Can I
communicate the educational influence of my embodied values, in self-studies of
my own education, in the education of others and in the education of social
formations, in a way that contributes to a scholarship of educational enquiry?
DRAFT 12 June 2004
Jack
Whitehead, Department of Education, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY.
(My thanks to
the gentle urgings of Linda Fitzgerald and Deborah Tidwell Ð without their
expressed desire for inclusionality this presentation would not have been made)
At the AERA 2004 Symposium of the S-STEP SIG on ÒThe transformative potential
of individuals' collaborative self-studies for sustainable global educational
networks of communicationÓ practitioner-researchers shared the following commitments:
ÒWe
are a group of teachers, professional educators, and education administrators,
working across the levels of education systems. Each of us asks, ÔHow do I
improve what I am doing for personal and social good?Õ Each of us aims to
generate our personal educational theories (Whitehead, 1989) to show how we are
doing so through our contributions to the education of social formations in our
own settings. This symposium is an opportunity to test the validity of these
claims against the critical judgement of peers, in the spirit of the AERA
organisers' themes, to make public a consideration of 'what counts as evidence
in high-quality educational research, how educational research informs and is
informed by practice, and the nature of the social, political, and historical
contexts in which educational research is conducted and used' (see http://www.aera.net) (AERA 2003).
This
Fifth International Conference of S-STEP on ÔJourneyÕs of Hope: Risking
Self-Study in a Diverse WorldÕ, offers another context with s-step researchers,
to continue this process of validation by providing time for a more sustained
focus on the validity of a claim to know how to transform ontological
commitments in a self-study of educational influence into living and
epistemological standards of judgement. Part of this context is provided by the
38 contributions by s-step researchers in the International Handbook of
Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices with what I think is a shared concern
with ontology:
ÒThe
consideration of ontology, of oneÕs being in and toward the world, should be a
central feature of any discussion of the value of self-study researchÓ (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2004, p.)
If
the claims I make stand up to your critical evaluations in relation to their
evidential base then the outcome will be a contribution to the new scholarship
of educational enquiry. I am
thinking particularly of a contribution to the epistemology of the new
scholarship in terms of the living and communicable standards of judgement that
can be used to test the validity of claims to educational knowledge that are
being made from within a living theory approach to self-study.
This
focus on the nature of living standards of judgement follows my contributions
to conversations in s-step communities on the significance of including ÔIÕ as
a living contradiction in enquiries of the kind, ÔHow do I improve what I am
doing?Õ It also follows a contribution on the significance of contributing to
the knowledge-base of education a story of oneÕs learning in such enquiries as
an explanation that constitutes oneÕs own living educational theory.
In
the context of my work in higher education my supervision and support for
action research programmes includes practitioner researchers with a range of
different enquiries into their own personal and professional contexts. As far
as I understand both self-study and action research, action research
necessarily involves a self-study because the practitioner-researcher is
studying his or her own practice. However, self-study does not necessarily
involve doing action research. There are many ways of studying the self that do
not involve engaging in enquiries that are focused on improving oneÕs own
practice, oneÕs understanding of that practice or of understanding and
improving the social context in which the practice is located.
Having
said that my self-studies of my teaching and teacher education practices are
focused on the growth of my educational knowledge in understanding my
educational influence in the learning of action researchers as they engage in a
process of self-realisation within their educational enquiries. My self-studies
are also focused on understanding the influence of living educational theories
in the education of social formations.
My
choice of focus on my educational relationships with doctoral researchers is
because of the extended period of time of their research programmes. The
minimum period of supervision for the doctorates in the living theory section
of http://www.actionresearch.net
is five years and the maximum is eight years with a period of two yearÕs
suspension. This gives time to understand the meanings of the individualÕs
ontological values and their clarification and transformation in the course of
their emergence in practice into living and communicable epistemological
standards of judgement.
Participants
in this validation exercise are invited to evaluate the validity of my claims
to educational knowledge as I continue to create my living educational theory.
My claims are:
i)
That
I can communicate the educational influence of my embodied ontological
values in explanations of my learning in self-studies of my own education, in
the education of others and in the education of social formations.
ii)
That I can demonstrate how my embodied ontological
values can be clarified in the course of their emergence in my educational
relationships and transformed, in this process of clarification, into
communicable and living epistemological standards of judgement.
I am seeing the significance of my claim in terms of a
contribution to a scholarship of educational enquiry that shows how embodied
ontological values can be clarified in the course of their emergence in
educational relationships. The key epistemological point is that the embodied
values are transformed, in the process of their clarification and emergence,
into epistemological and living standards of judgement that can be used to
evaluate the validity of the knowledge claims.
In
SchšnÕs terms, I see that, the problem of introducing and legitimizing in
the university the kinds of action research associated with the new scholarship
is one not only of the institution but of the scholars themselvesÓ. (Schšn, 1995, p.34)
What
Schšn means by this is that the development of an epistemology of practice for
the new scholarship will be hindered by a double impediment. He says that on
the one hand there is the power of disciplinary in-groups that have grown up
around the dominant epistemology of the research universities. On the other
hand there is the inability of those who might become new scholars to make
their practice into appropriately rigorous research. (Schšn, 1995, p.34)
This presentation can be seen as a continuing enquiry
into the implications of the question that formed my address to the British
Educational Research Association in 1988 on ÔHow do we Improve Research-based Professionalism
in Education? - A question which includes action research, educational theory
and the politics of educational knowledge.Õ (Whitehead, 1998). If I can make my
practice into appropriately rigorous research it can also be seen as a
contribution to what counts as evidence in self-studies of teacher education
practices in claims to know oneÕs educational influence in the education of
oneself, of others and of social formations (Whitehead 2004a).
