Jack
Whitehead's ontological commitments in self-study: A contribution to the AERA
2004 Symposium of the Self-Study in Teacher Education Practices, Special Interest
Group on, The transformative potential of individuals'
collaborative self-studies for sustainable global educational networks of
communication, in San Diego on the 16th April, 2004.
Jack Whitehead, University of Bath, Bath
BA 2 7AY. E-mail edsajw@bath.ac.uk
As
soon as I start to write about my ontological commitments I am conscious that
my language is inadequate to express my meanings. So, I am going to start
by focusing on my embodied expression of who I am and what I am doing, in
the here and now of being with you. The camera is recording me because I want
to reflect later on what I see myself doing in the time we are together. In
my experience of human existence, every individual I meet is unique in the
particular constellation of values that help to constitute and explain who
they are and what they are doing. Within each individual I also see values
that carry hope for the future of humanity and the potential to express values
that do not carry this hope. In my own life I am seeking to live more fully
those values that carry hope and to stem the influence of those that do not.
Each individual I meet can tell me different stories about their relationships
and experience that help me to understand their ontological commitments in
the sense of the meaning and purpose they give to their lives. I am no exception
and I aim to communicate the meanings of the embodied values I use, in the
explanations I give for my own educational influence, and which constitute
my ontology in a flow of life-affirming energy and enquiry:
Grounding
my ontological recognition in a flow of life-affirming energy and pleasure.
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.
How
can my ontological commitment to living a productive life be expressed as
an epistemological standard of judgment?
How
can I communicate an ontological commitment to an inclusional way of being
in my educational relationships with my students?
What do I mean by an ontological commitment to post-colonial practice in the spirit of Ubuntu?
My
choice of experiences through which to communicate my meanings is not intended
to make a point about my role as a Father, Husband, Son, Scholar, Educator.
It is simply that most of the significant experiences through which I have
clarified my values for myself have occurred in these relationships. You will have your own unique relationships,
contexts and experiences through which you have clarified for yourselves your
own ontological commitments. Understanding these differences in one of my
great pleasures in life and education.
My
ontological recognition of a flow of life-affirming energy and pleasure.
In
being with you I experience a life-affirming energy and imagine that you are
feeling the first of my ontological commitments to this energy through my
expression of pleasure in being here with you.
The flow of this life-affirming energy and pleasure carries my hope
for the future of humanity.
If
such an embodied value is to become a living and communicable standard of
judgement in educational research then others, such as yourselves, will need
to comprehend its meaning in a claim to educational knowledge. To demonstrate
this possibility I want to show you a brief video-clip of Cheryl Black from
May 2000, in a communication with one of her pupils, that carries this hope
to me. You can play this clip with Quicktime 6.4 or above and its size is
1.1Mb (it took around 1 minute to download with my broadband connection)
http://www.actionresearch.net/stand/cbs.mp4
Between
14-16 seconds into the clip I recognize a tangible expression of this life-affirming
energy and pleasure. I associate
this with the way Paul Tillich (1970) writes about the state of being grasped
by the power of being itself and connects this to ontological security. I
see this as a spiritual energy without any need for myself to connect it with
any religion or God. I mention this because I can see the importance that
many others give to ontological values that are connected with a power of
submission to the will of a God. I think that I have replaced my early Church
going (Christian) experience of power relations that supported this submission
by this powerful flow of life-affirming energy and pleasure.
Having
drawn attention to the ontological value of this flow of energy and pleasure
I want to explain how I am connecting my contribution to the focus of this
S-STEP Symposium on The transformative potential of individuals' collaborative
self-studies for sustainable global educational networks of communication.
As what I am about to say about two of my beliefs is fundamental to my life's
work I am open to your criticism because you might be able to show me that
I am wasting my life-time because my beliefs are mistaken and I'd like to
avoid this if at all possible!
I
believe that the transformative potential of self studies can be experienced
as one learns and sees the learning of others. Human existence can be understood
as a process of both living and
dying at the same time as learning is taking place. I have sustained my commitment
to working in education over the last 37 years because it seems to me to be
a worthwhile form of life. I am meaning this in the sense of contributing
an educational influence in one's own learning, in the learning of others
and in the education of social formations. I have explained my commitment
to supporting educational enquiries of the kind, 'How do I improve what I
am doing?, with a focus on living values more fully through one's educational
influence.
