntu, and the postcolonial literature I address,
came directly from the influence of Paulus Murray's postcolonial critical
pedagogy. When I say 'directly' I am meaning that it was an intentional action
of Paulus Murray to influence my learning. The papers in which I show this
influence have mediated his action through my own originality of mind and
critical judgement. I am meaning
'directly' in the sense of an intentional relationship rather than implying a
causal connection between his action and my response. Here is an extract from
the BERA 2004 paper which acknowledges and demonstrates the educational
influence of Paulus Murray's postcolonial critical pedagogy in my own learning
as I embrace, with understanding, his points about the significance of 'we-i'
relationships in Ubuntu.
"In my educational enquiries I am seeking to
support the enhancement of the flow of the values of Ubuntu from the ground of
living my postcolonial spiritual values in my educational relationships.
However, I do understand Paulus Murray's point about my 'I' feeling very
Western and European while to get closer to the values of Ubuntu I will need to
understand a sense of self that is closer to African and Arab cultural
expressions of 'i in we'.
'I live within an extended
Arab/Omani/British family where 'we' is used only when 'I' see's the other in
Ubuntu, in extended family connection, in a solidary space where we feel at one
in terms of identity and integrity. This feels so very different to your
formulary above. For this 'we' to happen there has to be an
eastern/southern "solidary logic" at work which is fundamentally
communicative, rather than a Western/northern "atomistic logic" at
work that is fundamentally ex-communicative.' (Murray, 23/08/04, e-mail).
For Murray the practical spirit of Ubuntu flows
from a sense of ethno-community where 'we' comes into existence when my 'I'
alongside lots of other 'I''s is subordinated to 'we-i'. The moment 'we'
happens is when my 'i' fully understands (and values, appreciates and accepts)
the responsibilities for how my identity and integrity is embraced within the
'we' of the extended family, and this is the first step in an ethno-community
held in Ubuntu or similar cosmology. Murray believes that the 'i' in eastern
and southern cultures is an 'i' that is 'we-i'. He says that the Western and
European 'I' has to learn how to let go of 'I' as a procedure to be satisfied
before making the move to 'we', which usually entails agonising over one's
space, one's autonomy, one's sense of identity. In eastern/southern indigenous
cultures the movement in 'we-i' space is seamless.
For the evidence in the living theory section of
actionresearch.net to show that such values have been legitimated in the
knowledge-base of the Academy in the form of living epistemological standards
of judgement, I am sure that I will have to address the problem that the values
in a Western 'I' do not migrate easily across cultural borders, east and south,
and that the values of Ubuntu or similar cosmologies that hold the values of 'i
in we' do not migrate easily across cultural borders, north and west. My
belief in the educational possibility of the generativity of bringing
these values alongside (Pound, 2003) each other in speaking
'cross-culturally' is grounded in the evidence provided in the doctoral
thesis of Ram Punia (2004) and in Marian Naidoo's (2004) writings from her
doctoral enquiry 'I am because we are. How can I improve my practice? The
emergence of a living theory of responsive practice'. My belief in the
generativity of bringing these values alongside each other is also grounded in
the scholarship of educational enquiry of Peggy Leong, the Manager of the
Academy of Best Learning in Education (ABLE) in Singapore. Leong's dissertation
on The Art of an Educational Enquirer (Leong, 1991) remains one of the most
inspiring texts I have read from a practitioner-researcher who understands and
can live values of inclusionality while engaging with tensions and conflicts
between different cultural contexts.
In meeting Murray's criticism above, I
recognise that I will need to offer for public criticism and validation the
evidence-based belief that I am moving towards the full realisation of my
postcolonial intentions in my pedagogisation of living educational
theories. Part of this realisation includes using Bernstein's insights on
the pedagogisation of knowledge in seeing the importance of recontextualising
living theory texts from their place in a university library into the
curriculum of organisations (Farren, 2004; Leong, 2004; Laidlaw, 2004; Murray,
2004, Adler-Collins 2004; Hartog, 2004). Another part of this realisation
includes the integration of insights from postcolonial theorists (Loomba, 1998;
Spivak, 1999) into my own living educational theory and practice. Although, in
doing this I will bear Loomba's point in mind:
A third result of the boom in postcolonial
studies has been that essays by a handful of name-brand critics have become
more important than the field itself – students feel the pressure to 'do'
Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak or Homi Bhabha or to read only the very latest
article. What Barbara Christian (1990) has called 'the race for theory' is
detrimental to thinking about the area itself. It is the star system of the
Western and particularly the United States academy that is partly responsible
for this, and partly the nature of theoretical work itself, which can be intimidating
and often self-referential. Thus although most students feel obliged to take
some note of postcolonial theory, not all of them are inspired to be creative
with it perhaps because they often lack expertise in colonial and postcolonial
histories and cultures. (Loomba, 1998, pp. xv-xvi).