From
the ground of my personal knowledge of a flow of a cosmic life-affirming energy
of well-being in my educational practices as a supervisor of educational
research programmes, I will invite the participants in this validation exercise
to engage in a dialectic of question of answer in relation to the answers I
have given (Whitehead, 2004b) to the questions:
In
my being with you in the here and now am I communicating a flow of cosmic
life-affirming energy of well-being in my relationships with you? In considering the values
that carry hope for the future of humanity I am suggesting that this cosmic
life-affirming energy of well-being carries such hope.
Do
video-clips of supervision sessions with doctoral practitioner-researchers,
together with my commentary, justify my claim that I express this flow of an
energy of well-being in my educational relationships? I now want to show some very short
video-clips to communicate my meaning of a flow of a life-affirming energy of
well-being.
Can
I communicate the meanings of an ontological expression of an inclusional 'will
to live' and 'will to knowledge', through a Daughter's birth, into a productive
life in my educational relationships?
Joan,
my wife, gave birth to our daughter Rebecca on the 23rd December 1975. She was
born 9 weeks prematurely and weighed one kilogramme. My first sight of her was
in an intensive care incubator, looking still and frail but breathing. The
nurse with me said that perhaps she should be Christened because she might not
last the night. Not being a Christian caused me to pause and shake my head. The
nurse left. Now, I have never focused my will to live and give (gift) life as I
did in being with Rebecca. I have never forgotten focusing the power of my own
life-affirming energy of well-being into an inclusional 'will to live' with
Rebecca. I imagine that you can feel enough of my life-affirming energy to
comprehend the nature of that focused will and the embodied value I am
expressing.
I
think that I bring this focused 'will to live' into my educational
relationships as it is transformed and expressed as a 'will to knowledge' in
living a productive life. While it may appear a little strange to some readers
that I am bringing into my account, at this point, my economic theory of living
a productive life, I do recognise the validity of the claim that no
sophisticated theory of education can ignore its contribution to economic
development (Halsey, Lauder, Brown, & Wells; 1997, p. 156) I draw my articulation of an economic
theory of human capability and distinguish this theory from the economic theory
of human capital with the ideas of Amartya Sen (2001).
For
Sen the yardstick of assessment between the two economic theories concentrates
on their different achievements:
Given
her personal characteristics, social background, economic circumstances and so
on, a person has the ability to do (or be) certain things that she has reason
to value. The reason for valuation can be direct (the functioning involved may
directly enrich her life, such as being well-nourished or being healthy), or
indirect (the functioning involved may contribute to further production, or
command a price in the market). The human capital perspective can-in
principle-be defined very broadly to cover both types of valuation, but it is
typically defined-by convention-primarily in terms of indirect value: human
qualities that can be employed as "capital" in production (in the way
physical capital is). In this sense, the narrower view of the human capital
approach fits into the more inclusive perspective of human capability, which
can cover both direct and indirect consequences of human abilities. (p. 293)
Sen
goes on to say that there is a crucial valuational difference between the human-capital
focus and the concentration on human capabilities - a difference that relates
to some extent to the distinction between means and ends:
The
acknowledgment of the role of human qualities in promoting and sustaining
economic growth-momentous as it is-tells us nothing about why economic growth
is sought in the first place. If, instead, the focus is, ultimately, on the
expansion of human freedom to live the kind of lives that people have reason to
value, then the role of economic growth in expanding these opportunities has to
be integrated into that more foundational understanding of the process of
development as the expansion of human capability to lead more worthwhile and
more free lives. (p. 295)
From
within an economic theory of human capability I see my productive life in
education as being concerned with enhancing the flow of values, skills and
knowledge that carry hope for the future of humanity in the education of individuals and their social formations
and with stemming the flow of values and knowledge that do not carry such hope.
My approach to enhancing the flow of values, skills and knowledges that carry
this hope is through the influence of my supervision of research programmes. I
see my productive life in terms of my effectiveness in supporting those
individuals, whose values, skills and knowledges I respect, to bring their embodied knowledge into the
Academy for legitimation, in the form of their living educational theories of
their learning as they ask, research, and answer questions of the kind, ÔHow do
I improve what I am doing?Õ
I
believe that the productivity of my 'will to knowledge' is experienced by
students I work with as a certainty that their embodied knowledges and values
should live in the Academy as legitimated educational knowledge. I think that I
communicate this as a belief that their originality of mind and critical
judgements will enable them to bring this knowledge into the Academy. These
beliefs have some support in the acknowledgements in the theses in the living
theory section of http://www.actionresearch.net
.
In
addition to the above expressions of a flow of a cosmic life-affirming energy
of well-being, an inclusional will to live that connects with my will to
knowledge and desire for a productive life, I also value the expression of a
loving warmth of humanity.
How
do I express the meaning of a loving warmth of humanity through a Father's
death, a Son's birth and a Colleague's death.
When
my Father died in 1990, my son Jonathan, aged 10, was with us both and the
experience was one of helping my Father let go of life while included in the
love of his family, including his wife, my mother and JonathanÕs grandmother,
Alice. Again, I imagine that those of you who have experienced the death of a
parent, or have empathized with those experiencing the death of a parent, can
bear witness to, rather than comprehending, the process of grieving. Feeling a
loving warmth of humanity emerging through grief does, in my experience, feed
life with death rather than feeding death with life (Rayner, 2003).
The
loving warmth of humanity I experienced with my Father through his death and
that emerged through the grief resonates closely with the loving warmth of
humanity I experienced with my wife Joan and son Jonathan at Jonathan's birth
in 1979. In this experience the loving wamth of humanity emerged through the
pleasure of the joy in Jonathan's birth.
I
also experienced a loving warmth of humanity with Martin Dobson, a colleague I
worked with for 20 years. Martin exuded this warmth wih a pleasure of
recognition in our daily contact. I last saw him a few days before his death
through cancer, after a long illness. Close to his death and knowing this with
certainty, Martin held my gaze and asked me to 'Give my love to the
Department'. Now, I am not sure why I found it difficult (and still feel a
twinge of embarrassment) to publicly carry my expression of Martin's loving
warmth of humanity, through my own, to others. Yet, I continue to try to bring
this quality as a living standard of judgement into the Academy because I
believe that such a loving warmth of humanity, if expressed more freely in the
world, would help the world to become a better place to be.
