Hello Moira and Robyn and others,

I know I have been quiet on this list, which is down to the fact that 
life has been incredibly busy, and continues to be so. But I do want to 
respond to the issues you are raising, because they are the issues that 
seem to me some of the most important. I continuously ask myself, How 
do I judge the quality of what I do? I need to ask this question 
because others are also asking it about me and my work and I need to 
know what I think about it myself. I guess my main standard of 
judgement is that I really enjoy what I do. I work with fantastic 
people, in a range of contexts, and I love working with them. I wake up 
every morning thinking 'Oh good, I'm still alive. What do I do with 
this day?' This day may be my last so whatever I do, I do with intent. 
My intent is educational, and by this I mean that I encourage others, 
and myself, to think independently, and to make up their, and my, own 
minds about what we do with the day. I judge a good day in terms of 
whether or not I have enabled someone to think for themselves, or maybe 
whether they have enabled me also to think for myself, which is a not 
unusual occurrence, or maybe whether I have enabled myself to think new 
ideas. The other day, in York, someone said, 'I never thought of that 
before,' so that was a really good day for me. I understand quality in 
terms of what I hold as 'good'. Every day for me is a good day, because 
I am alive in that day, and being alive is a living standard of 
judgement about the fact of being alive. Life is its own judge. My best 
days however are when new thinking happens, especially when the new 
thinking is being done by me, and that happens most often in company 
with others who are also engaged in new thinking – sometimes I meet 
those others in books and sometimes face to face. Sometimes they are 
kind meetings, and I really enjoy those, and sometimes not, but they 
also contribute to learning. I think kindness is such an important 
standard.

Tomorrow is a brand new adventure. I am going to Iceland! Then the 
following week to Ireland, and two weeks after that to South Africa. 
What amazing opportunities for good days, in the company of good 
people.

Best wishes to all – hope you are having a good day!

Jean


On 9 Oct 2006, at 06:53, Moira Laidlaw wrote:

> Hi, Robyn. I do like the way you have expressed your insights about 
> the challenges of seeing new ideas and not being caught up with 
> defending one's own 'patch'. It's so difficult, isn't it? Openness to 
> change, the ability to see that there are other possibilities, do seem 
> to offer healthy pathways to greater understanding and therefore more 
> ability to facilitate this openness in others. I agree with you that 
> propositional ways of explaining something or oneself sometimes lack 
> the appeal that can be found in seeing how one behaves instead. It has 
> often been the case for me that I have been surprised by someone 
> else's interpretation of what I have done, which wasn't what I was 
> expecting they might get out of it, only to find that a small thing I 
> did or said at a particular time has had a huge impact on them. I 
> think, because of that experience, I have tried to become more and 
> more transparent in my dealings with people in their action research 
> enquiries as they seek to understand more about how they improve 
> something. When you say:
>
> 'Actually I know really that what people notice and comment on is not 
> about what I say but what I do and their experience of it.  This is 
> what influences and appears to have worth for others,'
>
> this really resonates with me. Here in my work with VSO in Beijing's 
> central office, I am an international volunteer, whose job it is to 
> support the work of the other colleagues particularly in terms of 
> official VSO evaluation processes and their own chosen Action Research 
> enquiries. I was working with a new national office-volunteer recently 
> on his Action Research enquiry and talking about the theory of AR 
> because he'd asked for some background. When he talked to me later, 
> however, he was full of enthusiasm about the fact that I had spent 
> time with him on his own trying to help him improve his English. What 
> I had said about the AR enquiry process didn't seem to be the most 
> significant of what he had taken away from the meeting, although I'm 
> not suggesting it wasn't significant just becuse he didn't say 
> anything. My treatment of him, however, had clearly 'spoken' to him 
> loudly and subsequent to that initial meeting, he now comes and chats 
> with me openly about his life outside the office and what his plans 
> are for the future. A timely reminder about 'walking the talk'.
>
> You ask: 'How do we influence change?' I think this IS a big question, 
> and I don't claim to have AN answer to this. I can only say for my own 
> part, that the most positive influence of change facilitated by others 
> with me, and by me with others, has something to do with what you're 
> saying about open-endedness, a willingness to see other possibilities, 
> and an enthusiasm about the potential that each one of us, as human 
> beings, have for change and development independently and together.
>
> I would love to know what other readers think about the ideas emerging 
> here.
>
> Warmest regards,
>
> Moira
>
> <html><DIV>
> <P><FONT face="Lucida Handwriting, Cursive" color=#ff0000 
> size=5><STRONG><EM>Moira</EM></STRONG></FONT><FONT face="" 
> color=#9900cc size=5><STRONG><EM><FONT color=#ff0000>&nbsp;</FONT> 
> &nbsp;<IMG height=12 src'="http://graphics.hotmail.com/emsmile.gif" 
> width=12></EM></STRONG></FONT></P>
> <P><STRONG><EM><FONT color=#0000ff>'Be the changes you want to see in 
> the world!' </FONT></EM></STRONG></P>
> <P><FONT color=#ff9900 size=2><STRONG>Mahatma 
> Gandhi.<BR></STRONG></FONT></P>
> <P>&nbsp;</P></DIV></html>
>
>
>
>
>> From: Robyn Pound <[log in to unmask]>
>> Reply-To: BERA Practitioner-Researcher              
>> <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: What are living standards of judgement?
>> Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 05:46:22 -0700
>>
>>  BERA Practitioner Researchers.
>>   As always I am fascinated by the discussions stimulated by this 
>> forum.  Reading the submissions my thinking spun to follow different 
>> ideas that seem to go around in circles somewhat.
>>
>>   I recognise the living standards of judgement based on his personal 
>> values that Je Kan shares.  They feel very familiar but are also 
>> different to my own.  This is the first point.  Values commonly 
>> recognisable as useful are so because they work.  They therefore have 
>> relatability beyond ourselves (Bassey,1993?).  We relate easily with 
>> each other in these circumstances and find opportunities for growing 
>> and making contributions when they are in place.   On the other hand 
>> Je Kan’s life history and the ground from which he has formed his 
>> views of the world are his own and necessarily unique in the array of 
>> experiences that colour the nuances of meanings which make his 
>> standards and the ways that he lives them feel different from my own. 
>>  Thankfully we are not cardboard cut out clones of something defined 
>> by some higher authority as correct but are all striving towards 
>> finding ways of being that promote growth and contribution.   It 
>> seems to me that the people I meet are doing
>>  that anyway (striving to make life better) whether they believe they 
>> are doing living theory research or not.  The difference here is that 
>> we are trying to explain what we have come up with so as to extend 
>> the possibilities.  The explanations are always incomplete because 
>> the circumstances and variables are so diverse.
>>
>>   I also liked Brian’s questions because it is questions such as 
>> these that keep us on our toes and ‘bias, false consciousness, or 
>> even deception’ in question-provoking tension.  Here my thinking spun 
>> off on many tangents about:
>>   ·         Do we living theorists always have access to critical 
>> friends who ask the kinds of questions that prevent us from merely 
>> defending ourselves from the prospect of being found incomplete?  
>> Uncomfortable challenge can so easily lead to energy channelled into 
>> bolstering existing beliefs rather than openness to the prospect that 
>> there are things we do not yet know.   This says lots about the 
>> qualities of relationship with the critical friend and self 
>> confidence within the researcher sufficient for withstanding 
>> critique.
>>   ·         The role of encouragement and focussing on positives 
>> seems to be in perpetual tension with identifying the negatives – the 
>> ‘living contradictions’.  This is where the greatest learning occurs 
>> and new values eventually emerge in my experience but it seems to me 
>> to be one of the greatest skills in practice and in research to be 
>> able to effectively balance encouragement with challenge.  It turns 
>> up in many ways but I have come back to thinking about it as 
>> ‘congruence’ in Rogerian terms.  I have also been thinking about the 
>> value of naivety in only looking on the bright side being in balance 
>> with being in touch with likely negative possibilities.  This is a 
>> huge topic and I haven’t begun to explain myself!
>>   ·         The role of life and learning as process without final 
>> concrete solutions allows for researchers to get it wrong but also 
>> requires a climate of tentativeness and openness to other views in 
>> shared searching for change.  This is what we hope to promote for our 
>> learners or professional clients and it is in direct parallel with 
>> what we need for our own research journeys of discovery towards 
>> something better.  It demonstrates the two meanings of living in 
>> living theory that I am aware of.  Living as in the lived experience 
>> of those involved and living as in dynamic and changing.  Are there 
>> other aspects to this living nature of living theory?
>>   ·         ‘It is OK for you... but how do other professionals judge 
>> the validity or worth of your enquiry for their solution?’  This is 
>> the big question isn’t it?  How do we influence change? For me I am 
>> forever struggling to be able to explain in propositional statements 
>> about what it all means because I cannot help myself.  Actually I 
>> know really that what people notice and comment on is not about what 
>> I say but what I do and their experience of it.  This is what 
>> influences and appears to have worth for others.  I believe that I 
>> would not be still enjoying my job and tackling new and difficult 
>> areas of it if I had not undertaken living theory action research 
>> which gave me a greater understanding and confidence in what I am 
>> doing because I identified the values that motivate me and clarified 
>> the living standards of judgement which help me identify new areas 
>> for exploration.
>>   I am interested to see if these ideas contribute anything to Je 
>> Kan's question about living standards of judgement.
>>
>>   Robyn
>>   (health visitor working in Bath)
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------
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