As I look at the clip of myself in the conversation café I am trying to see myself with the eyes of another as I seek to enquir

How do i~we explain the educational influences of our values in our own learning and in the learning of others?

Jack Whitehead, Department of Education, University of Bath.

Marie Huxtable, Senior Educational Psychologist, Bath and North East Somerset

Research student, University of Bath

(Note – the views in this paper have emerged from our research into our professional practice and are not intended to represent the ideas of our employers)

DRAFT (5) 6th May 2006

Abstract

As professional educators and educational researchers we love what we do in the sense that we are energized by the educational processes of learning. We feel an energizing flow of pleasure in living productive lives as we support others in enhancing their own learning as they develop their own values, skills and understandings and we improve our own. Our desires to research and explain our educational influences in learning are connected to the questions we ask of ourselves and each other that are related to improving what i~we are doing in our professional practices.

In working and researching together we are aware of our shared commitment to respecting the individual identity and integrity of the other while recognizing that we are engaged in a process of co-creation in interconnecting and branching channels of communication with each other and with others. Hence our use of i~we to communicate a relationship in which an individual’s identity co-exists with a social relationship to the other(s).

In explaining the educational influences of our values in learning we think of our values, such as love, freedom, justice empathy, compassion, authenticity, enquiry learning, knowledge-creation and hope, as expressions of life-affirming energy that give meaning and purpose to our lives. In the process of clarifying the meanings of these values, in the course of their emergence in practice, we produce the living epistemological standards of judgment that can be used to evaluate the validity of our claims to knowledge. Our use of multi-media representations of what we are doing, enable us to communicate our understandings of our educational influences. We explain these influences in our own and in each others’ learning through the expression of our inclusional ways of being [MH1] . Following Rayner (2006), by inclusionality we are meaning a relationally dynamic awareness of space and boundaries that are connective, reflexive and co-creative. The living theories of individuals who are living with an inclusional perspective need living standards of judgement to judge the validity of explanations.

Our inclusional explanations will be shown to move beyond limitations of formal and dialectical logics in the co-creation of valid explanations of educational influences in learning that constitute our living educational theories.

In our inclusional relationships we ask what we can do for each other, for ourselves, and between us.

Here is what Marie wrote to Jack in September 2005 that began our consideration of what we can do for each other:

What I hope to do for Jack.

- Offer a productive enjoyable collaboration to create knowledge we both value

- Bring accounts (including my own )into the public domain as further evidence and legitimisation through the academy of living educational theories and the importance of living values

- Connect him with educators locally with whom there could be ‘rich’ conversations

- Connect his understandings to other work such as TASC, Primary Networks, APEX, Emotional Literacy, Inclusion… in the hope of continuing to influence educational practice after we are both long gone

- Give him reasons to laugh – rather than sigh

The significance of i~we in our explanations

The title of this paper contains i~we and we feel the need to explain the meaning of this term. For the 33 years of his research programme into the nature of educational theory, Jack has focused on enquiries, grounded in professional contexts, of the kind, ‘How do I improve what I am doing?’ He believes that individuals can speak for themselves and in his own enquiry has resisted speaking for others through the use of ‘we’. The resistence to ‘we’ has also been because of a desire not to impose his meanings on another. Marie shares this concern. We use i~we to emphasise a relationship in which the ‘I’ is not violated by the imposition of an inappropriate ‘We’. Where we use ‘we’ we have checked with each other that this is appropriate in the sense that we feel our meanings are shared. In our use of i~we, we are doing more that representing a resistance to imposition. We are also acknowledging that something is created that is beyond the individual but is in the space between – it is what is formed at the inclusional boundaries between us, a place of meeting rather than separating.