Some
of you will have received e-mails from me with the signature Love Jack.that
seeks to carry this quality of loving relationship and hope for the future of
humanity.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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.
I am
identifying such a loving warmth of humanity with the values of a kind and
judicious parent. In English Law teachers are held to be in 'loco parentis'
which means in the place of a parent. In Canadian Law the phrase is in place of
a 'kind and judicious parent'. Evidence for my belief that we will be able to
transform the embodied values of a loving (kind and judicious) parent into
living standards of educational judgement is beginning to emerge in the
accounts of teacher-researchers. For example, Lisa Percy, a teacher at John
Bentley School in Wiltshire England is enquiring into the meaning and
educational influence of her value of 'in loco parentis' and you can
access some of her writings on 'Should teachers be parents too?' at:
http://www.actionresearch.net/module/lpparentis.htm
I
think that it bears repeating that my ontological commitments to a
life-affirming energy of well-being and a loving warmth of humanity are also
accompanied by my ontological value of living a productive life in education.
As I have said I think I do this through my educational relationships as a
tutor and supervisor to practitioner-researchers on the continuing professional
development and research degree programmes at the University of Bath. To
include such a commitment in an explanation of educational influence, I need to
show the transformation from the embodied value of a productive life into an
epistemological standard of judgement for testing the validity of my
explanation.
How
can my ontological commitment to living a productive life be expressed as an
epistemological standard of judgment?
I
recall the passion behind my decision in 1966 to become a teacher. Looking
back, on my experiences of education in school and university at the age of 22,
I recognise that many of my teachers were well-meaning and enthusiastic about
communicating their subject knowledge. What I felt that I lacked were
educational relationships in which I was related to as an individual with his
own embodied knowledge and values that were worthy of recognition. I also felt
a lack of recognition of my capacities for creative and critical thought that
could have been engaged with in a process of enquiry learning. Hence my valuing
of the embodied knowledges and values of those I work with and my desire to
support their enquiry learning in the legitimation of their knowledge of this
learning, in the Academy.
So,
in explaining my productive life in education I see as significant my
ontological commitment to sustaining my passion for contributing to the
legitimation in the Academy of the embodied knowledges and values of
practitioner-researchers. This passion is grounded in the expression and
legitimation of my own originality of mind and critical judgement in my
educational knowledge-creation in the Academy. It was a source of great
satisfaction in 2000 to be able to place my own living theory doctorate
alongside those of the other researchers whose research programme I had helped
to supervise. I imagine that the evidential base, that shows my persistence in
the expression of this ontological passion, in the face of power relations that
could have constrained the creative expression of this passion (Whitehead, 1993),
is clear and strong in the successfully completed research programmes (http://www.actionresearch.net/living.shtml) for the living theory
doctorates and other degrees awarded to practitioner-researchers by the
University of Bath (Whitehead, 2004).
As I
contribute such accounts to the interconnecting and branching networks of
communication, made possible by the internet, I believe that I am producing
something of value as a human being in the ontological sense described by Marx
in his early writings:
Suppose
we had produced things as human beings: in his production each of us would have
twice affirmed himself and the other.
In
my production I would have objectified my individuality and its particularity,
and in the course of the activity I would have enjoyed an individual life, in
viewing the object I would have experienced the individual joy of knowing my
personality as an objective, sensuously perceptible, and indubitable power.
In
your satisfaction and your use of my product I would have had the direct and
conscious satisfaction that my work satisfied a human need, that it objectified
human nature, and that it created an object appropriate to the need of another
human being.
I
would have been the mediator between you and the species and you would have
experienced me as a re-integration of your own nature and a necessary part of
yourself; I would have been affirmed in your thought as well as your love.
In
my individual life I would have directly created your life, in my individual
activity I would have immediately confirmed and realized my true human nature. (Bernstein, p. 48, 1971)
So,
in being accountable to my ontological commitment to living a productive life
it is affirming to see that others find that my ideas and educational influence
have use-value within their own form of life. It is also important to me
because of this view of living a productive life, that I openly acknowledge the
influence that others have had in the creation of my own form of life.
Given
that I don't seem to avoid learning through enquiry I also recognise my
embrace of enquiry learning as an ontological commitment.
What
is my ontological commitment to enquiry learning?
By
an ontological commitment to enquiry learning I mean that I create and come to
understand myself through a process of question and answer. My ontological
questions include 'Who am I?' 'What am I doing' 'Why am I doing what I am
doing? and 'How am I improving what I am doing?'
As I
come to a better understanding of who I am, I see more clearly the embodied
values to which I hold myself accountable for living as fully as I can. These
values are a source of my experience of myself as a living contradiction as I
find myself working in relationships and contexts where some of my values are
negated in what I am doing. As I clarify my values, in the course of their
emergence in my practice of enquiry learning, they are transformed, through
this process of clarification, into the living standards of judgment I use to
test the validity of my knowledge-claims. In other words the values in my
ontological commitments provide the source for my epistemological standards of
judgment. This is such an important connection for me because my sense of
identity includes my sense of living a productive life by extending the
influence of values that carry hope for the future of humanity, through
education and knowledge-creation.
To
emphasise my sustained commitment to enquiry learning here is something I wrote
in 1980 about questioning:
ÒGadamer's ideas appealed to me because I
could identify with his emphasis on the importance of forming a question. For
Gadamer, questioning is a 'passion'. He says that questions press upon us when
our experiences conflict with our preconceived opinions. He believes that the art of questioning is not the
art of avoiding the pressure of opinion.
