Am I communicating a
valid explanation of my educational influences in my own learning and in the
learning of others?
Jack Whitehead, Department of Education, University of Bath
Draft 1 June 2007
Feelings of responsibility, curiosity and excitement are motivating this writing. I feel responsible, as tutor for your educational enquiry in the Masters degree programme, to share ideas that can support your enquiry to a successful completion. I am curious about whether I can actually share such ideas in a way that captivates your imaginations and that you find helpful in your enquiries. I am excited because I have this feeling that this communication will achieve a balance between the meanings I communicate through words and the meanings I communicate through a visual narrative that sustains a direct connection with our educational relationships as they are being lived. In other words I feel that I am about to exercise my creativity in finding a form of communication that is receptively responsive to what really matters to you and that may serve to enhance the flow of your life-affirming energy and values in your educational enquiry. While the focus of my visual narrative is with Louise, Claire and Joy and her pupils I am hopeful that everyone will feel engaged in and identify with what I am saying.
The intention behind this writing is new for me. It comes from a conversation with Louise in which she explained that she would value understanding me better and that she would value understanding the why, what and how of my educational practice. Louise explained that it was often through understanding someone else better that she came to a better understanding of herself. Louise's request sparked off the idea that I should make a clearer distinction between a person understanding themselves, a person understanding their learning and a person understanding their educational influences in learning. So, here goes.
I see education as centrally concerned with individuals
understanding themselves and others. This is why I like the inscription 'Know Thyself' at the entrance to the Temple of Apollo
in Delphi. 'Educator Know Thyself'
is a commitment to which I subscribe. So, I am seeing our educational enquiries
as concerned with self-studies into knowing ourselves. But, as educators I see
our primary responsibility to our students, in helping them to know
themselves. In this knowing I am
assuming that we all recognise the importance of learning. I think learning is
one characteristic of being human. We can't help learning. What fascinates me
is not so much this human characteristic of learning, which we all do, but the
educational influence we have in the learning.
I include in this educational
influence our own learning, the learning of others and the learning of the
social formations in which we live and work. I think the learning of social
formations is vitally important because of the influence of the social
formations in what it is possible for us to do. A child experiencing starvation
through drought in Kenya or the violence of war in Darfur or the poverty in a
South African Township, does not have the same opportunities for enhancing
their well-being as a child benefiting from the material and cultural
conditions in my own neighbourhood in Bath.
The reason I stress the importance
of our educational influences in learning is that my reading of history shows
that human beings can learn to treat other human beings as less than human with
responses that threaten humanity. For example I recently learnt that
Aboriginees in Australia were classified until 1967 under Flora and Fauna.
Being born in 1944 in the UK,
while the concentration camps such as Belsen and Auschwitz were exterminating
large numbers of individuals in gas chambers on racial grounds, has highlighted
for me just what inhuman things human beings can learn to think and do to each
other. Hence my reason for stressing educational influences in learning is that
I want to distinguish forms of learning that carry hope for the future of
humanity. So, I want to exclude some learning on the grounds that it is not
educational. Values can rule out some learning from being counted as
educational. I recognise that in distinguishing the values that I believe carry
hope for the future of humanity I might clash with the values held by others.
Because values motivate actions and we act within social relations of power, I
think it is important for our educational enquiries to understand the nature of
the power relations that influence what we do. Hence I always seeking to bring into
my tutoring understandings from the most social advanced social theories of the
day. All of these theories define the meanings of words in terms of other words
and make no use of the communication of ostensive meanings through pointing to
images of what can be shown.
To see if I can establish a balance between words and images, I have put some thoughts in the endnotes. Before I use more words, without images I want you to see an educational relationship in which non-verbal communications are taking place through embodied expressions. I don't just want to show you an educational relationship I want to explain how valid explanations of educational influences can be constructed with the help of visual narratives. Hence I want to focus on the nature of the explanations I offer for my educational influence in my own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of the social formations in which I live and work. I want to see if such explanations of educational influence in learning are useful to you as you generate your own explanations in your educational enquiries. One point I want to make here concerns what I mean by a successful completion of an educational enquiry. One of the most surprising successful completions was when a teacher, who had produced an educational enquiry whose quality was much higher than a pass level, explained to me that she had decided not to submit it. She explained that she felt that she was aware that every examination she had ever sat, she had been done to please her father. She felt that by deciding not to submit her account she would free herself of what she considered to be an oppressive response to examinations. I could see that she recognised the validity of my judgment that the quality her account was certainly appropriate for the masters work. I understood, accepted and affirmed, that the feeling of emancipation that came through not submitting the work marked the successful completion of the enquiry. Fortunately for me, in terms of making public the knowledge of professional educators for work accredited by the University, this was a unique response to the submission of an educational enquiry!
