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Update of 8th January 2005
I have added the links to the presentations from Symposia at the British and American Educational Research Associations during 2004. I have also added the link to Action Research Expeditions of October 2004 at http://www.arexpeditions.montana.edu/articleviewer.php?AID=80
This includes access to the contents of The Growth of Educational Knowledge 1: Creating Your Own Living Educational Theories 1973-1993 at http://www.actionresearch.net/bk93/geki.htm. The first internet link, in Part Two of the multi-media presentation on THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL KNOWLEDGE II: CREATING LIVING EDUCATIONAL THEORIES IN THE EDUCATION OF SOCIAL FORMATIONS, 1993-2004, leads to "How Valid Are Multi-Media Communications Of My Embodied Values In Living Theories And Standards Of Educational Judgement And Practice?"
at http://www.actionresearch.net/multimedia/jimenomov/JIMEW98.html. This includes a multl-media performance text to show a process through which the expression of embodied values such as academic freedom can be transformed into living epistemological standards of judgement in the course of their emergence and clarification in practice.
16 September 2004 at the British Educational Research Association Symposium in Manchester on - How Are We Contributing To A New Scholarship Of Educational Enquiry Through Our Pedagogisation Of Postcolonial Living Educational Theories In The Academy? With Paulus Murray - Rayal Agricultural College; Sarah Fletcher (withdrawn) ; Je Kan Adler-Collins - Fukuoka University; Jack Whitehead - University of Bath.
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17 September 2004 at the British Educational Research Association Symposium in Manchester on - Have We Created A New Epistemology For The New Scholarship Of Educational Enquiry Through Practitioner Research? Developing Sustainable Global Educational Networks Of Communication. With Jean McNiff, Caitriona McDonagh, Bernie Sullivan, Mairin Glenn - University of Limerick; Joan Whitehead, Bernie Fitzgerald - University of the West of England ; Marian Naidoo - National Institute for Mental Health England;
Jack Whitehead - University of Bath.
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16 April 2004 at the American Educational Research Association Symposium in San Diego on, The transformative potential of individuals' collaborative self-studies for sustainable global educational networks of communication
with contributions from: Catriona McDonagh, Bernie Sullivan and Jean McNiff from the University of Limerick;ÊJoan Whitehead and Bernie Fitzgerald from the University of the West of England; from Cheryl Black and Jackie Delong from the Grand Erie District School Board; Jack Whitehead of the University of Bath and from Maggie Farren of Dublin City University.
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Evolution of Educational Knowledge and Living Educational
Theories: A letter from Jack Whitehead 17th March 2003
I am writing this on the 17th March 2003 at a time when an
attack by British and other troops on Iraq looks imminent. I can feel
the closeness of the killing and death. I have just wished my son Jonathan,
Happy Birthday! This carries my love. Living with these tensions between
love, killing and death I'm wondering whether our contributions to the
growth of educational knowledge might help to educate our global social
formations in living more fully the values of peaceful well-being.
I have in mind a shared research programme in which we are
learning to live our values more fully in our practices. I am thinking
of how we might share our learning in our educational enquiries of the
kind, 'How am I improving what I am doing?'.
I imagine that no matter who we are and what we are doing, we have a desire
to educate ourselves through our life-time of learning. I also believe,
whether as parents, educators and/or citizens, we also want to contribute
what we can to the education of others and to influence the education
of our social formations in ways that can contribute to the development
of a more peaceful and productive world.
In this letter I am breaking new ground for myself as I move from a linear,
one to one form of e-communications, to the interconnecting branching
networks of e-communications below. I am hopeful that you will engage
with some of the ideas this letter gives you access. I also hope that
you will feel my desire for inclusivity as I show some of the interconnected
pathways of communication that have already contributed to the creation
and testing of living educational theories within our different local,
regional, national and global contexts.
I will begin with the pleasure of seeing someone that I haven't met making
a creative and critical response to the idea of living educational theory.
