EPILOGUE

Dr. Jack Whitehead, from the University of Bath, Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice, suggested that I write about the way in which professional action research and rich modelling can enhance development of embodied values. I now realise that a fine way to end this book is to reflect on the importance of that to which he alludes.

I recently have made a dangerous and serious ethical stand that may cost me my income. I am ashamed to say that I could not do this on my own. I needed one of my previous doctoral students to launch the official investigation and I am actively supported by many of my doctoral students in the process of standing for justice, freedom, and honesty in my 'patch of turf'. But some of you are stronger or more courageous than I am. You might be alone and without support. Even though, you might even be able to embody your values by the strength of your own being.

I have come to realise that I can embody my values by learning and teaching. To explain my values I use the master and slave (lordship and bondage) relationship in Hegel's dialectic. Many think that this insight is the most significant single element of Hegel's project. Echoing a teacher far greater than himself. Hegel's parable drives Marx, Nietzsche, early Heidegger, late Wittgenstein, Adorno, Habermas and not the neo-pragmatists such as Richard Rorty, and the anti-realists such as Don Cuppit.

Following the Baillie translation, pages 229-240, of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit/Mind, the master and slave dialectic analyses the inherent process whereby consciousnesses, including ourselves, recognise other consciousnesses by:

1) Initially destroying others to affirm ourselves. But we are thus left without significant others to recognise and affirm us;

2) Secondly, we strive to be recognised and affirmed as master by forcing others to be our slaves. But thus we have recognition by unrecognised slaves who we cannot respect or esteem. Moreover, slaves learn skills through work thus becoming stronger than masters who come to be ignobly dependent and weak.

When the slaves overcome the fear of death, they defy the master and thus become free;

3) If one or both are not destroyed, either:

a) the master and slave swap places in a wretched reversal of roles or;

b) the former slave holds out the liberating possibility of freely recognising the former master within inter-dependent economic, political, social, and cultural cooperation as equals.

Master or slave or both, how does one embody values? How does one realise what values one lives by? How does one come to realise the importance of such values: how does one communicate these values once realised? How does one really live by such values? How does one gain the courage to stand up against those who would destroy that which you value?

Can one talk of these values in a doctoral thesis and thus join a body of people whose task it is to support such endeavours? That is our hope.

In this book I have given you step-by-step instruction to begin a research paper or university recognised research thesis. I have striven to guide you by example and by giving examples of doctoral theses. I have striven to encourage and inform you, even perhaps to the point of cajoling and tempting you.

The time and need is dire. It was so at the time of Socrates and before and after and now. Whether master or slave or both, the rest is up to you. (Williams, & Dick, 2004, pp. 194-195)

Williams, M. & Dick, B. (Eds) (2004) Write a Doctoral Thesis About Work: Professional Action Research – A Creative Reader Introducing Rich Modelling. Cottesloe WA; Resource Press.