I have learnt from experience that there is a danger of using only words to communicate my meanings because significant meanings can be lost when the focus on meaning is on the words alone. I am thinking particularly of meanings that are being communicated non-verbally, through embodied expressions. To show some of these meanings, after a brief contextualisation, I shall begin by asking you to look at a video-clip of an educational relationship between Louise and me at the end of a master's unit I am tutoring on educational enquiry, together with my response to Claire as she leaves the session.
Contextual understandings in sharing my meanings
My purpose in asking you to look at a video-clip, rather than listening to what is being said, is to see if I can share meanings in the embodied expressions in an educational relationship that appear to you to be comprehensible, true, right and authentic[i]. The meanings in the embodied expressions I have in mind are focused on my expressions of pleasure, joy, and aesthetic engagement and responsiveness in the educational relationships with Louise and Claire in the two minute video-clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu_YSX7SlI0
At 1.33seconds Claire says goodbye as she leaves. Here are stills of my response to Claire:
As I receive Claire's 'goodbye' I can see myself, in the image above, experiencing a flow of life-affirming energy in the pleasure of my response. In this response there is a marked change from the intensity of the engagement with Louise. In my engagement with Louise I see a mutuality of receptive responsiveness in the mirroring of our body language. I feel a tension in not-knowing how to support Louise in bringing her embodied knowledge as an educator into the public domain so that it can be shared more widely. I can feel myself working with responses and ideas that might be useful to Louise. I see us both sustaining our boundaries and that these boundaries are flowing with the energy of enquiry, in a way that is non-invasive in relation to the others feeling of trust, integrity or identity. I'll need to check the validity of this interpretation with Louise and with others viewing the video-clip.
What I am claiming can be communicated through the visual narrative, in a way denied to words along, is the expression of a flow life-affirming energy with values as explanatory principles in explanations of educational influence. I can't overemphasise the importance of this idea that we can communicate the meanings of the flows of life-affirming energy with values, as our explanatory principles. I think it is at the heart of the creation of a new epistemology for educational knowledge because these explanatory principles can form new living standards of judgment in our explanations of educational influence.
So, for example, when I explain why I do what I do in terms
of a love for what I do, the meaning of loving what I do, flows with a
life-affirming energy. I need to bring energy in every explanation of what I
do, because I cannot do anything without the expression of energy. I also
cannot explain why I sustain what I do without the expression of pleasure.
Humour plays a vital part in the expression of this pleasure. For example, in
the two minute video-clip above, unknown at the time by either Louise or myself
because of our engagement with each other in our conversation, some of the
group moved a card in front of the camera
that read We Love Louise, followed by the card .... and Jack too. The spontaneous explosion of laughter
as I saw these cards moving across the screen as I watched the clip of Louise
and me for the first time, is mirrored in this joyful expression of pleasure
from Louise during an earlier part of the session. I am curious as to whether
you believe to be valid my advocacy of the necessity of including such flows of
energy with values as explanatory principles in our explanations of educational
influence? I think your response is necessary in answering my question, Am
I communicating a valid explanation of my educational influences in my own
learning and in the learning of others? I am claiming that my educational
influence in my own learning and in your learning can be explained with the
help of visual narratives that communicate the meanings of such flows of
life-affirming energy with values as explanatory principles in the explanation.
Do you think that this is a valid claim?