"It is not an art in the sense
that the Greeks speak of techne, not a craft that can be taught and by means of
which we would master the knowledge of truth".
Drawing on Plato's Seventh Letter, Gadamer distinguishes the unique character of
the art of dialectic. He does not
see the art of dialectic as the art of being able to win every argument. On the
contrary, he says it is possible that someone who is practising the art of
dialectic, i.e. the art of questioning and of seeking truth, comes off worse in
the argument in the eyes of those listening to it. (Gadamer, 1975. p.330).
According to Gadamer,
dialectic, as the art of asking questions, proves itself only because the
person who knows how to ask questions is able to persist in his questioning. I see a characteristic of this persistence
as being able to preserve one's
openness to the possibilities which life itself permits. The art of
questioning is that of being able to continue with one's questions. Gadamer
refers to dialectic as the art of conducting a real conversation.
"To conduct a conversation
requires first of all that the partners to it do not talk at cross purposes.
Hence its necessary structure is that of question and answer. The first
condition of the art of conversation is to ensure that the other person is with
usÉ. To conduct a conversationÉ. requires that one does not try to out-argue
the other person, but that one really considers the weight of the other's
opinion. Hence it is an art of testing. But the art of testing is the art of
questioning. For we have seen that to question means to lay open, to place in
the open. As against the solidity of opinions, questioning makes the object and
all its possibilities fluid. A person who possesses the 'art' of questioning is
a person who is able to prevent the suppression of questions by the dominant
opinion.... Thus the meaning of a sentence is relative to the question to which
it is a reply (my emphasis) , i.e.
it necessarily goes beyond what is said in it. The logic of the human
sciences is, then, as appears from what we have said a logic of the question. Despite Plato we are not very ready for
such a logic." (pp.
330-333)
I was shocked by this last sentence. What
could it mean? Despite Plato we are not very ready for a logic of question and
answer. I read on with increasing excitement to the point where he states that
R.G. Collingwood developed the idea of a logic of question and answer, but
unfortunately did not develop it systematically before he died. Having
assimilated Gadamer's views on the art of conversation and of the necessity of
finding a common language I then found myself disagreeing with the following
ideas on the relationship between 'I', 'language' and 'the world'.
"Our enquiry has been guided by
the basic idea that language is a central point where 'I' and the world meet
or, rather, manifest their original unity." (p.
431)
The basic difference between Gadamer's
enquiry and my own is that I do not hold that language is a central point where
'I' and the world manifest their original unity. I begin with the experience of
'I' as a living contradiction in the world in which I am conscious of holding
values which are at the same time negated in practice. I have no understanding
of any 'original unity'. If there is to be unity I see my enquiry as an attempt to understand how to create a unity between 'I'
and the world.
I did however find myself in complete
accord with the following ideas of Collingwood (1939, Chapter 5. Question and
Answer) on the relationship between a dialectical, or question and answer form,
and the propositional form,
"I began by observing that you
cannot find out what a man means by simply studying his spoken or written
statements, even though he has spoken or written with perfect command of
language and perfectly truthful intention. In order to find out his meaning you
must also know what the question was (a question in his own mind, and presumed
by him to be in yours) to which the thing he has said or written was meant as
an answer(p.31).....
Here I parted company with what I
called propositional logic, and its offspring the generally recognized theories
of truth. According to propositional logic (under which denomination I include
the so-called 'traditional' logic, the 'idealistic' logic of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, and the 'symbolic' logic of the nineteenth and twentieth)
truth or falsehood, which are what logic is chiefly concerned with, belongs to
propositions as such (p.33-34)ÉÉ
By 'right' I do not mean 'true'. The
'right' answer to a question is the answer which enables us to get ahead with
the process of questioning and answering. ....It follows, too, and this is what
especially struck me at the time, that whereas no two propositions can be in
themselves mutually contradictory, there are many cases in which one and the
same pair of propositions are capable of being thought either that or the opposites,
according as the questions they were meant to answer are reconstructed in one
way or in another". (Collingwood,
1939. P. 37. Chapt.5)
I accept and live with Collingwood's
point below that there is an intimate and mutual dependence between theory and
practice, 'thought depending upon what the thinker learned by experience in
action, action depending upon how he thought of himself and the world'. I also accept the implications of
working in education as a vocation in the sense that education, as a value-laden
practical activity places a responsibility on the educator to live values in
practice. I see educators as moral agents in Collingwood's sense below.
" There were, I held, no merely
moral actions, no merely political actions, and no merely economic actions.
Every action was moral, political, and economic. But although actions were not
to be divided into three separate classes - the moral, the political and the
economic - these three characteristics, their morality, their politicality, and
their economicity, must be distinguished and not confused as they are, for
example, by utiliarianism, which offers an account of economicity when
professing to offer one of morality (p.149).....The rapprochement between
theory and practice was equally incomplete. I no longer thought of them as
mutually independent: It was that the relation between them was one of intimate
and mutual dependence, thought depending upon what the thinker learned by
experience in action, action depending upon how he thought of himself and the
world".(Collingwood,
1939. P.150)
These assumptions are open to challenge.
They will not be abandoned lightly but have been opened up for your criticism
because of my commitment to a view of research-based professionalism in
education in which it is a responsibility of the researcher to submit her or
his work to public tests of validity. I relate this commitment to Macintyre's
view (1988) that,
"The rival claims to truth of
contending traditions of enquiry depend for their vindication upon the adequacy
and the explanatory power of the histories which the resources of each of those
traditions in conflict enable their adherents to write." (p. 403)
I intend to make your criticisms welcome
and to 'practise what I preach' in the sense of helping to develop a
conversational research community in which you experience the value of academic
freedom in helping to take your own enquiries forward.Ó (Whitehead, 1999, pp.