In working together to explain the educational influences of our values in our own learning and in the learning of others we have engaged in our individual reflections to show the transformational nature of our learning. We have shared these reflections with each other and with others. We have redrafted our paper as the responses have helped to clarify and develop our ideas. The present paper with its enquiry title has emerged from an earlier question in which we focused on Jack’s question as a supervisor of Marie’s research programme and on Marie’s enquiry:

How do I (Jack Whitehead) respond receptively to Marie Huxtable’s enquiry, ‘How do I improve my practice as a senior educational psychologist working in B&NES while researching my practice for a research degree?’ ?

These two overarching initial concerns both connect and distinguished our unique enquiries and contexts. Jack is researching his practice as a supervisor of research degrees at the University of Bath. Marie is researching her professional practice in a Local Authority. In the first draft of the paper Marie’s reflections below formed the major portion. Moira Laidlaw responded:

“The beginning is highly unusual Jack, for you. The 'we', I think, needs to be explained. That it's a real 'we' and not a theoretical one.

The first set of questions seem incredibly closed ones to me. We could flick to, and tick, them, or write yes and no, but surely another kind of questioning has actually gone on, which isn't directly shown in this paper, which purports partly to be about Jack's response to Marie. The questions:

i) Can we communicate the meanings of our embodied values?

ii) Can we distinguish the educational influences of the expression and recognition of our embodied values in our learning?

iii) Are our meanings of our embodied values experienced by others as the living standards of judgement we use to evaluate the validity of our beliefs about our educational influences in our own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of social formations?

I have mentioned this many times in responses to Jack's papers recently, that the formation of the questions seems to have become closed rather than generative. Would this be an accurate reflection of the way you've worked, because I wonder whether closed questions are psychologically or epistemologically where either of you are. The questions grate on me, that's what I'm saying. They're not inclusional questions, they're exclusional. Where's the AR 'how' question?

Next point, and perhaps I'm just thick and missing something, but where is Jack's response? I don't get it! The question Marie, you're asking within the main question, I get that, but Jack's response I don't. Is his response to be understood in the taking of film. His narrative is absent in a paper in which yours is prominent. That in itself is certainly worth exploration. But I don't get the 'receptive' response from Jack in the paper at all. I'm puzzled. So again, the we becomes doubly confusing for me. What we? It starts, this paper, as a real 'we' paper, but becomes an 'I' paper without explanation. Frustrating and confusing, for this reader anyway.

More please. The paper is really important. At a time when government agencies and innovations are squeezing life out of interactions between human beings, who are, after all, the whole point of being alive, then we need to know more about the processes which generate life and don't stifle it. How are Alan's ideas being used day-by-day, for example? You make a lot about his ideas at the beginning. You don't go through the AR cycle stuff, but you do emphasise his influence. Why? How? I think I know, because I'm acquainted with the basic ideas, but I don't know. I think this point is important.”

Otherwise, in terms of making the points about your educational values (in particular Marie's, but also Jack's by implication) the paper is great! I really like the photographs (sorry, but I can't download the video coverage - it would take about six hours and money's short!!!) and the points you make about the standards of judgement and how you need more than the government's allowance, so to speak, are beautifully made!

More please! Hope these comments are constructive. The paper is brilliant, but not always coherent. Looking forward to seeing the next draft and other people's ideas too.”

We have produced the present paper with Moira's responses in mind. In particular we have drawn from the main body of the text of the previous draft our understanding that “we are seeking a better understanding of the meanings of the values we express in our relationships in the course of their emergence in practice, as well as understanding their educational influences in our own learning and in the learning of others.” This understanding transformed the questions we were asking as individuals separated in Jack’s mind into supervisor and research student into the present question where we exist as two colleagues enquiring together into a matter of mutual interest. We retain our distinct identities within the inclusionality of our present enquiry. This can been seen in the way we have constructed the paper to include our answers to the original questions we are asking of each other.

i) Can we communicate the meanings of our embodied values?

ii) Can we distinguish the educational influences of the expression and recognition of our embodied values in our learning?