In sharing my meanings I also bring into the context my understandings of receptive responsive relationships and my relationally dynamic awareness of inclusionality and the historical, cultural and social theories that are part of the growth of my educational knowledge.[ii]
Coming back to Louise's desire to
understand me better I wonder if the following is helpful. As a 22 year old I
recall vividly two experiences that continue to influence me. The first was on
a beautiful sunny day in Newcastle where I was a student, stretched out on the
grass enjoying the sun, I felt the flow of the enormous power of the cosmos
with space and felt part of this flow of energy-space. Without moving into Paul
Tillich's thesistic understandings I use his words of being grasped by the
power of being itself to communicate the meanings of this experience to myself.
The second experience was linked with the first. As I enjoyed the warmth of the
sun and felt the power of this expression of being I found myself wondering
about what would be a worthwhile form of life. What could I do that would be a
worth while way of spending my life-time? The answer I liked was to contribute
to education in a way that enabled learners to feel recognised and affirmed as
human beings with a worth while contribution to make to their own learning. I
think this desire emerged out of a feeling that I had not experienced much of
such qualities, apart from with my parents and a few teachers, during my formal
schooling and university. Both the flow of life-affirming energy and the sense
of vocation for education have sustained my enthusiasm for life and education
over the past 40 years.
I am now working in education to
contribute to the professional knowledge-base of education. I see this
contribution in terms of the generation and sharing of our living educational
theories through which we come to know ourselves and one another better as well
as being able to explain our educational influences in learning. In creating my
own living educational theory and in supporting others in the creation of their
own here is what I think I do. The what also connects with the why and how.
What I think I do is to
communicate two expressions of faith; a faith in the value of the embodied knowledge
of the other and a faith in the value of bringing this knowledge into the
public domain for sharing. I believe that I invite others into a relationship
of mutuality. By this I mean that the educational relationship is sustained by
an open receptivity to the flow of energy with values that give meaning and
purpose to the lives we are living in our work in education. In my early
studies of education I was influenced by reading the work of Erich Fromm, John
Dewey and Richard Peters[iii].
I still use insights from these readings and I owe some of my ability to
articulate my meanings to the words they use. For example Erich Fromm writes
about being faced with the choice of uniting with the world in the spontaneity
of love and productive work or of seeking a kind of security that destroys our
integrity and freedom. I still use the words, love, productive work, integrity
and freedom, to communicate the meaning of the values I believe I express in my
educational relationships. John Dewey developed a logic of inquiry that I
associate with action reflection cycles of expressing concerns, imagining ways
forward in action plans, acting, evaluating and modifying concerns ideas and
action in the light of the evaluations. I still use this understanding of
action reflection cycles in helping to move forward educational enquiries.
Learning from the group of philosophers led by Richard Peters at the Institute
of Education, between 1968-1970, I developed my capacity to articulate my
values in terms of justice, worth-while activities, freedom, respect and the
procedural principle of democracy in the education of social formations.
I think we are all unique in the
particular constellation of values and understandings that help to constitute
who we are and what we do in our particular social contexts. Some of the most
original work from my own research came from viewing video-tapes of my
classroom practice during 1971/72. I could see on viewing the tapes that I was
not doing what I thought I was doing. I thought I had established enquiry
learning in my classroom. The tapes showed that I was unwittingly providing the
pupils with the questions that I thought they were formulating themselves. I
became aware of myself as a living contradiction. One of my original
contributions to educational knowledge has been the inclusion of 'I' as a
living contradiction in enquiries of the kind, 'how do I improve what I am
doing?' Another is the idea that our explanations of our educational influences
in learning constitute our living educational theories. I believe that our
uniqueness is expressed in terms of our own constellations of values and
understandings. For example, you might focus on values of care, compassion,
joy, fairness to distinguish the meanings of your explanatory principles in explanations
of your educational influence. You may express what really matters to you using
other words. However we individually express our values I recognise that they
may not be experienced as fully as possible because of the historical, cultural
and social contexts of our human condition. I seek to understand these contexts
in deciding what to do. When these values are not being lived as fully as I
believe to be possible I experience myself as a living contradiction. I seek to
resolve such contradictions and tensions, guided by my values and
understandings, knowing that life is not a smooth story of self where all
tensions can be resolved satisfactorily. I also judge my influence in relation
to the expression and development of our understandings of ourselves, our love
of learning and the learning itself. While recognising the complexity of
problems involved in forming and sustaining relationships I seek to express the
above values in my life and work.