In particular I am thinking of the insight that
the colonial aftermath calls for an ameliorative and therapeutic theory which
is responsive to the task of remembering and recalling the colonial past. I
associate this theory with the influence in educating social formations of
Adler-Collins' enquiry into the pedagogisation of a curriculum for the healing
nurse. I see that the work of this theory may be compared with what Lyotard
describes as the psychoanalytic procedure of anamnesis 'to elaborate their
current problems by freely associating apparently inconsequential details with
past situations - allowing them to uncover hidden meanings in their lives and
their behaviour' (1998:
8) (Murray e-mail, 21/08/04). I also see that Fletcher's contributions to BERA
2004 (Fletcher, 2004 –withdrawn 11/09/04; Fletcher & Adler-Collins,
2004 – withdrawn 11/09/04; Fletcher & Bognor, 2004) mark her moving
on from the University of Bath with her passionate commitment to educational values
restored from these cathartic and therapeutic accounts of her experiences and
learning, in the creation and testing of her own living educational theory. As
Gandhi (1998) says:
I also see that, postcolonial theory
inevitably commits itself to a complex project of historical and psychological
'recovery'. If its scholarly task inheres in the carefully researched retrieval
of historical detail, it has an equally compelling political obligation to
assist the subjects of postcoloniality to live with the gaps and fissures of
their condition, and thereby learn to proceed with self-understanding. (Gandhi 1998: 8) (Murray e-mail,
21/08/04)
It may help
you to evaluate the validity of my claim about moving towards the full
realisation of my postcolonial intentions by comparing the Appendix to my BERA
Presidential Address, where no practitioner-researcher had yet to receive a
doctorate for a self-study of their own educational practices, with the
Appendix to this paper which gives the web-based locations for accessing some
17 living theory doctoral theses of practitioner-researchers who have graduated
since 1995. These include the thesis of Punia (2004) in which he shows how his
spiritual sense of a cosmological unity can embrace together 'I-You' relations
with 'we-i' relationships in his work as an international educator in
Mauritius, Fiji, Western Somoa, Hong Kong, Singapore and the UK. I am
also hoping before too long to include within the living theory section of
actionresearch.net a successfully completed doctoral thesis from Marian Naidoo
(2004) whose ontological value and living epistemological standard of judgement
of 'passion for compassion' also holds together in a most creative and
productive tension, 'we-i' relationships with 'I-You' relationships. The
addition of a thesis by Paulus Murray (2004) with a standard of judgement of
postcolonial critical pedagogy and an analysis of the pedagogisation of
postcolonial living educational theories would also do much to enhance the
educational knowledge base in the Academy." (Whitehead, 2004)
5) Can a flow-form of
compassion in learning be distinguished as a living standard of judgement in an
individual's education?
The expression by Marian Naidoo of
her passion for compassion in her doctoral research programme has influenced my
learning on how to expression an inclusional meaning of compassion as a living
standard of judgement. Marian is a talented actress and part of the power of
her communication of her passion for compassion is through her use of Theatre
in Education, in which she expresses the feelings, insights and thoughts of
people with Altzheimer's and their carers. To appreciate Marian's influence on
my growing awareness of the expression of a passion for compassion as a value
with profound significance for the future of humanity, I think it will be
necessary to view the DVD Marian has prepared as part of her thesis.
Here is the introduction to the
paper Marian presented to the Symposium I convened at the 2004 Annual
Conference of the British Educational Research Association, that helped to
reinforce her educational influence in my learning:
"This paper provides a framework for a
self-study inquiry undertaken over a period of five years. The inquiry I
refer to is an inquiry into my own practice as a facilitator of healthcare
improvement as I have been asking myself the question "How can I improve
my practice?"
This self-study has been communicated through the narrative of my learning and
the development of an authentic sense of self as I have engaged with others in
a creative and critical collaboration of developing practice.
The self that I refer to is both continually
emerging and transforming as my developing practice responds to the needs of
the people I am engaging with in pedagogical relationships. This response
communicates my embodied values, which are also emergent and transforming and
as I have been able to clarify them through my inquiry, the act of
clarification transforms these values into standards by which my practice may
be judged.
I will also
show how my inquiry has been exploring the potential of visual narratives in
multi-media accounts for clarifying and communicating the meaning of
inclusional values in the course of their emergence in the practice of
educational enquiry. I will demonstrate how through the creation and
communication of this visual narrative the process of clarifying and
communicating the meaning of inclusional values which are informed by an
ontological commitment to a passion for compassion, has enabled me to transform
them into living and communicable epistemological standards of judgement.
This also enables the validity of my contribution to educational knowledge to
be evaluated."
