Additions to our archive of explanations of educational influences in 
learning

"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." - Jack

I do find Jack's ideas helpful, and he certainly does draw on my ideas.

Here is a 'rough guide' take on my experience of working with(-in) the 
influence of Jack's ideas.

Jack has always encouraged me to frist and foremost challenge my own 
ideas. My tendency is to challenge the ideas of others in a traditional 
academic sense. I have listened to Jack's counsel because of the 
authenticity of his own practice with me.

Do read this amazing evidence, which I corroborate, written by Jack, that 
points to his extensive and intensive willingness to bring his body into 
spaces of challenge and to take the challenge of others, seriously,

"Closing this chapter on what counts as evidence ion the self-study of 
teacher education practices brought to mind a quotation from A.N.Whitehead 
about imagination, as well as the most challenging question I have been 
asked as an s-step researcher, by Paul Murray, a former doctoral student 
and a mixed race educator:

Where is the evidence of the critical engagement with the ideas of 
critical 
race theorists, critical non-racial theorists and post-colonial theorists 
in 
the formation of the identities and practices of individuals you are 
working 
with? Where is the evidence of your influence in respect of alerting them 
to 
enhancing the quality of their work by making themselves familiar with 
these 
epistemologies? (Why should you/they when they can get their PhD's/do 
their 
AR writing without making reference to their critical knowledge? (Murray, 
2003, 3-mail)

Having doctoral students who ask their supervisors such questions does not 
make for an unreflective life. Yet taking such questions seriously offers 
the possibility that the s-step researcher will be able to look back on a 
life of inquiry (Marshall, 1999) that has focused on living values of 
humanity more fully."

(page 897, Evidence in Self-Studies of Teacher Education Practices, in 
Loughran J, Hamilton, M.L., LeBoskey, V.K, and Russell, T. (eds.), 
International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education 
Practices, 2004, Dordrecht: Kluwer).

As a supervisor and research mentor Jack has been impeccable in providing 
a tweak to my consciousness concerning how I hold my self accountable for 
my live/living thesis from within the logics of my own live and living 
thesis. 

It seems to me he has done this by way of example. In this process Jack 
has supported the legitimacy of my own way of seeing as a live/living 
theory scholar while enabling me to become - gradually!- less defensive 
and more (psychologically) honest about the glitches in my thinking, the 
contradictions in my claims to practice, and the sometimes tawdry nature 
of my scarifying. This is Jack's brilliance in his challenging encounter 
with me. 

Because of this encounter I now consciously aim to respond to the 
challenges from my own students with that combo of grace and intellectual 
rigour that Jack has shown me in the 'encounter of challenge', and which 
can be aesthetically appreciated through Gabriel Marcel's (1935) beautiful 
way of describing the sort of human availability that was needed to 
achieve the right mode of encounter as,

"a mutual availability for what the future holds in store" 

(p 49, in Emmy Van Deurzen, 1998, Paradox and Passion in Psychotherapy, 
Wiley)

In terms of adding to our archive of explanations et al. What I recognise 
as Jack's impeccable quality as a doctoral-educator from the grounds of my
experience is his persistent invitation to examine whether the unity of
imagination I sometimes express in my writing has correspondence with my
experiences in reality. I've been influenced by Jack to internalise this
standard of judgement, not uncritically and entirely willingly I might add,
and it has really helped me to take more careful responsibility for the
critical and ethical faculties of authenticity of my research stories. To 
make a shift from rhetoric and polemic, towards placing my insights in the 
ground of edcuational practicalities.

In developing the art of postcolonial scholarship from a theoretical
backdrop of critical theory (and related critical perspectives) I have
developed a very 'critical eye' in respect of the authority of scholarship.
Jack has encouraged me to find my own theoretical construction for my 
living and live thesis, without doctrinal cramp, or the caprice of a 
supervisor's hubris. I have that delight of knowing that I've been 
influenced by Jack's educational practice to hold dear to my own practice 
the educational virtue communicated with sublime clarity and elegance in 
the following excerpt,

"In seeing education as an art, I accept a responsibility for helping 
others to give a form to their own lives. Accounts of our own lives as 
educators do seem to be intimately related to the lives of those we teach. 
I mean this in the sense that in accounts of our educative relations we 
should surely expect our students to speak on their behalf. I believe my 
students do." (page 9, Jack Whitehead, The Growth of Educational 
Knowledge: Creating Your Own Living Educational Theories, 1993, Hyde)

I do! 

Yaqub