In conclusion I want to focus on what counts as evidence of my educational influence in relation to the expression and development of our understandings of ourselves, our love of learning and the learning itself.
The focus of my attention is the account produced by Joy with her pupils on:
Can Children Carry Out Action Research About
Learning, Creating Their Own Learning Theory?
The account can be accessed at:
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/tuesdayma/joymounterull.htm
The three video-clips in Appendix 2 show the pupils engaging
with Joy in explaining how they are using the TASC wheel (Thinking Actively In
A Social Context) and in explaining how to reform the action research cycle of
the TASC wheel into a more appropriate model for explaining their own learning.
As I read the account Joy had produced with her pupils my understandings were
extended and deepened in terms of the qualities of reflective understandings
and creativity expressed by 6 year old young people. I believe that Joy, through
her pedagogical skills, values and understandings is helping to keep open an
educational space in which the young people feel that they are valued and that
they are being invited to share their ideas in a space that feels safe with a
pleasurable invitation to participate being expressed and sustained by Joy with
her pupils. I need to check the validity of these interpretations with Joy and
her pupils.
I also believe that I have contributed to the generation of
a similar space in the MA sessions that has influenced Joy in working to bring
her embodied knowledge into the public domain, as an educator researching
herself working with pupils as researchers in researching their own
learning. Through responding to
drafts accounts, in a way that values Joy's creativity and the creativity of
her pupils, I believe that I have supported Joy (along with others) in bringing
the account into the Academy as an accredited masters enquiry into
understanding learning and learners. By placed the account in the flow of
educational knowledge through web-space at http://www.jackwhitehead.com/tuesdayma/joymounterull.htm
I believe that this is contributing to the influence of living educational
theories, as cultural artefacts that can influence the learning of others in
accounting for their own lives in terms of the expression of values that carry
hope for the future of humanity.
As my educational enquiry continues I am hoping to show how
my educational knowledge is being extended and deepened through the
contributions of those I am tutoring on the masters programme. I also hope to
show how I am extending my educational influence in the generation and
evaluation of the living educational theories of others. My primary responsible
as a tutor on the masters programme is to support the educators in the
successful completion of their units and dissertation for the masters degree.
In this process, as I research my own practice through continuing to explore
the implications of asking, researching and answering the question, 'how
do I improve what I am doing?', I
want to continue to make contributions to the professional knowledge-base of
education. My hope is that in
researching myself researching with other educators with researching young
people, I shall continue to enhance the flow of living educational theories as
a contribution to the creation of a world of educational quality.
Part of my productive life is concerned with the education of social formations. My focus is on the educational influence in the Academy of energy-flowing, receptive-responsive standards of judgment in evaluating the quality of contributions to educational knowledge. Some headway has been made in the legitimation of living theories with their living standards of judgement in the Academy. If you would like to browse through the Abstracts and/or contents of some of these contributions to the educational formation of the Academy in terms of a new epistemology for educational knowledge you can access these from http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/living.shtml
What I have in mind in producing this account for myself and for you are questions concerning the validity of explanations of my educational influences in my own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of the social formations in which I live and work. My reason for sharing the account is to contribute to the professional knowledge base of education[iv]. In contributing to our knowledge-base I think it is important to ask and respond to questions related to the validity, objectivity and rigour of the knowledge we are generating in our living educational theories. Together with Jean McNiff we have published our own living theories and answered questions related to these issues and to questions concerning the standards of judgement and the logics and methodology that can be used in evaluating the quality of the educational knowledge being created[v]. I am hoping to share more insights from this corpus of work as our educational enquiries continue.
The excitement with which I began this draft paper is still
with me. I am hoping that you will respond in a way that helps me to evaluate
the validity of my belief that through including the visual-data of educational
relationships and developing my meanings ostensively by both pointing to
practice and drawing insights from the ideas of others, I am communicating a
valid explanation of my educational influences in my own learning and in the
learning of others. Am I? Only your response can help me to understand the
quality of my communication and the validity of my explanation. No pressure to
respond, just the hope that you will experience some pleasure in doing so!
Endnotes