Dear Brian, Peter Jack,
I am some what confused with the sudden postings about idle talk, Have
I missed some thing ? Has list become an academic writing club? or is
it seeking academic approval from some where? This theme of the issues
of standards and what they look like is one month old.
Brain, you wrote,
What of understandings, theories that have been
> generated?
>
> What of rich possibilities for other professionals to
> generalise naturalistically to their situation?
>
> Of possibilities for others gaining insights, points
> of entry into improving their own problems?
>
> Of relevance and significance to wider and deeper
> local, national and international issues?
yes, please!!! Great points, great questions. So how do we do it?
Context on and in practitioners lives is as it often drives actions.
Perhaps not to where the individual wants to go. Understanding contexts
gives clearer insights.
If you look in the achieves, I am most interested to see what standard
of judgments are being used to describe postings as idle talk?
Is not discourse and its attributed values, mundane idle talk or
otherwise part of the research process? Are there not different
research methodological approaches that do not particular follow or
wish to follow the prescribed format of conversations on this list?
Perhaps I have misunderstood?
Alon has a case when he said: say what you want to say, what is
important to you and let others make of it what they will. Standards
and values emerge over time, clone approaches or scripted ways to
respond I believe are exclusional in nature ( a judgment value) and
possibly to busy practitioners who may not have the wish to discuss in
professorial debate, as beautiful as it was, but rather want to speak
with other busy teachers about the issues and problems , possibly their
solution they face in actual practice. ( another judgment value). I
can at my leisure take some ones posting and then make it academic. ( a
belief).
Such a plan as you are prescribing at this early stage of the question
may well act as a barrier to people who will feel that can not nor do
not wish to communicate in the way that you seem to be seeking. (
judgment) There is more to academics and research than the actual
flowery exclusive language or particular favored models. ( judgment and
belief) The space should be held open for discourse between
practitioners. ( judgment) I for one am extremely interested in the
idle talk of other practitioners which allows me to see windows on
their lives , their life worlds and where they are coming from, idle
talk also contains values, beliefs and standards of judgment that are
equally reveling and helpful to me. If I do not agree or do not like at
posting I can easily use the delete button or I can engage the choice
is mine. To judge others words as idle is academic intolerance (
Belief) is that really what this list wants to publicly set as it mode
of operation? What message are you sending out? Perhaps we seeing how
judgments can exclude rather than include and how they can scarify
rather than support. perhaps we are seeing as well the difficulty of
deciding the rightness of the judgments of another. Are we once again
seeing Power issues being expressed to dictate to others the course
their discourse should take?
Peter did you really mean what you posted? I can understand being
frustrated and disappointed that research did not produced the
anticipated and expected out comes or even the desired ones. That is
the nature of research. You say we did not learn form the past perhaps
I would ask the question; What is your view of why the out come did
not fulfill your expectations? Idea talk is a poor descriptive
scholarly term that is demeaning the impute of others. Which I know you
would never do , so what is it that has pressed your buttons so to
speak?
Moira, your posting was a joy, beautiful to read and some thing I can
look to aspire to. It was a professorial paper. I also look forward to
your rich ideas and experience expressed in your every day descriptive
language where you open up a window in to teaching in China, with the
cultural, every day influences and insights you have shared.
If we reflect on what standards of judgment have been shown relating to
this question asked by Jack which I believe id for next years BERA
conference. We can see that judgments have been made about the level of
discourse not being scholarly. I would like to ask how this judgment
was made. What values in terms of levels of articulation and expression
are decided to be suitable for scholarly inclusion in this list?
I also wish to ask the question is this a list that is open for BERA
members to respectfully listen and engage or is this a closed list for
selected scholars who have their own agenda as to what constitutes
educational standards and enquiry? Clarification would be gratefully
appreciated idle talk or other wise.
If we reflect on what questions have been posted and the ideas, there
have been many interesting points raised. As yet such points have yet
to be taken up and engaged with. I suggest that due process be allowed
to hold its natural course.
Love to all, smile .. Je Kan
oting Brian wakeman <[log in to unmask]>:
> Hello Peter and All,
>
> Would it be worth enunciating some principles of
> judgement...some criteria for the various levels of
> value on international research?
>
> How would we recognise each of the levels in
> practitioner research?
>
>
>
>
> What of sharpness and relevance of questions?
>
> What of clarity of ethical principles?
>
> What of quality of data gathering?
>
> Of rigour of analysis
>
> Of awareness and discussion of the writing of others?
>
> What of practical change or improvements that have
> taken place?
>
> What of understandings, theories that have been
> generated?
>
> What of rich possibilities for other professionals to
> generalise naturalistically to their situation?
>
> Of possibilities for others gaining insights, points
> of entry into improving their own problems?
>
> Of relevance and significance to wider and deeper
> local, national and international issues?
>
> Regards
>
>
> Brian
>
> --- Peter Mellett <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Dear All
>>
>> Jack wrote on 19 September 2006 under the heading
>> 'A BEGINNING FOR THE 2006-7 PRACTITIONER-RESEARCHER
>> E-SEMINAR'
>> “… We have 123 subscribers on the list to begin the
>> 2006-2007 Practitioner-
>> Researcher e-seminar on the standards of judgement
>> we use in evaluating the
>> quality of the educational knowledge and educational
>> theories we are
>> creating as practitioner-researchers.”