25-29)
Because
much of my productive life is spent in the supervision of research programmes
to bring the embodied knowledge of practitioner-researchers into the Academy I
am living myself through others (Riding 2003). By living myself through others
I mean in the relational and inclusional sense that this aspect of my
productive life in dependent on others finding use-value in what I do and
integrating insights from what I do into their own form of life.
How
can I communicate an ontological commitment to an inclusional way of being in
my educational relationships with my students?
Perhaps
one of my clearest expressions of the development of an inclusional way of
being is the story of my enquiry learning and the growth of my educational
knowledge at the University of Bath between 1973-1993 (Whitehead, 1993). I
clarified my ontological commitment to an inclusional form of freedom in the
course of its emergence in my practice of enquiry as I persisted in the face of
pressures that according to the University might have constrained a less
determined individual! I have been fortunate to work with Judi Marshall
and Peter Reason in the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice at
the University of Bath as they have done so much to live their own lives of
inquiry (Marshall, 1997) and hold open a creative space for individual and
collaborative enquiries that has included my own work.
My
passion for enquiry learning with others is connected with my experience,
understandings and ontological commitment to the inclusionality of I-You
and We-I relationships. In my contribution to the AERA Symposium on The
transformative potential of individuals' collaborative self-studies for
sustainable global educational networks of communication, I wanted to communicate the
nature of my ontological commitments to inclusionality and collaboration before
I connected these commitments to the transformative potential of the internet
for supporting the development of sustainable global educational networks of
communication. Here is what I said:
Inclusionality
is an awareness that space, far from passively surrounding and isolating
discrete, massy objects, is a vital, dynamic inclusion within, around and
permeating natural form across all scales of organization, allowing diverse
possibilities for movement and communication. This awareness radically affects
the way we interpret all kinds of irreversible dynamic processes. (Rayner, p.1, 2004)
I
owe a debt to Martin Buber's work for helping me to express through language a
most significant ontological and inclusional commitment in my work to I-You
relations. I am thinking of I-You relations in the poetic sense communicated by
Martin Buber through his text I and Thou.
But
how beautiful and legitimate the vivid and emphatic I of Socrates sounds! It is
the I of infinite conversation, and the air of conversation is present on all
its ways, even before his judges, even in the final hour in prison. This I
lived in that relation to man which is embodied in conversation. It believed in
the actuality of men and went out toward them. Thus it stood together with them
in actuality and is never severed from it. Even solitude cannot spell
forsakenness, and when the human world falls silent for him, he hears his
daimonion say You.
How
beautiful and legitimate the full I of Goethe sounds! It is the I of pure
intercourse with nature. Nature yields to it and speaks ceaselessly with it;
she reveals here mysteries to it and yet does not betray her mystery. It
believes in her and says to the rose: "So it is You" - and at once
shares the same actuality with the rose. Hence, when it returns to itself, the
spirit of actuality stays with it; the vision of the sun clings to the blessed
eye that recalls its own likeness to the sun, and the friendship of the
elements accompanies man into the calm of dying and rebirth.
Thus
the "adequate, true, and pure" I-saying of the representatives of
association, the Socratic and the Goethean persons, resounds through the ages. (Buber, 1970, p. 117)
I
also recognise the importance of the point Buber makes about a relationship
between an educator and a student not achieving the full mutuality of
I-You relationships because of the special humility of the educator in
subordinating his or her own hierarchical view of the world to the particular
being of the student. Buber says that with the experience of full mutuality the
educative relationship breaks asunder or changes into friendship.
Because
I agree with Buber's point about mutuality in an educative relationship, I
describe my ontological commitment in my educative relationships, as a tutor or
supervisor, as a commitment to the inclusionality of We-I relationships. I
think that there is a quality of inclusionality in these We-I relationships
because I accept a responsibility to enable those I work with to bring their
embodied knowledge and values into the Academy as legitimate knowledge.
Now,
here is a most important tension in my educational relationships. Because of my
enthusiasm to live my values I may be experienced as imposing a colonising and
potentially damaging relationship on those I teach, tutor or supervise. I think
that all those I work with understand that I see my primary professional
responsibility being expressed in a We-I relationship which is focused on
enabling the other to bring their embodied knowledge into the Academy. In doing
this I think that I am doing something that those who seek my supervision want
me to do. Yet, there is always the danger that my intuitions about what is in
the interest of the other's learning may be mistaken. Hence my commitment to
enquiry learning and to learning that I am mistaken. Viewing video-tapes of
myself in my professional contexts is a useful reminder of the fallibility of
intuition and self-evaluation.
In
my educative relationships I am conscious that my own I-knowledge is
subordinate in the inclusionality of We-I relationships in my expression
of faith in the other's embodied knowledge. I am thinking here of the
inclusionality of We-I relationships in which I express my ontological
commitment to the other in my faith in their expression of their originality of
mind and critical judgement in bringing their embodied knowledges and values
into the public domain of the Academy. I am thinking of the educational
influence of the expression of my ontological commitment to support the construction
of a thesis by a practitioner-researcher. I am thinking of this influence in
relation to the embodied values of the other as these have been clarified in
the course of their emergence in their enquiry learning and so transformed into
communicable and living standards of judgement. The qualities of inclusionality
I have in mind are perhaps best expressed in Maggie Farren's research into her
pedagogy of the unique at Dublin City University ( http://webpages.dcu.ie/~farrenm/)
and
in the presentation of her ontological commitments to self-study in the S-STEP
SIG Symposium at AERA 2004.
I
also feel an ontological commitment to Peter Reason's and John Heron's
inclusional ideas of cooperative enquiry (http://www.bath.ac.uk/carpp/layguide.htm
). It is my
understanding of these enquiries that individuals work together in helping each
other to form and develop their own enquiries. We do this with a willingness to
account for ourselves and to others in terms of what we care about or, in my
terms, our embodied values. I associate the Monday evening educational
conversations at the University of Bath as a forum for such collaborative
enquiries. I can be seen, in the video-clip below expressing my
inclusional way of being in such a conversation on the 12th January 2004, as a
member of the group responding to Je Kan Adler-Collins as he prepared for a
transfer seminar on the 14th January to justify his transfer from a Masters
research programme to a Doctoral research programme.