I am thinking of Colin Smith's ideas on the development of shared living
theories and I do hope we will and engage and respond to his paper 'Supporting
Teacher and School Development: learning and teaching policies, shared
living theories and teacher-research partnerships'. This has been published
in Teacher Development, Volume 6, Number 2, pp. 157- 179, 2002. You
can download the final draft of this paper in Word format by clicking
here
I am connecting Colin Smith's ideas on shared living theory to the living
educational theories of Jackie Delong, Cheryl Black, Heather Knill-Griesser
and Geoff Suderman-Gladwell in the Grand Erie District School Board in
Ontario, Canada. Jackie's award for leadership in action research from
the Ontario Educational Research Council in 2001 was richly deserved.
I think you will appreciate Jackie's achievements in stressing the importance
of understanding one's 'system's influence' in the abstract
and contents of her living theory doctorate as a Superintendent of Schools.
Jackie supported Heather,
Cheryl and Geoff in their masters programme at Brock University and
it is my belief that they have made public their embodied knowledge as
master educators in their dissertions. Cheryl is now a school principal
and is continuing with her educational enquiries in a doctoral study of
her educational influence. Yet, I doubt if these insights could have developed
in the way they have without Kevin
Eames' research in the 1980s and early 1990s where he demonstrated
how teacher-researchers could 'grow
their own'
school-based action research group.
I am also connecting Colin's ideas to Maggie Farren's doctoral
enquiry into a pedagogy of the unique. Maggie has 'pedagogised' living
theory texts in her contributions to the curriculum at Dublin City University
and Maggie's use of Information
and Communications Technology at DCU is most inspiring.
Terri Austin, the Head of a Charter School in Alaska, has
stressed the importance of the practice of community in the self-study
of teacher-education practices. I am relating my present learning about
the education of social formations to Terri
Austin's doctoral enquiry on the practice of community and to Alan
Rayner's inclusional ways of being. Alan Rayner is a biologist and
ecological
researcher whose stress on inclusional
ways of being seems to me to offer great hope for the evolution of
our living theories and their contributions to a more peaceful and productive
future for humanity. Robyn Pound's (2003) doctorate on, 'How
can I improve my health visiting support of parenting? The creation of
an alongside epistemology through action enquiry' makes a contribution
to this future by showing the potential of a living quality of alongsideness
to contribute to the well-being of parent-child relationships and to a
living theory of health visiting practice. I am also linking Peggy
Leong's work on 'Learning Circles' at the Academy of Best Practice
in Learning in Singapore to Colin Smith's notion of shared living theories.
Moira Laidlaw continues to explore her educational influence
through her work in teacher education at Guyuan Teachers College in China.
Her action plan with
the Dean of Education, Dean Tian Fengjun (you may have to rotate this
PDF in your browser) and her
other writings show the continuingevolution of her living educational
theories and contributions to educational knowledge
Jean McNiff's original ideas on action research as a
generative and transformative process have been matched by the influence
of her books and
writings in
encouraging individuals and groups to develop their own living educational
theories. As her writings show, Jean
has extended her enquiries and influence into the Middle East.
Jean's booklet on Action
Research and Professional Development is a delightfully clear
introduction and Jean has made this freely available to celebrate
our 21 years of working together. Ideas from Jean's booklet have influenced
the contributions to Passion
in Professional Practice edited by Jackie Delong and Cheryl Black.
Peter Mellett is working on the development of the Action
Research component of a 'Research Observatory' at the University of
Bath. Action researchers at Bath have contributed to a review of educational
action research carried out by Peter Mellett for the British Educational
Research Association You
can access the review in Word format by clicking here.
Sarah Fletcher has integrated action research processes
into her research into making public the embodied knowledge in her
own mentoring practice. She
has also been supporting teacher-researchers to share and make public
their embodied knowledge of mentoring. Sarah is also developing
visual narratives that can communicate the meanings of embodied values
in educational relationships. I am working with Peter, Sarah, Jackie
and Cheryl in different enquiries to develop multi-media accounts
of educational influence including the education of social formations.