Here is how Marian described the roots of her ontological
commitment to a passion of compassion to the Symposium:
"I have also paid attention to the past in my
inquiry in order to ask myself and to gain clarity as to how the life I have
experienced so far, the challenges, the sorrow, the excitement and the joy,
have made a contribution and continue to make a contribution to the way I live
my life now and the values that I hold. In this way I have been engaged in a
process described by Bullough and Pinnegar (2001) of joining history with
biography, "When the issue confronted by the self is shown to have
relationship to and bearing on the context and ethos of a time, then self-study
moves to research." (Bullough and Pinnegar. 2001. Cited in Laboskey.2004.) Although
this may be perceived as a nostalgic process I am in agreement with Mitchell
and Weber (1999) that nostalgia can be placed in the context of looking ahead
and imagining particular scenarios for the future, in my case imagining
scenarios that have the potential to transform our practice.
"We posit that a pedagogy of reinvention
through memory has a political agenda that involves a deliberate remembering
– one which unconsciously 'uncovers' memory – and which implies a
relationship to schooling that is anything but nostalgic in the usual
sentimental sense. Here we refer to the particular humiliation and pain
that individuals might have experienced, and also how these experiences are
linked to inequalities based on class, race, sex or religion."(Mitchell and Weber. 1999. p. 225.)
It is by paying attention to these moments of
humiliation in my own inquiry that I was able to identify the roots of my
ontological commitment to a passion for compassion and from this understanding
demonstrate how this has now become a living, relational and inclusional
epistemological standard by which my work may be judged.
This
process of critically reflecting on my practice and engaging with others in an
inclusional and responsive way contributes to the pedagogisation of my practice
in the way that Freire (1973) describes. It also focuses my practice on
building relationships "that are aimed at individual and social
transformation."
Laboskey. 2004. As part of my inquiry I have been asking myself how I can
live my values more fully in my practice. This has involved me engaging
with others "..in order to seek evidence that changes did indeed represent improvement." (Russell. 2002, pp 3-4. Cited in
Whitehead. 2004. P.871). For me this is a crucial part of my inquiry, in
my day to day work I often engage with people whose opinions and experiences are
very rarely listened to. I wanted to ensure that by developing an
inclusional way of relating and responding to those I am engaging with I would
be helping them to communicate their voices along with my own. My passion
for compassion is rooted in a firm commitment that each one of us is unique and
much of my practice involves an exploration not only our uniqueness but also
how we engage and respond to each other. I also recognise that this has become
one of the ways in which I pedagogise my practice. (Bernstein, 2000)."
(Naidoo,
2004, http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw//bera04/mnbera04.htm
)
What I am
doing here is acknowledging the educational influence of Naidoo's
pedagogisation of her living educational theory in my own learning of
inclusional meanings of passion for compassion. I acknowledge that I have much still to learn in the expression of a passion for compassion and I would say that this is one of my weakest expressions in my own values of humanity. I intend to address this weakness in a presentation at the American Educational Research
Association meeting in Montreal in April 2005.
6) Can a loving flow-form of
life-affirming energy in educational relationships be distinguished as a living
standard of judgement in educational relationships?
One of my most vivid recollections
of a flow of life-affirming energy was on a gloriously sunny day in Newcastle,
as a 22 year old student in 1966. I was aware of a flow of cosmic energy that
flowed through and around me and that continues to resonates for me in what
Bataille refers to as assenting to life to the point of death and what Tillich
refers to as a state of being grasped by the power of being itself. I continue
to find the source of this cosmic flow of energy is a mystery to me and while I
experience the flow of this energy as having personal and social expression, I
see that the flow existed before my own experience of it and I believe it will
continue to flow, outside myself, when I am dead. I know that any explanation
of what I do would be incomplete and invalid without the inclusion of an
acknowledgement of the significance of my experience of this energy. I see such
energy flowing through individuals as they express what really matters to them
and I usually distinguish what really matters to people, what they care about,
in terms of their values.
I identify such a flow of
life-affirming energy in the life and work of Salvador Dali. I imagine that we
will have different responses to the following quotation. You may feel that
there is an unbearable ego at work here. I am identifying with the idea that
one can experience a supreme pleasure that I experience as a flow of
life-affirming energy, in being oneself together with the humour of my response
to 'Modesty is not exactly my speciality'!
Every morning upon awakening,
I experience a supreme pleasure:
That of being Salvador Dali
And I ask myself, wonderstruck
What prodigious thing will he do
today,
This Salvador Dali
Modesty
Is not exactly
My speciality.
(Levi, 2000, p.122)
A value which seems to find
expression in every culture is love. In seeking intersubjective agreement about
the meaning of a 'loving flow-form of life-affirming energy in educational
relationships' I am thinking of inclusional meanings that hold together, while at
the same time distinguishing love and energy in a loving flow-form of
life-affirming energy in educational relationships.