You
can access my analysis of this meeting and judge my inclusional way of being
at:
http://www.actionresearch.net//Logics/jwpopper.htm
by
scrolling down to the nine photographs you can click on any one of the these to
see the video clips of each contribution. You can see me expressing my values
in my educational relationships at:
http://www.actionresearch.net//Logics/jackinc.mov
I
wouldn't try to access the 27 minute video without the fast transfer speeds of
a University network but the nine clips of individual contributions are
accessible through broadband connections. The individual contributions to the
conversation, including my own, communicate to me the quality of inclusionality
I am associating with We-I relationships in which the transformative potential
of individuals' collaborative self-studies was seen by Alan Rayner and myself
in the transfer seminar with Je Kan Adler-Collins where he communicated his
ideas from the ground of his own inclusional way of being.
My
ontological commitment to inclusionality, in the education of social
formations, is connected with my actions in contributing to sustainable global
educational networks of communication. Here is an example of what I mean by the
education of a social formation. Before 1991 the Regulations of the University
of Bath refused to permit the questioning of examiners' judgments of research
degrees under any circumstances. In 1988 Legislation in England and Wales
protected academic freedom under the law to question received wisdom. The
change in the University Regulations in 1991 to permit questions to be raised
on the grounds of bias, prejudice or inadequate assessment on the part of the
examiners is the kind of process I am referring to when I write about the
education of social formations. I am meaning that the regulatory principles of
a social formation move to support more fully the values that carry hope for
the future of humanity.
It
may sound strange to link my ontological commitments to technology, but I have
found that who I am and what I do is intimately linked to my use of technology.
I mean this in the sense that the tools I am able to use, help me to define who
I am and what I do. For example, in relation to sustainable global educational
networks of communication, I spend much time using the web-technology at http://www.actionresearch.net to add to the living
educational theory resources produced by self-study researchers. I do this
because I believe that the accounts of learning produced by these researchers,
as they seek to live their values more fully in their practice, carry hope for
the future of humanity. Each researcher I have worked with has contributed to
my well-being and productive life. None more so that Jean McNiff whose
sustained and sustaining companionship in our generative and
transformatory enquiries over the past 23 years was marked in 2001
in Jean's words as she placed the third edition of Action Research for
Professional Practice on the Web:
I
am placing the work here in celebration of two special events. The first event
is that I have (finally!) succeeded in establishing a web site. The second
event is that this year marks the twenty-first anniversary of my learning
partnership with Jack Whitehead.
http://www.jeanmcniff.com/booklet1.html
I trust that you can feel and see the influence of Jean's creative spirit in
our commitment to contribute to the development of sustainable global
educational networks of communication through our face-to-face communications
and our resources on the web. I think you will also feel and see the influence
of other self-study researchers in sustaining and extending our global
educational networks of communication. For example, in the Values section of http://www.actionresearch.net you will find:
Jackie
Delong's keynote address on, Action Research Implemented in The Grand Erie
DistrictSchool Board: Impact on Teacher Development, Improvement and the
Support System. to the Japanese Association of Educators for Human Development
on the 29th February, 2004 at:
http://www.actionresearch.net//monday/jdJapan04.htm
Jill Burton's keynote address - Seeking the Standard - presented at
Chulalongkorn University Language Institute's 5th international conference in
Bangkok, December, 2003, at:
http://www.actionresearch.net/values/jbCULIpap.htm
Developing Educational Methodologies through a Living Theory Approach to Action
Research.Moira Laidlaw's inaugural address (Laidlaw, 2004a) to China's
Experimental Centre for Educational Action Research in Foreign Languages
Teaching. Presented at the Londong Institute, 20 March 2004. at:
http://www.actionresearch.net//moira/mllect1.htm
Developing
Some Appropriate Standards of Judgement for our Action Research Enquiries in
China. Dr. Moira Laidlaw's Second Lecture (Laidlaw, 2004b) for The Londong
Institute, Gansu Province, 20 March, 2004, at:
http://www.actionresearch.net//moira/mlQingyang2.htm
Jean
McNiff's paper for an invitational seminar at Stellenbosch University, South
Africa, on 10th November 2003 - How do we develop a twenty-first Century
knowledge base for the teaching profession in South Africa? How do we
communicate our passion for learning? at:
http://www.actionresearch.net/values/jmstellsa.htm
Joan
Whitehead's Keynote address to the Standing Committee for the Education and
Training of Teachers Annual Conference 3rd-4th October 2003, Dunchurch. The
Future of Teaching and Teaching in the Future: a vision of the future of the
profession of teaching - Making the Possible Probable, at:
http://www.actionresearch.net/evol/joanw_files/joanw.htm
As part of a continuing enquiry into The transformative potential of
individuals' collaborative self-studies for sustainable global educational
networks of communication I also want to draw your attention to the BERA e-Seminar/Workshop
of the Practitioner-Researcher Special Interest Group 5th February Ð 19th June
which you can join at:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa.exe?SUBED1=bera-practitioner-researcher&A=1
Through
sharing our self-study research and contributing to the conversations on the
development of ontologically-based and living standards of judgement in
s-step research I believe that we are in a process of spreading the influence
of the educational knowledge and the values that carry hope for the future of
humanity. Amongst these values I recognise a commitment to post-colonial
practices. I associate such practices with my resistance to the experience of
power being used to undermine my identity and sense of integrity. I understand
the spirit of Ubuntu in the sense of 'a person is a person because of other
people to be a way of relating that stems the flow of power and values that do
not carry hope for the future of humanity.
What
do I mean by an ontological commitment to post-colonial practice in the spirit
of Ubuntu?