The way we have constructed this paper is intended to show the living dynamic of our inclusional educational relationship that is grounded in a quality of inclusionality of equality in power relations that both of us hold in relation to our values of humanity. Within this quality of inclusionality we are aware of and resistant to Jack’s move into a supervisor~supervised relationship that can be defined by the unequal power relations associated with the regime of truth of a University in relation to a registered research student. Marie has written something about her feelings of resistance about Jack’s move into a supervisor~supervised relationship.

'Supervisor' is an unfortunate word as it suggests a power relationship and that is not the relationship which I have understood – when we have communicated I do not hear you saying responsible for but responsible towards, which is not the over seeing power position implied by ‘supervisor’.

Marie will now focus on her question in the context of a 10 minute video-clip of her practice:

‘How do I improve my practice as a senior educational psychologist working in B&NES while researching my practice for a research degree?’

Marie is explaining to colleagues her concern with the way ‘targets’ form a ‘basket of indicators’. Marie is explaining what she thinks is missing from the present ‘standards’ in terms of the values she believes to be vital to education. Marie then responded to the video with some reflections that connected to the values and understandings that give meaning to her life in education. Jack then integrated the video-clip and images into the text and responded to Marie’s initial reflections and questions. The video clip was taken on the 26^th March 2006 in a Wednesday morning Breakfast Café Conversation in the local authority. This is a meeting with colleagues to share ideas and to explore the possibility that the living theory approach to action research initiated by Jack can contribute to enhancing the quality of our practice in relation to the policies of the local authority on Inclusion. The clip is 38.4Mb opens in Quicktime and takes some minutes to download using broadband. You can access the clip from:

http://www.jackwhitehead.com/marie/mhjwclip1.mov

Here are Marie’s reflections on the video, taken by Jack. Jack selected the images because he felt that at the moment they were taken Marie was expressing qualities of listening, enquiry and pleasure that she values not only for herself, but that she responds to in others as qualities that are vital to education and inclusion.

Marie’s reflections

As I look at the clip of myself in this conversation café I am trying to see myself with the eyes of another as I seek to enquire with, rather than simply to communicate to, others. Jack Whitehead took the video, so in one sense I am seeing myself through his eyes. Through this process I wish to progress my own practice by understanding more about what I do well and where I can improve, and to share my learning in a way that can enables others to construct meaning of their own from my experiences. I find looking at myself on video an uncomfortable experience emotionally and yet I am doing it because I want to understand better what I am doing and to improve my educational influence in my workplace.

I have chosen this clip because it is the first time in the conversations where I have made a sustained contribution on an issue that concerns me deeply. The issue is one of standards and judgements and my strong feeling that the government policies on the forms of accountability we are under pressure to use in local authorities are omitting some vital qualities of inclusionality and education. These qualities are not omitted from the lives of the educators I am working with.

I have seen others expressing these qualities through their behaving as educators as they are influencing their own learning and the learning of others, be they children or adults. For instance Ed with a nursery child, Louise with 10 year olds, Jack with South African educators. A common feature I would like to be able to see in more of my own practice is the ability to engage in a collaborative, creative, educational conversation. That is, create a space for enquiry between myself and another where we each try to listen to, and enquire of the other and our self with humour and pleasure and to create something new, not only between us, but also each within our self.

In the 10 minute video-clip I believe that I am expressing myself with humour and pleasure and I am expressing my desire to create something new, not only between us, but also each within our selves. I can hear myself seeking to create something new in adding to the ‘basket of indictors’ those qualities of love, pleasure, humour and enquiry that I see and recognize myself expressing in the video-tape. As part of my concern that my beliefs about myself should be valid, I am seeking to strengthen the validity of my beliefs by submitting them in this account for your appreciation and critical responses.