Evidence for my belief that it is
possible to reach an intersubjective agreement on the meaning of such a living
standard of educational judgement is provided by the agreement between Moira
Laidlaw and me that the relational flows of meaning in the video clip below,
from which the following still image was taken, can be described through our
agreed ostensive definition as a loving flow-form of life-affirming energy in
educational relationships:
More still images from the
classroom with Moira Laidlaw at Guyuan Teachers College in China on the 15
October 2004 can be seen at:
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/moira151004/moira151004.html
The following 9 MB video clip will
take several minutes to download using Broadband (10 minutes on my system) and
opens in Quicktime.
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/mlendSorenson.mov
I am fascinated by the
question of whether it is possible and desirable to extend this agreement,
between Moira and me, with your agreement, that as we watch the
video-clip we-i are experiencing a loving flow-form of life-affirming
energy in the channels of space and dynamic boundaries of the educational
relationships. So, one of the tests of validity of my belief that it will be
possible to enhance such loving flows of life-affirming energy within our
social contexts and educational relationships, rests on this meaning resonating
with your own, first through the uniqueness of our intuitive responses and then
into the explicit cognitions of our shared language. The following image and Moira's
comments may support the development of our intersubjective agreement of
inclusional meanings of loving flows of life-affirming energy.
Mother and
Child in Xi'an, August 2001.
This is a picture I
took just after I arrived in China. I think it's lovely. I don't know the woman
or the child, but asked if I could take the boy's photograph. The delight on
both faces for me embodies those qualities of love and life-affirming spirit I
want to see more of in the world. The way the mother pushes the child forward -
his confidence and delight, her pride and pleasure in how lovely he is. Well,
that's how I see it anyway. Isn't it just gorgeous!
I am in little doubt that if we
could find ways of enhancing the flows of such life-affirming energies in the
education of our social forms the world would be a better place to be. This
paper is grounded in what may be seen as my own 'core blindness, that the
creation, testing and sharing of living educational theories that are focused
on learning to live such values more fully in practice, will make a
significance contribution to the future of humanity.
In the following e-mail which
responds to my request for responses to an early draft of this paper, Eleanor
Lohr points to such a 'core blindness' in my supervisory relationship when it
took me two years to realise that I needed to express love through my embodied
relationships, rather that to believe that my words were sufficient!
"Jack, I am responding in a rush. I hope
my thoughts, although unrefined, might help. I'm sure that there are more
thoughts to come. I hope that I do not offend in making public some
aspects of our relationship:
In your email you asked:
James and Eleanor - I'm wondering if we (Moira
and I, can extend this meaning into our intersubjective
agreements? I'm
hoping to engage with your theses in a later draft)
When I experience living values in relationship
as just 'being', feeling 'right', just 'existing' my descriptions have a
tendency to make references to nouns like 'love', and in so doing living values
lose both their thickness and their fluidity. Just decribing the being of
'love' looses the language of inclusionality because the noun appears to be
boundaried, concretised even. There appears to be no inherent capacity
for influence, and love appears only to want to suck everything into its own
definition.
In
my thesis I have used Bernsteins' theory of pedagogy to describe my experience
of the pedagogy of loving presence as a way of bringing the 'unthinking' but
physical presence of love into relationship. Because I use the
'unthinking' aspects of Bernstein's theory, the pedagogy of presence is able to
retain the fluidity of inclusionality. Unthinkingness does not imply
unawareness. It is the presence of love inhabiting awareness that comes
through action into the timbre of the voice and into the choice of language.
I
am suggesting that a pedagogical relation is not a one way action, that the
unseen presence of love comes into awareness through the quality of connection,
and it is this quality of the connection that enables flow in intersubjective
relations when both (or all) have grasped (noticed) its presence.
Noticing does not necessarily mean pointing to it. In my experience
it can work many ways. If two or more people are comfortable, can enter into
the language of love (or life affirming energy) and feel a sense of creative
energy, then love is in the pedagogical presence and operates knowingly.
But in my experience if there is uncertainty, lack of security either within
the context or in the intersubjective relation, then direct references can
bring power plays that interfere with love's flow. In the latter case the
pedagogical relation may be more one-sided, known only to those that notice,
but with no referencing. In the former case there is more likely to be a
shared free flow of pedagogical learning.
If
the language of love (or life affirming energy) is to be brought into the
academy, then the reframing of the context in which it operates is an enormous
task (as Jack has said).