I
want to draw attention to the significance of the collaborative self-studies of
Paulus Murray and Pip Bruce-Ferguson for my educational enquiry. In seeing my
educational practices through an ontological commitment to post-colonial
practices and theorising I have been influenced by the spirit of Ubuntu
(Murray, 2004) that flows through Paulus Murray and which he expresses through
his relationships and writings. In an earlier presentation to an AERA S-STEP
seminar Paulus and I analysed our 'White and Black with White Identities in
Self-studies of Teacher-educator Practices (Murray & Whitehead, 2000). Some
more recent understandings are in a multi-media account of my living logics of
educational enquiry through which I express my meanings of Ubuntu and
post-colonial practice. I do this by pointing towards some limitations in both
a propositional logic of domination and a linguistic logic of dialectical
enquiry (Whitehead, 2004a) and showing how I transcend these limitations
through a living logic in an explanation of my educational influence. In my
post-colonial intentions, practices and theorising I am including my
ontological commitment to resist a range of different forms of colonising. One
of these is the imposition of a logic of domination on my ways of understanding
my experience and the world in which I live.
What
I have in mind here is the logic of domination used by Paul Hirst and Richard
Peters (1970) in their Logic of Education which led them to impose a structure
on practical decisions, impose wholeness on separate entities and impose the
'stamp' of this logic on the curriculum (Hirst & Peters, 1970, p. 17). This
logic supports the view that the practical principles, or embodied values, I
use to explain my educational influences are at best pragmatic maxims that have
a first crude and superficial justification in practice that in any rationally
developed theory would be replaced by principles with more theoretical
justification (Hirst, 1983, p.18).
I
began this paper by saying that as soon as I start to write about my
ontological commitments I am conscious that my language is inadequate to
express my meanings. Hence my interest in multi-media accounts for the
representation of the learning of s-step researchers and my emphasis on the
importance of the evidence of this learning in the contributions of our s-step
community for transforming the knowledge-base of education (Whitehead, 2004b).
I identify with the spirit of enquiry embodied in the life of enquiry of Pip
Ferguson as she began the March 2004 conversation of the e-Seminar/Workshop of
the Practitioner-Researcher Special Interest Group of the British Educational
Research Association. I leave you with some of the implications for the
politics of educational knowledge in Pip Bruce-Ferguson's questions and an
invitation to join in the on-going conversation at:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa.exe?SUBED1=bera-practitioner-researcher&A=1
Pip
is asking her questions as a practitioner-researcher in a Maori University.
Pip's questions resonate with my post-colonial intentions:
i)
Why, oh why, does the traditional Western system have to INSIST on written
expression as its highest pinnacle?
ii)
Should we, and if so how can we, cast off the mantle of privileging writing as
our main form of evidence of quality research?
and
perhaps the most challenging question of all:
iii)
How can we open up our practice to the richness of other cultures, and learn
to value their ways of being equally with our own?
If
we carry our ontological commitments into our practical explorations of the
implications of these questions we cannot avoid an engagement with the power
relations that legitimate what counts as educational knowledge in the Academy.
I have taken to heart Donald Schšn's (1995) point that the problem of
introducing and legitimizing in the university the kinds of action research
associated with the new scholarship is one not only of the institution but of
the scholars themselves (p.33).
Presentations
at AERA and BERA provide public forums in which I submit my accounts of my
learning for evaluation by my peers so that you may show me where I am mistaken
and stimulate my imagination to see how I might enhance my effectiveness. I am
holding myself accountable both to living my ontological commitments as fully
as I can in influencing the legitimation of the embodied knowledge of
professional educators and in communicating living theory accounts through
global and interconnecting networks of communication. I can be seen to be doing
this in the presentation on How do I live more fully the values that
continue to energise my life-long learning and influence in the education of
myself, others and social formations?
at: http://www.jackwhitehead.com/jbspaperclips/values16dec.html
Through
the video-clip in this visual narrative I believe that I am doing this by
enhancing the communicability of Alan Rayner's ontological commitment and
scholarly enquiry into inclusional ways of being. The narrative contains three
further video involving Gordon Trafford, a deputy headteacher and Nick Stanton,
a colleague of Gordon's at John Bentley School in England where we work
together in supporting a group of teacher-researchers. In the second video-clip
I can be seen explaining some of the limitations of permitting the educational
enquiries of s-step researchers to be constrained by the assumptions of
social science methodologies. The second and third clips show teachers learning
from their students as they create a school's mission statement about values
into practice, using the student's insights and language.
If
you access Is this a valid explanation of my use of inclusional, dialectical
and propositional logics in my living theory of my educational influence in my
learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of social formations?
Do my values carry the hope of Ubuntu for the future of humanity?
at: http://www.actionresearch.net//Logics/jwpopper.htm
you
can view the video-clip of a 27 minute Monday evening conversation at the
University of Bath on the 12 January 2004 when the group are helping Je Kan
Adler-Collins, a doctoral researcher and assistant Professor in the Faculty of
Nursing at Fukuoka University in Japan, prepare for his transfer seminar from
his M.Phil. to his Ph.D. programme on the 14 January (Successful). The second
set of 9 short clips focus on the contributions of individuals to the
conversation. The aim of the presentation is to communicate something of the
nature of the living logics I use in explanations of my educational influence.
To
conclude in recognition of Schšn's contribution to the development of my
understanding of a scholarship of educational enquiry I leave you with his point:
Hence,
introducing the new scholarship into institutions of higher education means
becoming involved in an epistemological battle. It is a battle of snails,
proceeding so slowly that you have to look very carefully in order to see it
going on. But it is happening nonetheless. (Schšn, 1995, p. 32)
and
the expression of hope in seeing that our combined contributions have speeded
up the process!