I
also believe that the world will become a better place through educating social
formations to live more fully the values that carry hope for the future of
humanity. I see this education as involving the enhancement of the flow of
understanding of how to live
these values more fully through developing sustainable, global networks of
communication. The communications I have in mind are the accounts of learning
of self-study researchers as we work within our local contexts and share our
communications globally on how we are seeking to live our values as fully
as we can in whatever life-time we have left. By being willing to share and
learn from each others accounts in this way, I think we are showing for ourselves in this public way The
transformative potential of individuals' collaborative self-studies for sustainable
global educational networks of communication.
I
am also connecting these beliefs to what I see as a most significant contribution
to educational knowledge in the creation of 'Professional Working Theories':
'We use the term 'Professional Working
Theory' to symbolize professional understanding that evolves through the constant
interplay of professional knowledge, practical experience, reflection, and
ethical or moral principles. Explicit Professional Working Theory is developed
through systematic and comprehensive critical reflection and collegial dialogue,
and also contributes to the construction of professional identity, the creation
of professional knowledge, and the development of collegial approaches to
practice. The Professional Working theory process outlined below offers teachers
(and academics) an opportunity to frame their reflection on the living theories
implicit in their practice' (Dalmau &
Gudj—nsd—ttir, 2002, p, 104)
Dalmau and Gudj—nsd—ttir stress the importance
of ethical principles as explanatory principles that provide reasons for why
we do what we do. In this presentation I will be making a distinction between
the meanings of the embodied values I am expressing moment to moment in what
I am doing and the ethical principles I form from these embodied values. I
clarify the meanings of my ethical principles in the course of their emergence
in what I am doing and use them as standards of judgment in my explanations
of (claims to know) my educational influence. As I communicate the meanings
of my educational standards of judgment, to which I hold myself accountable
I am intending to make a contribution to our understandings of the standards
that can be used to evaluate the validity of our professional working theories.
The connection of my embodied values to my
ontological commitments is that my values help to constitute who I am and
explain what I am doing. Because they help to constitute who I am and what
I do, they involve my personal responses to the certainty of my death, to
birth and to a productive life in between. I am seeking to establish a clear
connection between my personal ontology and a productive life in education
as I communicate the values to which I hold myself accountable in the construction
of my own Professional Working Theory.
Let
me see if I can communicate the meanings of some of my ontological values
as they became clear to me through the experience of birth and death, involving
my wife, Joan, my daughter, Rebecca, my son , Jonathan, my Mother, Alice and
my Father, Jack..I have chosen to clarify the meanings of an inclusional 'will
to life' and 'will to knowledge' because I recognise the importance of these
values in explaining who I am and what I do in education.
Joan
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 into an inclusional 'will to live' with Rebecca
with the desire that she should live and find life worthwhile. 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 my 'will to knowledge'. I see my life in education as being concerned with enhancing the flow of values and knowledge that carry hope for 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.
I believe that 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 and as a belief that their originality
of mind and critical judgements will enable them to bring this knowledge into
the Academy.
Expressing
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, 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 through which one feeds life with death rather than feeds death with life (Rayner, 2003). Feeling a loving warmth of humanity emerging through grief does, in my experience, feed life with death rather than feeding death with life.
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 joy of 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 of 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.
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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
am also aware that my ontological commitments to a life-affirming energy and
a loving warmth of humanity are also accompanied by my ontological value of
living a productive life in education. 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 into an epistemological standard of judgement for testing the validity
of my explanation.
How
can an ontological commitment to living a productive life be expressed as
an epistemological standard of judgement?
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 legitimate this knowledge in the Academy.
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, and in the face of power relations that could
have constrained the creative expression of this passion, 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 redintegration 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 (Although I am sure Joan would provide evidence of my seeming
inability to learn her basic standards of domestic order in the home, kitchen
and more particularly the garden!) I also recognise my embrace of enquiry
learning as an ontological commitment.
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 commitment 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.
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 this process 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.
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. Given that the title of this
Symposium is The transformative potential of
individuals' collaborative self-studies for sustainable global educational
networks of communication, I want to communicate the nature
of my ontological commitments to inclusionality and collaboration before I
connect these commitments to the transformative potential of the internet
for supporting the development of sustainable global educational networks
of communication.
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' 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 this Symposium.
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:
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.
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.
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 want to end this paper
in the spirit of enquiry embodied in the life of enquiry of Pip Ferguson as
she begins 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.
i)
Why, oh why, does the traditional Western system have to INSIST on written
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 Schön'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.actionresearch.net/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 contrained
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 Schön'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. (Schön, 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 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."
Of all the ontological values that carry hope for the future of humanity I am following Marian Naidoo in suggesting that enhanching 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!
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