I
take my relationship with Jack as an example of what I mean:
I
have been supervised by Jack for 5 years and for the first two years I was
deeply unhappy. I found his excitement about learning and creativity
inspiring but also puzzling. I couldn't get into it, couldn't make it
real for me. In my struggle to please him (as well as make sense for
myself) I could not find a comfortable place to write from. There was no
common understanding that I could find in my peer group, just a lot of jostling
and elbowing. I could not understand Jack's sighs or his language, it
didn't connect with my experience. I wanted him to like me at least, but
there was no sign of that either! Gradually I became aware that Jack was
reading phenomenology, suggesting books that I could respond to. It gave
me a message, I thought he was reading specially for me! (No idea if this
was an accurate understanding - it doesn't really matter). Then I was
able to say to him, 'I can't have intellectual conversations for more than 40
minutes', 'I can't think so I do not know what to say to you'. Meanwhile
I learned from Sara (Glennie) that I needed to exercise to come back into my
head! I told Jack. I said to Jack, 'I can't think, I need to walk'
and he replied, 'I'll walk with you'.
Now I KNOW Jack 'loves' me, now I can see the presence of
love, now I can think best on the computer with him sitting on my shoulder,
enter into his language share my thoughts, create a new language of love.
Words in this case, did not bring a loving pedagogy about.
With much love,
Eleanor" (e-mail 20 January, 2005)
My curiosity about the possibility
of agreeing shared meanings such as a loving flow of life-affirming energy,
extends to the development of inclusional meanings of a living standard of
judgement of social justice in questions of the kind, 'How do I improve what I
am doing?' Justice and Love are
connected in a question asked by James Finnegan, 'How can love enable justice
to see rightly?'
7) Can a flow-form of social
justice be distinguished as a living standard of judgement in an individual's
education?
James Finnegan, in his doctoral enquiry, How do
I create my own educational theory in my educative relations as an action
researcher and as a teacher? influenced my educational developing by showing me
his meanings of social justice.
His enquiry included the question which continues to inspire me, 'How
can love enable justice to see rightly?' Here is the Abstract to the thesis
that helped to develop by understanding of inclusional meanings of social
justice:
"How do I create my own educational theory in my educative
relations as an action researcher and as a teacher?
My enquiry is based on four qualitative studies [1994-1997]
in a boys secondary school in the Republic of Ireland. I adopt a living
educational theory approach to action research in my study.
In creating my own educational theory, I demonstrate how I
have become a more reflective educational action researcher in developing and
defining an original set of standards of judgement for judging my action
research and teaching practices. These include my methodological, educational,
and social standards of judgement.
In helping to facilitate an expression of student voices in
my teaching, as I seek to improve their learning, I enable my sixth form
students and myself to engage in more democratic actions and more egalitarian
power relations in the classroom, primarily through the elicitation/creation,
greater enactment, and evaluation of teaching/learning communicative
activities. In this, How can I help you to improve your learning? is a question
worth asking my sixth form students.
My work also shows that I have become a more reflective
practitioner as I dialogue with the writings of other educators whilst seeking
to relate my values concerning democratic action and social justice to my
classroom teaching."
(Finnegan, 2000. Retrieved on the
28th January 2005 from http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/fin.shtml
In her doctoral enquiry as a
senior lecturer at Middlesex University, Mary Hartog related issues of social
justice to loving and life-affirming educative relations. Social justice isn't mentioned in her
abstract, but it permeates the whole of her thesis as she sustains a most
impressive commitment to developing as a scholar and researcher while facing
the gender biases that have not served the interests of women scholars in
higher education. Here is the
abstract of Mary's Self study
of a higher education tutor: how can I improve my practice? to emphasise the connection between this sustained
commitment to social justice in the workplace and her loving and life-affirming
educational practices.
Abstract
This thesis is a self-study of
a tutor in higher education committed to practice improvement. It is presented
as a study of singularity and an example of first person education action
research. It is epistemologically and methodologically distinct in that it is
based on my values as an educator and ideas about what constitutes loving and
life-affirming educational practice.
The aim of this thesis is to
present a storied account of my inquiry, in which I explore what it means to
live my values in practice. Through descriptions and explanations of my
practice, this thesis unveils a process of action and reflection, punctuated by
moments when I deny or fail to live my values fully in practice, prompting the
iterative question 'How do I improve my practice?'; the reflective process
enabling me to better understand my practice and test out that understanding
with others in the public domain.
My claim to originality is
embodied in the aesthetics of my teaching and learning relationships, as I
respond to the sources of humanity and educative needs of my students, as I
listen to their stories and find an ethic of care in my teaching and learning
relationships that contain them in good company and that returns them to their
stories as more complete human beings.
Evidence is drawn from
life-story work, narrative accounting, student assignments, audio and video
taped sessions of teaching and learning situations, the latter of which include
edited CD-R files. These clips offer a glimpse of my embodied claims to know
what the creation of loving and life-affirming educative relations involves.