I know that in the video, unusually for me, I can be seen making the longest contribution I have made in these conversations. As I watch the video I am listening intently to myself. Listening does not require just the ears to hear the sounds. It requires both a skill and intention to hear and respond to what is seen, heard and felt of the response to what I am trying to develop and communicate. It also requires an intention to understand, and creatively connect with, what the other person is bringing and creating. It requires modification of the communication to engage, acknowledge and build on the response of the other and maintain engagement in the enquiry. Communication requires a skill and intention to convey meanings and understandings behind and beyond the words through a genuine interest and pleasure in the other and a belief that the venture is a worthwhile activity where something new can be created. In the moment of the following image I am focusing on the importance of qualities of an inclusional human existence that are at present omitted from the government ‘targets’ and the standards used in the workplace to judge our ‘effectiveness’.

In producing this account and making it available to you on the web it is inviting a response from you that I think could help to create new living standards of judgement in education that more closely connect with the values, skills and understandings of inclusionality that we wish to see expressed more fully in the world. In my inclusional relationships I think that I communicate an interest in the other from the genuine feeling of valuing the other. In the image below I recognize myself seeking to engage with another. I am seeking to connect my understandings with theirs with an invitation to enquire and in the expectation that something worthwhile will be produced.

Because of the nature of my academic and professional training as an educational psychologist my initial desire is to develop a behavioural observation schedule! But, I am resisting my tendency to create a category system and then organize it into a taxonomy because I now see that this is analogous to pulling the wings off the butterfly in order to appreciate its beauty. Hence in this presentation I am asking you to hold in view my intention to engage with others in enquiry. I think that the video-clip shows me seeking to do this through the way I seek to relate to others in my ‘scanning’ of the room and in the tentative way in which I am expressing myself. There are particular images in the video-clip where I experience myself enquiring of the other about their understanding of what I am saying. The communicability of my points about the meanings of particular images requires antecedents and some understanding of context.

As you view the video-clip do you recognize, as I do, that I am expressing my pleasure of being in a collaborative, creative, educational conversation with others? I believe that to connect with another person in such a way brings with it a feeling of pleasure that overrides and can support me to attend to rather than give in to temporary unpleasant feelings of embarrassment, fear, or anxiety which interrupts learning.

Do you recognize my expressions of humour. I believe that these often accompany moments when there is a connection between people who have shared values and understandings; who share that moment of realisation of that connection or the recognition that something new and of value has been created between them or within one of them.

Do you experience as I do moments in the clip that you can see that humour which carries with it bursts of physical pleasure and energy.

Jack’s Reflections

I am contextualizing my response in a tension between the equality of power in inclusional relationships and the unequal power relations between supervisor and supervised. The picture immediately above evokes in me the flow of pleasurable, life-affirming energy of feeling the flow of Marie’s pleasure and her passion for the equal power relations of mutuality. I see the pleasure in Bataille’s (1987, p. 11) terms as assenting to life up to the point of death and in Cho’s (2005) terms of love in education, where the energy of loving relations is focused on knowledge-creation. Eleanor Lohr (2006) has expressed this well in her thesis on Love at Work (see http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/lohr.shtm ) and Margaret Farren has shown her own passion for education in her exploration of the generation of a pedagogy of the unique from the web of betweenness in her doctorate (see http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/farren.shtml )

So, in thinking about how I respond receptively to Marie’s enquiry, I know that Marie is a unique human being with her own constellation of values, skills and understandings that to constitute who she is, what she does and why she does it. In responding to her enquiries I am conscious of listening to her desire and commitment to mutuality, her passion for education and learning, her awareness of a tension between the standards being used to judge educational processes and outcomes in her workplace and the living standards she uses to judge the quality of educational processes and outcomes. I am also aware of her inclusional awareness and way of being in her valuing, connecting and enquiring with others.

In my choice of the images above they are taken in the flow of Marie’s expression of concern about the present standards being used to assess outcomes and her desire to articulate the living standards she uses to evaluate quality in education. I chose the first image because I can feel Marie’s focused will in articulating something about the standards she believes are of value in improving education. I chose the second image because I can feel, as I watch the video-clip, Marie tentatively seeking a response from others to see if she has been understood. I chose the third clip because of the spontaneity of the pleasure and laughter that carries for me Marie’s life-affirming energy, passion for life and education and the delight she can experience and express in being with others.

