For the Monday Group and invitation to colleagues.
5.00-7.00 1WN 3.8 Monday 24th January 2005.
Because of the ending of Monday's conversation on the 17th Jan. with Joao talking about the importance of touch in giving sensory support, Margarida's passion for pleasure in learning and with Ken's explorations of the importance of dance in communication, I thought we might return to this conversation with the further stimulus of an e-mail from Erica
"Jack,
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 2 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 facinating. 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?"
I'm hoping that the third phase
of my life-long research programme into the growth of my educational
knowledge on 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?' will go some way to answering Erica"s question about
inclusional meanings of living standards of judgement.
(see http://www.jackwhitehead.com/jwartl141015weba.htm
)
Jean, Alan,
Jackie, Paulus, Erica, Moira, Maggie, Mary, Je Kan, James, Marian, Ram and
Eleanor - as I'm making a claim to have co-created inclusional meanings of
living standards of educational judgement through your educational influence in
my learning, it would be good to hear if you think I'm on the inside of your
meanings!
Working in
the spirit of inclusionality means it would be good to hear your voices with
mine in the paper (don't hesitate to suggest I replace or add to what I'm
saying by something you think is better – see Moira's addition of the picture
of the Mother and Child in China and Eleanor's piece on love that I used to
point out one of my 'core blindnesses')
There's a
Reading Group in the Department of Education, convened by our new Prof. Harry
Daniels. A paper is circulated and then we get together to explore the
meanings. It's a great way to share ideas, keep up to date with our thinking
and develop our critical evaluations of the ideas of others (and our own) in
relation to our work as educational researchers. Yesterday's paper was Ole
Dreier's (1999) Paper on Personal Trajectories of Participation across Contexts
of Social Practice. Outlines. 1 (1), 5-32. Retrieved 20th Jan. 2005
from
As we bring
our critiques of each others' ideas and the ideas of others into our
conversations we could strengthen what Pat D'Arcy has always emphasized. That
is the capacity to make aesthetically engaged and appreciate responses to each
others' accounts. I've worked on this in my response to Ole Dreier's paper at:
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/jwrestoDreier.htm
You
might like to do the same. I did like what Dreier writes about 'stances' and I
can see the development of inclusional meanings of living standards of judgement
as the development of a 'stance'.
I found myself wondering if Dreier's acceptance of his conceptualisations of 'subject' and
'social practice' as unproblematic norms in his discourse created a 'core
blindness' that could prevent him from seeing the significance of the heuristic
of human existence for a theory of the person being developed by Alon in his
doctoral enquiry.
Very
good news from Cheryl. Her paper from her AERA 03 presentation is due to be
published by Reflective Practice in February 2005.
Mary's
been very busy since her graduation last July and her news is that:
"I
noticed that Paulus is doing work on diversity, and you may recall that I
have
also done some work in this area around student learning with
colleagues
at Middlesex. Infact, we took a paper to the Knowledge Management
conference
at Greenwich in the summer. It has been accepted for publication
in
a Knowledge Management (refereed) Journal, and we have just rejigged it.
I
to will be published later this year.
I attach for your information a
copy
of the paper that we have submitted.
I
have also sent a paper into Reflective Practice for consideration for the
Special
Issue for May 2005. The Special Issues has arisen from last summers
conference
proceedings, and Tony is proposing to include around 20 short
papers. As I wasn't a presenter but a
participant, I think I may have to
stand
in line. However, the paper is on
working with memoir to facilitate
rationality
and justice in our work, as a vehicle for reflection, and I have
drawn
in the use of the Belenky framework as a second level of reflection
for
this work. It is a short piece circa 2,500 words, see attached. I will
let
you know if it gets accepted. If not, I will try again with a longer
piece. I am still waiting to hear from Ashgate
about the proposal to
publish
my thesis. They have said in
principle they are interested and have
sent
out the WWK chapter to a reviewer."
Mark
Williams is connecting our Monday evening conversations with the VisionSpace
action research group he is convening from Edith Cowan University and I'll add
whatever I receive from this Australian group in the What's New Section of http://www.actionresearch.net .
After
we've caught up with each others news do let's start with Erica's letter.
Love
Jack.