The next question has emerged from
my doctoral thesis on How do I improve my practice? Creating a discipline of
education through educational enquiry. You can access the focal analysis of my
thesis in Volume 1 at: http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/jack.shtml with the Abstract that leads me into
question number 6 about a living standard of judgement of educational enquiry:
This thesis shows how living
educational standards of originality of mind and critical judgement in
educational enquiries has created a discipline of education. The meanings of
these standards emerged from an analysis of my research published between
1977-1999. The analysis proceeds from the base of my experience of myself, my
I, as a living contradiction in the question, How do I improve this process of
education here? An educational methodology, which includes I as a living
contradiction, emerges from the application of a four-fold classification of
methodologies of the social sciences. Then the idea of living educational
theories emerges in terms of the descriptions and explanations which individual
learners produce for their own educational development. A logic of the
question, How do I improve my practice?, emerges from my engagement with the
ideas of others and from an exploration of the question in the practical
contradictions between the power of truth and the truth of power in my
workplace. A discipline of education, with its standards of originality of mind
and critical judgement, is defined and extended into my educative influences as
a professional educator in the enquiry, How do I help you to improve your
learning? My living educational theory continues to develop in the enquiry, How
do I live my values more fully in my practice? I explain my present practice in
terms of an evaluation of my past learning, in terms of my present experiences
of spiritual, aesthetic and ethical contradictions in my educative relations
and in terms of my proposals for living my values more fully in the future.
8) Can a flow-form of
educational enquiry be distinguished as a living standard of judgement in an
individual's education?
The educational enquiries I have
in mind are those that focus on educational influences in learning in
explorations of implications of asking, researching and answering questions of
the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?'
In the flow of such an educational
enquiry, I experience myself as a living contradiction in the sense that the
intentions influencing my actions are often formed from a desire to live my
values more fully in my practice as I recognise that some of my values are not
being lived as fully as I desire. My most vivid experience of existing as a
living contradiction was seeing a video-tape of my teaching in 1972 where I
could see myself doing something that actually blocked the very thing I thought
I had established in my classroom. I thought my pupils were engaging in enquiry
learning in the sense that I was stimulating their questions to which I was
making a response. When I saw the video-tape I could see that the way that I
was structuring the learning resources and my talk with the class was actually
serving to stifle their enquiry learning! In this recognition I found my
imagination already working out ways of improving my practice. On moving to the
University of Bath in 1973 I began to offer professional development programmes
to support teachers who wanted to enable their pupils to engage in enquiry learning.
In 1975-76 I worked with a group of 6 teachers over two years on the process of
improving learning for 11-14 year olds in mixed ability science groups. In an
evaluation report on the work I explained the process of improving learning in
terms of explanations generated from models of innovation, change in the
teaching-learning process and evaluation. On showing this to academic
colleagues they appreciated the explanation in terms of the models. On showing
the report to the teachers they explained that they could not see themselves in
the explanation. I returned to the original data gathered in the enquiry and,
with the help of Paul Hunt, one of the teachers, reconstructed the explanation
in a way that the 6 teachers recognised themselves in the explanation.
The form of the report
acknowledged that the process of improvement involved our shared expression of
each others' problems, our imagined possibilities in ideas for an action plan,
our actions and data gathering, our evaluations, our modifications of problems,
ideas and actions in the light of the evaluations and the sharing of our
accounts of our learning. You can access the full report at:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/writings/ilmagall.pdf
(a couple of minutes to download using broadband)
This form of educational enquiry
can be seen to be expressed in many of the accounts produced by beginner
practitioner-researchers at China's Experimental Centre for Educational Action
Research (CECEARFLT). These can be viewed at:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/moira.shtml
See for example the first action research report from Hao
Cailing, a teacher new to the profession in 2004 at CECEARFLT: 'How can I help
my students to build their vocabulary?' at http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/moira/haocailing.htm
9) Can a flow-form of living
educational theories be distinguished as a living standard of judgement in the
education of individuals and their social formations?
a) In the education of individuals
By a living educational theory I
am meaning an explanation which an individual produces for their own learning
as they explore the implications of asking, researching and answering questions
of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?' For example, if you study the
titles of the living theory theses at:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/living.shtml
you will see that Ben Cunningham explored the
implications of asking, researching and answering his question, 'How do I come
to know my spirituality as I create my own living educational theory?' Ben has this to say about his living
educational theory thesis:
My thesis is a
narrative which offers the following distinct and original contributions to
educational knowledge, as I show originality of mind and critical judgment in
connecting the personal with the professional in my explanations of my
educative relationships with others:
I show how my living engagement with my
God is enabling me to author my life and is part of the interweaving of my
values in my educative relationships with others.
I show the meaning of my values as I
explain my educative relationships in terms of how I dialectically engage the
intrapersonal with the interpersonal.