Hence in my reflections with the video-clip and with Marie’s reflections I believe that I am communicating the meanings of my embodied values of responding to the other with a flow of life-affirming energy that communicates in a way that the other recognizes themselves as assenting to life up to the point of death, within this shared flow of energy.

I am thinking of values as expressions of energy that form the living boundaries connecting me with others. With Marie I am valuing her search for appropriate ways of representing her living standards in a way that is evidence-based and can communicate with others. I am valuing both the process of enquiry learning and the substantive content focused on living standards of educational judgement.

In thinking about my ability to distinguish the educational influences of the expression and recognition of our embodied values in our learning I focus on a shift in my understanding of relationships and a change in Marie’s willingness to engage in a self-study of her own learning that she will make public through her writings. Marie has influenced my awareness of the importance of acknowledging the importance of inclusionality within equal power relations. She has also heightened my awareness of the need to resist relating to her within a superviser~supervised relationship that involves unequal power relations. I believe that I have influenced Marie, through being receptively responsive to her interests, concerns, values, skills and understandings to improve the quality of her self-study into her educational influence through becoming more self-aware of how she is perceived by others in enhancing their learning.

I~we are fascinated by the possibility that some of the values, skills and understandings we are now sharing are helpful to others in creating their own forms of life in their workplaces and other social contexts. This fascination is connected with my~our desire to influence the education of social formations as well as self and other individuals. The power of a collective response in educating social formations often has greater influence than the actions of an individual. Hence i~we are interested in enhancing the flow of values that carry hope for the future of humanity with collective actions that serve this purpose. To this end Jack is working within the Academy to see if he can contribute to a transformation in the standards of judgement that are used to legitimate what counts as educational knowledge. It is his belief that the living standards of judgement, such as love, compassion, justice, freedom, care, enquiry learning and knowledge-creation, that have already been legitimated in the living educational theories flowing through web-space, are making a contribution to this transformation. Jack’s attention is now re-focusing on spreading the influence of this recognition and legitimation in local, regional, national and global social formations. Hence the embodied values we have referred to in this paper are increasingly being expressed as sociocultural relations that can influence the learning of social formations with living theories and standards of judgement. Jack and Marie want to further explore the possibility of connecting the evidence legitimated within the academy with the need for an evidential base of the educational living values as standards of judgement of educators in the local authority and schools by which they can be held to be publicly accountable.

Who are we connecting to with the Tuesday Group in mind? Where are we going?

We have seen inclusional pedagogy in action, for instance in the writings of people like Moira Laidlaw and Erica Holly and [MH2] in the video clips that Ed and Louise have shared with the Tuesday group and in the picture of the child offering to Belle [MH3] . Louise has commented on the inclusional educational nature of Jack as educator in the Tuesday group which is similar to the observations Marie made which led to Jack researching his own practice as educator

The common features are the sensitive consideration of the educator seeking to understand the ‘students’ enquiry, the skills and understandings that the student can bring to it from within, helping the student to bring these to the fore and offering tools and possibilities from their experience, skills and understandings to the student This is perhaps a brief description of ‘learner centred’ learning that many educators are seeking to move towards. What we see that we value, which takes it beyond this, is the educator opening themselves to the offering of superior understandings and skills of the student – valuing the student as a true co-creator of valued knowledge. There is an expectation of the student and the educator that the student has a ‘responsibility’ to give as well as take. We believe that this opens up the possibility for the student to be twice affirmed [MH4] It connects the cognitive and affective and contributes to the students experience of themselves as valued creators of knowledge, with an acknowledge and valued educational influence in their own learning and the learning of others.

We hear some of the shift towards a similar valuing in terms such as dependent (where the teacher as instructor delivers the given curriculum to the child who receives and some interpretations of mentoring) to independent (which is child centred learning, where the teacher is connecting with the individuals personal learning intentions, with ‘coaching’ rather than mentoring beginning to be emphasised ) to interdependent learning (the move towards creating communities of enquiry, teachers are described as lead learners, enquiry based learning, the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) project and John Westburnham’s [MH5] work on profound learning connects).

