Dear Moira and members of China’s Experimental Centre for Educational
Action Research in Foreign Languages Teaching, as well as BERA contributors
I just want to acknowledge that it was aspects of this story which Moira
has just posted to this list, that got me reflecting and wanting to
contribute directly about syntheses between Moira's student and my Maori
researchers. Zhang Lixia's response to the photos, and her ability to
draw out of them profound thoughts (contributing to theory of her own)
made me think how frustrating it is for such wise people to have their
knowledge disregarded because it doesn't appear 'in writing'. Moira has
captured Zhang Lixia's thinking in writing, but her response to a
photographic stimulus was an oral response. Moira has also written
extensively elsewhere about her appreciation for the wisdom of Dean Tian,
of the Centre, wisdom which she experiences daily but which has not,
presumably, been written down and deemed to be excellent by our standards.
Marian's indication that the inclusion of non-written materials as part of
a PhD investigation is fraught with difficulty, makes me even more
determined to hunt down and disseminate examples of students doing this
successfully. I'll be in touch with an ex-Auckland University of
Technology colleague tomorrow who was aiming to present a short film as
part of his PhD - as I understand his work, it was more like the written
explanation being a 'tack-on' to the film work, rather than the other way
around, as Marian has indicated. I'll try and find out if he succeeded. I
do believe that publicising such challenges to the traditional academy's
practices can help us to establish more broad-based understandings of what
constitutes sound standards in less traditional areas.
I'm wondering to what extent power and knowledge are complicit in the
Academy's seeming reluctance to broaden the scope of what it counts
as 'worthwhile' in PhD study. When I taught at polytechnic many years
ago, I had a welding tutor who was very frustrated because he had to
include in the curriculum a technique of gas welding that hadn't been used
in industry for twenty years, but was still being taught and examined.
The problem, when he investigated, was that the folk who set the exams had
not been practising welders for years, but were reluctant to admit that
their knowledge was now outdated. So they kept stuff in there that no-one
used any more, rather than admit that times had changed. Makes you think,
doesn't it?
Warm regards
Pip
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