I show how a dialectic of both care and
challenge that is sensitive to difference, is enabling me to create my own
living educational theory which is a form of improvisatory self-realisation.
I show how my leadership comes into
being in my words and actions as I exercise my ethic of responsibility towards
others.
Such living educational theories
are now flowing through the internet and accessible to those with the
appropriate technology which you already have access to if you are reading
this! They also reside in the library of the University of Bath in the
traditional form of bound theses.
In the living theories,
individuals explain their learning as they explore the implications of existing
as living contradictions in enquiries of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am
doing?' in the contexts of their life-long learning. I think the evidence already provided by
practitioner-researchers at http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/living.shtml
is sufficient to justify the claim that living educational theories can be
understood as a living standard of judgement in the education of individuals.
But what of the education of social formations? Can the flow of living
educational theories be connected to the education of social formations?
b) In the education of social formations
Can a flow-form of living
educational theories be distinguished as a living standard of judgement in the
education of social formations?
In one sense part of my education
can be understood as a social formation. My understanding of a flow-form of
living educational theories was transformed, as part of my social formation, by
Alan Rayner's influence as he explained his understanding of inclusionality and
serverance. I video-taped his explanations and I hope that if you have the
technology that you will have already accessed this at:
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/rayner1sor.mov
(a 39 Mb clip)
Seeing and hearing Alan's
demonstration of his understanding of what happens when severance from
inclusionality occurs, I could feel my perceptions of space and boundaries
being transformed. I experienced this transformation through a resonance with Alan's expression of his
relationally dynamic awareness of space and boundaries that are connective,
reflexive and co-creative.
I think it bears repeating that
the diagram of anastomosis above helped me to visualise the implications of
this perception for the flow of living educational theories through the
interconnecting and branching channels and boundaries of communication of the
internet. The questions that are
fascinating me are whether a flow-form of living educational theories can
influence the education of social formations and whether this flow of
educational theories can be distinguished as a living standard of judgement.
The example I usually give to illustrate what I am meaning by the education of
a social formation concerns the social formation of the University of Bath.
Before 1991 the University regulations were interpreted as explicitly refusing
to permit the questioning of the judgements of examiners of research degrees
under any circumstances. For an analysis of the way in which this influenced my
own learning see Part 1 of the October 2004 contribution to Action Research
Expeditions at: http://arexpeditions.montana.edu/articleviewer.php?AID=80&PAGE=3
And Part 4 of The Growth of
Educational Knowledge on Living contradictions - I am a creative academic. I am not.I can question the
judgements of other academics. I cannot.
at: http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/bk93/geki.htm
In 1991 the University regulations
changed to permit questions to be raised on the grounds of bias, prejudice and
inadequate assessment. I am referring to the education of social formations in
terms of the changes in the regulations that govern the social order of a
social formation. I am seeing changes in regulations as educational if the
change is a movement in the direction of living more fully values that carry
hope for the future of humanity.
There is some evidence that a
flow-form of living educational theories be distinguished as a living standard
of judgement in the education of social formations. Consider for example the
living educational theories that have been legitimated at Dublin City
University, supervised by Margaret Farren and that are now flowing from her
web-space at http://webpages.dcu.ie/~farrenm/dissertations.html
. You can access the resources flowing from her web-space at http://webpages.dcu.ie/~farrenm/
and experience the flow of Margaret's research into webs of betweenness and a
pedagogy of the unique at:
http://webpages.dcu.ie/~farrenm/research.html
Maggie is on the far right of the
two pictures from a video-clip of a validation group meeting.
I am associating the legitimation of living
educational theory theses in the constituents of the Global Academy with the
education of their social formations. The flow of living educational theories
and their associated educational action research has been communicated most
extensively through the books written and edited by Jean McNiff and co-authored
with Jean , through her educational influence with masters students at the
University of the West of England, with doctoral students at the Universities
of Glamorgan and Limerick and through her international presentations in China,
Canada, Malaysia, South Africa, Israel and the USA and through the resources
flowing from her web-space at http://www.jeanmcniff.com/home.php
Jean's ideas on the generative and
transformatory nature of educational action, flow with our ideas on the
generation and testing of living educational theories. Where Jean has been
particularly successful is in her ability to connect our ideas with the
experiences of practitioners who wish to research their own practice. I am
associating the legitimation of the living educational theory masters
dissertations with Jean's supervision at the University of the West of England
with the education of this social formation. You can access some of these
accounts at:
http://www.jeanmcniff.com/reports.php
and should be able to obtain our latest book
(McNiff and Whitehead, 2005) on Action Research for Teachers by April 2005.