We believe in the clips from Moira, Branko, Louise, Sue and ourselves we have evidence of our inclusional pedagogies at work that resonate closely with Margaret Farren’s doctorate on ‘How can I create a pedagogy of the unique through a web of betweenness?’ (see above). We think Ed is demonstrating his inclusional pedagogy in his genuine thanking the lad at the end of the lesson. We think Louise is expressing her inclusional pedagogy in taking the description of a shape and connecting it with other children’s learning. Louise specifically says she does not know and is genuinely interested in a question one of the children offers.[MH6]

As Marie looks at her experience of working with Jack she can see the shift needed for her to express her value of inclusional pedagogy more fully. This has happened as we have shared our intention to live our values of inclusionality more fully. This can be seen it in the change of the titles of this paper, the balance of the voices in the paper, the connections being made with other contexts and in our understandings extending to include our wider sociocultural contexts (e.g. DFES, NCSL).

Each has begun to acknowledge and seek to use and bring out of the other their superior [MH7] knowledge and connect it with the individual and shared enquiries. The roles and responsibilities of Jack as supervisor and Marie as supervised are still expressed as previously understood but have become extended. We are beginning to reflect on our lived experiences of an inclusional pedagogy with the thoughts that it does not necessarily supersede but embraces the others. What is seen of the interplay between educator and student at any one time may appear to represent other pedagogies, for instance giving information or the use of direct instruction, but through the shared power and the implicit responsibility that each has towards the other, they are subordinated within the overarching intention of creating valued knowledge within and between the enquirers.

What we have to offer from this self study is our emotional and cognitive progression through the expression of new living standards of judgement. Marie has experienced the ‘pain’ and struggle of moving her learning (and she acknowledges that she as learner is the only one able to improve her own learning) and has come to understand that for an inclusional educational relationship to exist a shift is needed not only from Jack as educator but also in Marie as learner. Jack has experienced the tensions of an educator who is seeking to resist the imposition of his hierarchical view of the work through responding to Marie’s interests and needs.

We have experienced ourselves as living contradictions in our response as educators who do not want at the moment to behave as interdependent learners and the emotional threat we feel to the opening of ourselves – a vulnerability of not having a claim to superior knowledge without acknowledging the superior knowledge of the other. We talk of risk taking for children and feel the need to sustain our own integrity by addressing the risks for educators in remaining open to the possibilities for learning and education that life itself permits.

We see Meg, Nina, James, Vic, Vicky, Richard, Louise, Robyn, Steve, Claire, Juliet, Louise, Ed and Ros being willing to take risks in staying open to explore these possibilities and we are looking forward to continuing our learning together in this Summer Term.

In the same spirit we see Sue, Sue, Denise, Phil, Pete, Jo, Bob, and Louise in the Headteachers Pause for Thought group sharing their explorations of their leadership in the creation of their schools as inclusional educational communities through their enquiries into their leadership in their own learning and we are looking forward to continuing to contribute to their energising collaboration and extend their influence.

Finally in the Breakfast Conversation Cafes with Nigel, Lynn, Chris, Kate, Kathie, Clare, Mary, and Deborah, we see the core of living connections between services and strategies in the local authority expressing and evidencing their living and loving educational values. We look forward to the continued journey from action learning to action research and the experimentation with different forms of documentation which communicate the standards of judgement we seek to be accountable to.

Bataille, G. (1987) Eroticism. London, New York; Marion Boyars

Cho, D. (2005) Lessons of love: psychoanalysis and teacher-student love. Educational Theory, Vol. 55, No. 1, pp. 79-95.

Rayner, A. (2006) Essays and talks about ‘Inclusionality’ by Alan Rayner. Retrieve 6/05/06 from http://www.bath.ac.uk/~bssadmr/inclusionality/