As soon as these can be accessed through the web, I will let you know.
Sarah is working with Tadashi Asada from Tokyo University and Tadashi
is doing much to develop action research approaches to teacher development
in Japan. JeKan Adler-Collins is moving to Fukuoka to start work at
the University. JeKan is researching his influence in making public
his embodied knowledge as a healing nurse and integrating this into
the nursing curriculum of the university. He is studying his own pedagogic
influence in the learning of his students.You
can read JeKan's writings and participate in the e-forum discussions
of living action research.
I want to finish this letter by drawing your attention
to what I see as the government's most damaging policy in relation
to the future of educational research. Departments of Education like
my own who have been judged to be of 5 or 5* quality receive far more
funding to support their educational research than other Departments.
The present move to create greater selectivity by awarding 6* (and
additional funding) is going to increase the damage I have in mind
for the future of educational research.
Consider two of the living theory doctoral studies to
have been awarded by Kingston University when the Faculty of Education
was judged at level 2 in a previous Research Assessment Exercise.
I am thinking of the doctorates of Moyra
Evans and John
Loftus . While Deputy Head of Denbigh Comprehensive School Moyra
carried out her enquiry on 'An action research enquiry into reflection
in action as part of my role as a deputy headteacher'.
In Chapter Eight she explains how she developed her own living educational
theory. While a Headteacher John Loftus conducted his research
on 'An action
research enquiry into the marketing of an established first school
in its transition to full primary status.'
I think you will appreciate further the knowledge-creating
capacities of practitioner-researchers by reading their educational
enquiries. Sarah Fletcher has done much to publicise such enquiries
at http://www.teacherresearch.net
From this site you can access Sarah's 'Best Practice
Research Scholarship Guide to Research Mentoring'.
From
the masters section of actionresearch.net you can also access
the educational enquiries (and methods of educational enquiry accounts)
of Simon Riding, Karen Collins, Mark Potts and other teachers I have
been working with as a group at Westwood St. Thomas School in Wiltshire,
UK.
See for example:
My anxiety for the future of educational research is
that the creation and testing of living educational theories will
be marginalised by a funding mechanism that will support a degenerating
research programme. Let me explain. In the 1960s and 1970s the dominant
view of educational theory was that it was constituted by the philosophy,
psychology, sociology and history of education. In terms of today's
disciplines and fields of enquiry one could add, economics, politics,
management and leadership. The problem with the old disciplines approach
was that none of these disciplines either individually or collectively
could produce a valid explanation for the educational development
of an individual from within the learners' educational enquiry of
the kind, 'How am I improving what I am doing?'. I set out an
alternative 'living' approach to educational theory in my own doctoral
thesis.
The creation and testing of living educational theories
is grounded in the assumption that individual learners can create
and test their own educational theories in the course of their educational
enquiries.These enquiries can include the kind of appreciative
and engaged responses to the ideas of others, researched by Pat
D'Arcy in her thesis. Rather than the bulk of the money going
to support the old disciplines approach to educational theory, I am
suggesting that money should certainly be fairly distributed to those
Departments of Education which can demonstrate a quality of teaching,
supervision and research that is leading to the growth of educational
knowledge through the creation and testing of living educational theories.
For further evidence of the knowledge-creating capacities of practitioner-researchers
do access Kevin Eames' Ph.D. (1995) 'How
do I, as a teacher and educational action-researcher, describe and
explain the nature of my professional knowledge?' and Erica Holley's
(1997) M.Phil. Dissertation on, 'How
do I as a teacher-researcher contribute to the development of a living
educational theory through an exploration of my values in my professional
practice?'
Love Jack.
A colleague, Martin Dobson, died last year at the age
of 52 and 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.
Jack Whitehead Tel: 01225 826826 extn 5571
Department of Education Fax: 01225 826113
University of Bath
Bath BA2 7AY UK
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