For the Monday Group and an Invitation to Colleagues:
5.00-7.00 1WN 3.8 on 12/06/06
After we've caught up with each others' news from the week
I'm hoping that we can give some time to exploring Alan's idea of dynamic
incompleteness to help to inform our inclusional enquiries. Je Kan is now
posting writings for his doctoral thesis at http://www.living-action-research.org/PhD_index.htm
and is inviting our responses.
After last night's conversation John left a paper by Jana
Milloy of Simon Fraser University on Gesture of absence: Eros of Writing (Janus Head, 8(2), 545-552, 2005). Do have a look at
John's webpage at http://pubpages.unh.edu/~jds/
which includes this point about his social ecological approach:
"In recent times I have begun to look beyond current versions of Social
Constructionism, toward the surrounding circumstances making such a movement
possible. Indeed, many versions of Social Constructionism still seem to me to
be deeply 'infected' with the Cartesianism that in fact they aim to overcome.
They have not yet moved on from a world of dead, mechanically structured
activities to a world of living, embodied beings, spontaneously responsive to
each other. The move first to a focus on joint action, then to dialogically-structured or 'chiasmically
organized' (see Merleau-Ponty, 1968) activities, is a central
part of my interest in participatory modes of life and
inquiry. In my "Social Accountability..." book, I called my approach
a social ecological one, and it is to this approach that I have returned.
I will be posting my recent writing along these lines below."
You can download Jana Milloy's paper from:
http://www.janushead.org/8-2/milloy.pdf
The paper supports Margarida's insistence on the importance of proprioception, Alan's idea of dynamic incompleteness and our fascination with language in explaining educational influences in learning:
"How can we make language more experiential? Is there a possibility of a text, of a language, that would linger closer to the flesh, that would engage kinesthetically with meaning inscribed in the body? What words could move the absences and intimacies of living in the flesh into language?' (Milloy, 2005, p. 547).
It also connects with Eleanor's exploration of Eros in her thesis on Love at Work. It's a great feeling to experience the loving warmth of humanity that Martin Dobson asked me to share in the Department of Education, in both Eleanor's thesis and in the flow of last night's conversation. I've just finished a transcript of a video-clip of Yaqub in the Addiction to Conflict session from the Unhooked Thinking Conference and I'm feeling Yaqub expressing a similar loving warmth in his communication with the audience. John has also sent through a pdf file of Taptiklis' ideas on Storymaking from the Storymaker Foundation for Narrative knowledge, NZ, suggesting Marie and Marian might find this particulary interesting. You can access this at:
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/shotter/shotter.pdf (it's nearly one Mb so takes time to download)
Do please register and then contribute to the guest e-forum for the 7th World Congress on Action Learning, Action Research and Process Management (21-24 August, 2006 in Groningen), at:
http://www.wcar2006.nl/forum/viewforum.php?f=1&sid=42a800b0558d6f066ea42db8e6005746
in the theme on Evidence Of Our Standards In Accounting For Ourselves and/or Unhooked Well-Being, or start off your own thread.
There are over 20 living theory theses and dissertations with live urls (see http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/living.shtml) to take others to the evidence of your educational influences in your own learning, in the learning of others and/or the learning of social formations. Each individual has a unique constellation of values, so do please enable others to connect with the writings that show the meanings of your own living standards in action. We've 10 weeks before the face to face sessions at the Congress and I'd like to draw on the archive of our conversations/correspondences to demonstrate what we are doing and learning in our particular contexts.
If you go into the details for last night's Monday evening conversation at http://www.jackwhitehead.com/monday/m050606.htm you can scroll to the bottom and access the text-based and multi-media account of Marie's and Jack's exploration of:
How are we co-creating living standards of
judgement in action-researching our professional practice?
We conclude the multi-media account with:
"We want to focus attention on the five doctorates
that have been awarded under the change of regulation at the University of Bath
in 2004 that allowed the submission of e-media. This removed some of the
limitations in textual representations that relied solely on meanings being
communicated through a printed page. With the multi-media living theory
accounts below, new living and inclusional standards of judgment have been
legitimated in the Academy. The living educational theories are flowing through
web-space as sociocultural artefacts that are freely available for all those
with the appropriate web-technology.
Church, M. (2004) Creating an
uncompromised place to belong: Why do I find myself in networks? Retrieved 25
May 2006 from http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/church.shtml
Farren, M. (2005) How can
I create a pedagogy of the unique through a web of betweenness.
Ph.D. University of Bath. Retrieved 25 May 2006 from http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/farren.shtml
Hartog, M. (2004) A Self
Study Of A Higher Education Tutor: How Can I Improve My Practice? Ph.D.
University of Bath. Retrieved 25 May 2006 from http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/hartog.shtml
Lohr, E. (2006) Love
at Work: What is my lived experience of love, and how may I become an
instrument of love's purpose? Retrieved 25 May 2006 from http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/lohr.shtml
Naidoo, M. (2005) I am Because We Are. (My
never-ending story) The emergence of a living theory of inclusional and
responsive practice. Retrieved 25 May 2006 from http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/naidoo.shtml
In each living theory an individual holds themselves to account, in the
explanation for their learning, for living a life in which they are seeking to
live as fully as they can the values that give meaning and purpose to their
lives. Marian Naidoo explicitly presents an emergent living theory of
inclusional and responsive practice. In researching our question How are
we co-creating living standards of judgment in action-researching our
professional practices? we are learning from the original contributions to
knowledge of each of these researchers. Through our dialogues we form and share
ideas. We produce accounts of learning in the public domain for critical
evaluation and which we can return to as evidence of our thinking and learning
at a particular time and in a particular context. We are exploring the
possibility that the new epistemology for the new scholarship advocated by
Schon (1995) requires new living standards of judgment. We have explained our
processes of co-creating such standards from our embodied values of equality in
power relations, life-affirming energy, a loving passion for education in
learning and knowledge-creation, enquiry learning, and a receptively responsive
systemic influence in the education of social formations."
We are hoping that this ending might prompt the beginning of your
contribution (I know that Pip, Marie, Alon, William and Je Kan have already
made contributions – we could respond to these) to the World Congress
e-forum!
You can access Professor Moira Laidlaw's Inaugural Address at Ningxia Teachers University for
the 13th June 2006 on, How Might We Enhance the Educational Value of our Research-base at the New University in Guyuan?
Researching Stories for the Social Good.
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/china/mlinaugural.pdf
Love Jack.