>>
>> Looking back to last year, I remember Jack opening
>> the e-seminar for 2005
>> with an invitation ". . . to a discussion on the
>> contributions of our
>> living educational theories and our evidence of our
>> educational influences
>> in our own learning and to the future of educational
>> research . . ." with
>> a further invitation ". . . to let each other know
>> where our educational
>> theories can be accessed and where we can see
>> evidence of our educational
>> influences in our own learning, the learning of
>> others and in the learning
>> and education of social formations."
>>
>> I see a common theme between the 2005 and 2006
>> seminar briefings that
>> centres on standards of judgement.
>>
>> In 2005, Jack asked me to take on the role of
>> reviewer as the archive of
>> contributions filled. However, on 30 June at 'Re:
>> Start of the Review
>> Process' I stated:
>> “. . . I have been perusing postings as they have
>> been made over the past
>> few weeks and must admit to noting that the
>> exchanges have created within
>> me a steadily growing sense of tension as I
>> endeavour to hold on to the
>> original stated theme of the e-seminar i.e. 'The
>> nature of educational
>> theories: what counts as evidence of educational
>> influences in learning?'
>> In an attempt to respond to that tension and to see
>> if the process of
>> review can be moved forward, I propose to go ‘back
>> to basics’ and to
>> undertake an action enquiry under Jack's usual
>> sequential headings:
>>
>> 1. What is my concern ?
>> 2. Why am I concerned?
>> 3. What do I think I can do about it?
>> 4. What kind of 'evidence' can I collect to help me
>> make some judgements
>> about what is happening?
>> 5. How do I plan to collect such evidence?”
>> 6. How shall I check that my judgement about what
>> has happened is reasonably
>> fair and accurate? …”
>>
>> In an attempt to ground this enquiry in a practice
>> that could be shared
>> with seminar members, I decided to review a piece of
>> work published on
>> Jack’s website that is regarded as being a
>> good-quality action research
>> enquiry. I then asked the question “How can we
>> review the work of Kathryn
>> Yeaman and thereby develop standards of judgement
>> which help us to
>> understand the nature of educational theories and
>> what counts as evidence
>> of our educational influences in learning”?
>>
>> I received interest in this enquiry from Jack and
>> Moira but, in the end,
>> there was no other on-going engagement. I wrote a
>> final posting on 07
>> October 2005 at 'Making meanings from the archive'
>> and concluded:
>>
>> “… Are we to make something of this archive, or are
>> we to press eagerly on
>> into the future, looking for the next opportunity to
>> rehearse our familiar
>> arguments amongst ourselves, without actually
>> convincing anyone outside our
>> immediate circle that we have made any sort of
>> serious contribution to the
>> wider debate.”
>>
>> To me, it seems that we are failing to build on the
>> past, or even to draw
>> conclusions from the past.
>>
>> Alon Serper wrote the following contribution to the
>> 2006 seminar on 12
>> October under
>> 'Re: What kind of lifeworld are we creating for each
>> other here?'
>> “… I am growing increasingly tired so I have to
>> speak in order to stop
>> being that exhausted as I read the entries … It is
>> just further
>> highlighting and displaying the critique of
>> academics and academia as
>> detached ivory tower (possibly made of much cheaper
>> material than ivory) of
>> talkers/analysers, talking what Heidegger called
>> 'idle talk' and what I
>> myself, in my usual not messing about and saying
>> what I think, call yakking
>> of yakkers, rather than doers and deyakkers.
>> So my contribution is as follows:
>> Just produce an account, showing your living
>> standards of judgement and
>> make it public for assessment and re-evaluation:
>> We'll decide and tell you
>> if it is epistemological, clear and convincing,
>> contributing (ethical) and
>> educational.”
>>
>> I would claim that Alon has coming to a similar
>> conclusion as mine of last
>> year: we need to share an enquiry that is grounded
>> in practice. Otherwise,
>> we are doomed to produce yet another megabyte or two
>> of ‘idle talk’. What
>> do you think we should do?
>>
>> Peter Mellett
>> 19 October 2006
>>
>>
>> Archive
>>
>> 20 June 2005
>>
>>
> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0506&L=bera-practitioner-
>> researcher&T=0&O=A&P=9355
>>
>> 21 June
>>
> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0506&L=bera-practitioner-
>> researcher&T=0&O=A&P=10194
>>
>> 23 June
>>
> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0506&L=bera-practitioner-
>> researcher&T=0&O=A&P=11674
>>
>> 24 June
>>
> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0506&L=bera-practitioner-
>> researcher&T=0&O=A&P=12514
>>
>> 30 June ***
>>
> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0506&L=bera-practitioner-
>> researcher&T=0&O=A&P=16122
>>
>> 4 July
>>
> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0507&L=bera-practitioner-
>> researcher&T=0&O=A&P=3732
>>
>> 5 July
>>
> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0507&L=bera-practitioner-
>> researcher&T=0&O=A&P=5427
>>
>> 15 July
>>
> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0507&L=bera-practitioner-
>> researcher&T=0&O=A&P=15006
>>
>> 07 October ***
>>
> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0510&L=bera-practitioner-
>> researcher&T=0&O=A&P=73
>>
>
>
> Brian E. Wakeman
> Education adviser
> Dunstable
> Beds
>
>
Rev Je Kan Adler-Collins
Assistant Professor of Nursing
Fukuoka Prefectural University Faculty of Nursing
Tagawa City
Fukuoka Prefecture
Japan
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