I
think the most impressive evidence of the influence of our s-step movement has
been gathered and edited by many members of S-STEP including John Loughran,
Mary Lynn Hamilton and Vicki LaBoskey and Tom Russell (2004) in The
International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching Practice. The evidence shows clearly
our s-step influences in the education of our Academies and other social
formations as our ontological values are transformed into living standards of
judgement. The evidence also shows that we are bringing our living knowledge of
our educational relationships into the Academy as we learn with and from each
other and with and from our students and as they do with us.
Marian
Naidoo is one such doctoral researcher of the University of Bath who is close
to submission. In a presentation to a Monday evening conversation in the
Department of Education, Marian gave a multi-media presentation that included
the following:.
"This
chapter opens with a video-clip of me explaining to Shaun (Marian's partner) the
reasons behind my choice of clips, which is being influenced by the importance
I place on my embodied values of inclusional relationship, responsive practice,
trust, love and respect for self and for others and the importance of living
life creatively."
the
presentation moved my colleague Alan Rayner to respond:
I
felt your 'love and respect' for (inner) self was evident in the radiance of
your performance, that allowed you fully to express and enjoy your empathy with
those you were portraying.
Of
all the ontological values that carry hope for the future of humanity I am
following Marian Naidoo in suggesting that enhancing the flow of love and
respect for self and for others, in the education of ourselves and the social
formations in which we work and live, would do much to ensure that we leave the
world a better place than it was when we came into it. I imagine that many of
us could live with this epitaph!
How
do I distinguish the life-affirming well-being in my laughter in stemming the
flow of values that threaten my well-being from a sadistic humour that reveals
an insensitivity to the suffering of others and which do not carry hope for the
future of humanity?
Like
the flow of life-affirming energy of well-being I find myself unable to explain
the source of the sudden eruption of laughter in the face of some living
contradictions. The four illustrations below from my supervision experiences
with Alon Serper, Jackie Delong, Paulus Murray and Je Kan Adler Collins could
be interpreted as my expression of a sadistic humour that reveals an
insensitivity to the suffering of others. Yet I experience the sudden release
of energy through the humour as a healthy expression of well-being. Alon is
with me today and we wonÕt know until the living moment how we express
ourselves and you experience the ontological value of our humour. Here is an
extract from AlonÕs writings to give you some idea of his focus on ontological
values in his enquiry into human existence:
I
am proposing a living solution and heuristic tool for the integrative,
holistic, dynamic, humanistic, naturalistic (Morse et al., 2002; Guba and Lincoln,
1981; Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Denzin, 1997) and unbiased conception and study
of the human subject and human existence in the world within real-life
situations and interrelations. A
heuristic tool that is authentic, firsthand, engaging, adaptable and
purposely-made for its task and for its interacting with its subject
matter. A heuristic tool that is
academic, systematic and scholarly, yet non-scholastic. I am putting forward the case for the
possibility of the implementation and use of the educational living action
research technique (Whitehead, 1985, 1989a, 2004b) in the study of human
existence. This comes with the
essential modification for the purpose of being accommodated to the different
task and objective for which it is borrowed. Thus, I am suggesting this technique for the study of the holistic, personalised (see James,
1890, chapter, 9 on consciousness), unique (Lomax and Parker, 1995), unreduced,
existing, emerging, becoming, constantly changing (James, 1890, chapter 9) and
continuously self-transforming, self-constructing, self-defining and
self-creating human subject (Serper, 1999, 2003, 2004). For the emerging individual being in
the world (Rogers, 1965, 1967, 1980; Nietzsche, 1967; May, 1953, 1967a, 1967b;
May et al., 1958). And for self-study
research into the ontology, of one's being in and toward the world in teaching and teacher-educational practices
(Bullough and Pinnegar, 2004).
(Serper, 2004, p.1)
The
expression of the embodied experience of humour through laughter does not appear
on any of the recent lists of professional standards of practice for teaching!
As a doctor educator I want to emphasise its important in my educative
relations. I am thinking of the humour that suddenly erupts spontaneously in an
educative relation. As I run the video-clip of Paul Murray and myself backwards
and forwards rapidly I think you will see our laughter. As you listen to the
clip you may vicariously experience the humour.
It's
significance may be understood in terms of Paul's enquiry into the influence of
his mixed race identity in his educative relations with his students. I think
we are both sensitive to the pain in Paul's mixed race identity and while we
enjoy each others' company and find humour in many things we have not laughed
so spontaneously about his mixed-race identity and my white identity. At the
moment of the humour it is also important to understand that Paul's black
father was called Jack, and that Paul was given away soon after birth because
his white mother could not 'pass' Paul as white to her white husband. The
justaposition of Paul's construction of a positive mixed-race identity in the
context of his educative relation to one Jack Whitehead, evoked the humour and
laughter.
Gregory
Bateson (1980, p. 124) has related humour to evolution. He says that the mere
fact of humour in human relations indicates that multiple typing is essential
to human communication. In the absence of logical typing he says that humour
would be unnecessary and perhaps could not exist. The significance of the
experience of humour I am sharing with you as a standard of educative relation,
through the video-clip is focused on the multiple typing of white and
mixed-race identities.
In
the clip with Jackie Delong the humour is focused on my Ôlack of praiseÕ. In
the clip with Je Kan Adler-Collins the humour is focused on my Ôlack of
compassionÕ.
In
the here and now of this educational journey of mine I am interested in hearing
your responses to my claims about the significance of showing how the meanings
of ontological values can be clarified in the course of their emergence in
practice and hence transformed into the living and communicable epistemological
standards of judgement of our s-step accounts. I am hopeful that the risks IÕve
taken in my educational relationships, some of which have been experienced
directly by participants in the Castle conferences and other S-STEP
presentations at AERA, have been part of an educational enquiry that can be
seen to be bringing more fully into the world the values that carry hope for
the future of humanity whilst not shying away from confronting the problems of
stemming the flow of values that do not carry this hope.
Love Jack. (11 June 2004)
Presentation
Format Ð Validation Exercise
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