I think you are missing something important that I regard as crucial for me 
and my heuristics

Any research, enquiry, epistemological, approach is and defines itself as 
the way the given researcher finds it most suitable for his/her fulfillment 
as the researcher/being/Ontology he/she wishes for him/her to become and be. 
This entails to critically engage, through falsification and self-denial and 
their integration in the research, with an Ontologically defining problem 
that he/she passionately involves himself/herself in as what/whom he/she is 
and becoming.  It is carried out with a view to better understand and an 
intention to shed light on and push it forward so as to extend the knowledge 
of the situation it is derived from.  The research publicly, ostensibly and 
concretely clarifies and rationalises this statement/proposition of mine and 
its phenomenological essence.  Why this is the case.  A critical analysis of 
the history, future intention and present of this statement.  Concrete 
illustration of it.

Any research is essentially the researcher who has chosen to engage and 
indulge himself/herself in it.  A research does not have life of its own. 
It does not and cannot exist without the researcher.  It is the researcher. 
All the problems of positivism and radical empiricism are derived from the 
attempt to separate research from the researcher.  For the third time, A 
research IS the researcher and is as good as him/her.  What does it mean to 
be the researcher is the question for me? Who is presently the researcher?

If we could do a good phenomenological analysis of the researcher from 
within the present situation in which he/she is located, looking at his/her 
history and the future intention we could understand (Husserl) best the 
research and the approach used.

Self-study action research is no different.  I think it should lead this 
position rather than succumb and follow a prefixed receipe of ready-made 
criteria and evaluation by which to become research.  It constructs itself 
by the researcher constructinh himself/herself as the researcher.

It is what the individual who engages with it makes of it.

This is why it is so important for me to say that I am an individual who has 
chosen to use self-study action research for my research passion - 
liberating, activating and self-constructing Ontology - but by no means I am 
an action researcher.  I define it.  It does not define me.  I am 
Ontologist.  Because Ontology is me.  I define it in my image.

If I could find a better way to fulfill me as the researcher I wish myself 
to become and be then I'll switch to it.  I analyse this possibility all the 
time.  As soon as I'll detect it, I'll switch to it.

For me, Jack permits me to critically engage and rationalise my 
Ontological/phenomenological 'I' as my research intention and heuristics in 
the intention of solving a problem that has Ontologically defining my 
existence.  I take this idea and intend to saturate and extract the most of 
it for my research purpose.  I am occasionally left dismayed when jargon 
like 'Cosmos', 'energy flow', 'spiritualism', 'collective', 'we' are being 
uttered without further sufficiant for me explanation and clarification as I 
always tended to completely frown on spiritualism and mysticism and 
subscribed to practicality and directness.

I have my own Ontology, agenda, intention, time table, knowledge, 
aspiration, history, future and present.  This is the only thing that leads 
me and my research and that I subscribe to.

I am me as a researcher.  My research and heuristics are designed for me and 
my research.  And I intend to make it public as I think it could shed light 
on common, academic and human issues that I have lived and saw my peers 
struggling with.

Alon

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jack Whitehead" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2005 10:02 AM
Subject: Re: Additions to our archive of explanations of educational 
influences in learning


> Like Steve I've been influenced by Pat D'Arcy's ideas on how to make 
> appreciative
> and engaged responses to the texts of others and tend to use Pat's ideas 
> from her
> thesis at:
> http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/pat.shtml when working to improve my reviews 
> of the
> writings of others. If you click on this url, I think you will enjoy Pat's 
> Abstract. I also
> like Pete's emphasis on respect for evidence.  When Sarah says:
>
> "The stimulus to challenge Jack's writings came from my viva voce 
> examination in
> November 2003 (wrong criteria used by examiners - appeal - thesis still 
> unexamined
> in 2005!) The examiners asked why I was so accepting of what Jack said 
> about that
> self study action research IS the only form of action research. I started 
> thinking!"
>
> I would have seen  such a  question as a wonderful opportunity to engage 
> with the
> evidential base of the examiners' understandings. Given my belief that the 
> claim that
> sefl-study action research IS the only form of action research would be a 
> very silly
> claim to make, (and I have never said or written it) my own response would 
> be:
>
> But Jack doesn't believe that self-study action research IS the only form 
> of action
> research. What he has done is to  advocate the development of a living 
> educational
> theory approach to action research (see http://www.actionresearch.net) in 
> which
> individuals create and test the validity of their explanations for their 
> own learning as
> they ask, research and answer questions of the kind, 'How do I improve 
> what I am
> doing?'
>
> I'm hoping that nobody will  attribute to me the belief that self-study 
> action research
> IS the only form of action research. What I'm hoping is that 
> practitioner-researchers
> find some of my ideas about the nature of educational theory helpful as 
> they
> construct their own, just as I draw on the ideas of others. It  would be 
> helpful for me to
> know who asked the question so that I could write to them to correct their 
> mistake.
>
> Love Jack.
>
>