As the accessibility to high speed
internet connections spreads across national and institutional boundaries it is
my belief and hope that there will be an enhanced flow of living educational
theories influencing each other through the boundaries and carrying hope for
the future of humanity. For example, on the 13th January 2005 I was
tutoring a school-based group of teacher-researchers for their educational
enquiry unit on the masters programme at the University of Bath. This was the
first meeting in a room which was equipped with a white board and broadband
connection to the internet. I opened the clip from Moira Laidlaw's classroom at
Guyuan Teachers' College in China (the clip above from the 15th
October 2004) and pointed to Chapter 4 on I can speak for myself. My account
of working with Poppy and how I struggled to come to terms with what I saw as
academic accounts of teaching? of Erica Holley's thesis on, How do I
as a teacher-researcher contribute to the development of a living educational
theory through an exploration of my values in my professional practice? I opened the masters programme section of http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw and
pointed to the educational enquiry accounts and methods of educational enquiry
accounts of local teachers who had successfully completed these modules and
their masters dissertations. As I was doing this, I was suddenly aware of how
permeable the boundaries between the flow of accounts of practitioner-researchers
legitimated by a University and the narratives of the practitioner-researchers
in a school-based teacher-researcher group had become. As the opportunities to
base web-servers in one's own home increases I can see the flow of living
educational theories becoming more extensive and the boundaries between our
interconnecting and branching channels of communication becoming more permeable
to each others' understandings. This could enhance the flows of life-affirming
energy and values that carry hope for the future of humanity. I am feeling this
hope in our sharing and responding to the living educational theories of each
others' learning as we each seek to make our own contributions to well-being in
the world through our educational enquiries. I am hopeful that you will feel a
responsive resonance to the ideas of Jane Spiro as she expresses her belief in
our power to transform the world through sharing the stories we make of our
lives. Jane is the Head of the Applied Linguistics Department of Oxford Brookes
University and you can access the paper she drafted out for the February 2005
issue of the English Language Gazette at http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/monday/jsTeacherStories.htm
Some of the implications of
responding to Jane's ideas on a global scale, can be appreciated by looking at
the influence of living educational theories in a context that is concerned
with the education of Chinese educators. I am thinking of China's Experimental
Centre for Educational Action Research in Foreign Languages Teaching at Guyuan
Teachers College. With the leadership of Chinese action researchers such as
Dean Tian Fengjun and Li Peidong and the influence of Moira Laidlaw's
educational practices and ideas, it is already possible to see the influence of
living educational theories in the education of the social formation of this
Chinese context. I hope that you will read with pleasure the stories of their learning from
these Chinese educators at:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/moira.shtml
Robyn Pound is a health visitor whose doctoral action research has made an original contribution to the knowledge-base of health visiting. You can access Pound's (2003) enquiry, How can I improve my health visiting support of parenting? The creation of an alongside epistemology through action enquiry, at http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/pound.shtml
Here is what Robyn Pound says about her enquiry, in the Abstract to her thesis.
"Motivated initially by rights for children, particularly freedom from violence, this thesis explores the enhancement of children's well-being in family life. It shows the creation of a living theory of health visiting as I seek to understand, improve, evaluate and explain my support of developing family relationships. From increasingly collaborative relationships with parents, colleagues, educational researchers and others, alongsideness emerges as an explanation I found appropriate to my parenting, health visiting and researching. Alongsideness, meaning creating and sustaining connections that enhance collaborative enquiry, intends to support the generation of personal theory for application in practice.
The thesis shows how I found theory of human emotional need useful for understanding and raising awareness about the needs of people in relationships and for problem-solving. It illuminates the health-enhancing and educational possibilities of alongsideness for myself, children, their families and the communities they form. It shows how I question personal beliefs arising from my history, as I reflect on my values and attempt to embody them for living as I practise. Self-study enabled me to grapple with the dynamic, multi-dimensions of alongsideness in diverse situations, the dilemmas arising for understanding myself and for clarifying my practice values.
The thesis contributes to a new scholarship of enquiry for health visiting. It shows how values generated and embodied in the process of enquiring can be transformed into living standards of judgement both for evaluating practice and for judging my claims to knowledge. It explains how the generation of living theory through reflective action enquiry has potential for the improvement and explanation of practice."
In seeking to enhance through the world, the flow of values that carry hope for the future of humanity, I am convinced that the embodied values and epistemology of alongside developed by Pound in the course of her enquiry into her life as a heath visitor are helping to constitute this flow. You can see see her December 2004 research report on her post-doctoral research, How can I/we support the development of family-centred health visiting for improving wellbeing and reducing social exclusion? Co-enquiry project report, at http://www.jackwhitehead.com/robynpound.html
I am wondering if sharing our accounts of such intergenerational and intercultural learning, through the flow of our international communications as they influence our social and personal formations, can serve to strengthen our educational influence in the education of our social formations and each other?
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