My Emergent African Great Story 'Living I' as naturally including neighbourhood, embodying an audacious Valuing Social Living Pedagogy and imagining the universe luminously, as an energetic inclusion of darkness throughout light and light in darkness.

Abstract of PhD Submission
Ian Phillips - Graduated 14th December 2011

In answering Schon's call for a new epistemology for new scholarship, my contribution is an emergent African Voice reaching out to the academic and non academic, African and non-African alike, for the fullest co-creative possibilities. It informs on my valuing social living pedagogy, comprising "a unique purposeful recognition, an enhanced relational mutuality and an engaging dialogical praxis". These dynamic relational standards of judgement are at the heart of my 'Emergent African Great Story', created and presented, as if using a dynamic loom (consisting of my theoretical lenses) to create a traditional African Cloth.

Included are Whitehead's living educational theory, Cooperider's Appreciative Inquiry and Marshall's Living Life as Inquiry, together with my own storytelling that affirm the African Voice in my professional practice. However, also revealed is "stuckness" in my receptivity, responsiveness and reflexivity.

I act for profound change and engage with Scharmer's Theory U and Presencing, Okri's seeing Africa through the eyes of a lover, Charles' embodied Ubuntu and Berry's Great Work (now my Great Passion). I embrace "being and becoming" and reconfigure personal and universal dynamics to evidence: What I am doing to improve how I communicate the African Voice in ways that are authentic, African, and at the same time understandable to non-Africans and the academy.

Integrous inquiry surfaces in the source dimension of my social relationship a vital bicultural complementation of Scharmer's "Field" and my "Cloth" in the Paut Neteru (the Kametic Tree of Life). From this connectivity and engagement with Rayner's understanding of Natural Inclusion, in the 'space that cannot be cut', inescapably, I find that my self-identity naturally includes neighbourhood.

I proffer audacity imagining the universe luminously and making public my "Great Story" which values the communities from which it emerged as well as those larger communities of the modern day, which have lost sight of the depth of our origins.

CONTENTS

You can download the PhD in the different Weaves/chapters

Frontispiece, Abstract, List of Figures, Acknowledgement, Dedication. page 2

Weave One: My Emergent African Great Story In the Understanding of Weaving a Traditional African Cloth page 16

Weave Two: Action to Know 'I' in My Cloth: Engaging with Living Theory Methodology Included With My Own Narrative page 87

Weave Three: My Sankofa Great Story - Maroons and Sankofa Bird as a Twin Appliqué in Celebration of the Africentric Idea page 136

Weave Four: Prescencing Included in the Loom - Being and Becoming Surfacing in the Weaver's Learning. Living and Working and the Challenge of Rediscovery in my 'African Birthing' page 182

Weave Five: Novel Threads of Love In My Cloth - Tapping Family, Seeing Rediscovered African Voice Through the Eyes of a Lover and My Embodying Living Ubuntu and Embrace of the Great Work as My Great Passion page 215

Weave Six: From Achievement Gap to Education Debt and the Appreciating Value of the African Story: It's in Our Cloth to Heal, Protect and Create - Mandiani's Great Story and I in my Best Cloth . page 256

Weave Seven: Surfacing of the Paut Neteru (The Tree of Life), Embrace of Path to a Divine self Included With and Including the Divinity of Nature and Bringing my Cloth to Field in a Vital Bicultural Complementation page 343

Weave Eight: The Transforming Life of the Weaver: Consciously Surfacing Self as a Living 'I' that Naturally Includes Neighbourhood In Its Dynamic Balancing of Inner and Outer Identity page 400

Weave Nine: The Taking Off: The Future Wanting to Emerge page 433

Bibliography page 439

Postscript: In the heart of Self is the 'Space that cannot be Cut' - with video of the viva-voce examination on the 25th October 2011page 462a

Appendix One: Ready and Inspired to Create My Cloth (My African Great Story page 464

Appendix Two: Sparrow's Lyrics page 485

Appendix Three: Back in the Academy page 491

Appendix Four: An Intrusive Thought in My Cloth page 510

Appendix Five: Granny and I: Adversaries page 551

Appendix Six: 'Being Stuck' - Shuttle and Weft Not Aligned in Large Fabric: I Can Hear Jack - I would hear jack page 562

Appendix Seven: Care page 618

Appendix Eight: My African Birthingpage 621

Appendix Nine: Ways of Being and Doingpage 641