I like Susie's point about method and about working and playing
together:
"I am not offering a "method" but simply saying that I feel ready to
do such work (and play) with you. I would want our method to come
into being with us."
As well as our method coming into being with us, I am also wondering
if our understandings of our living standards of judgment can also
come into being with us as i~we explore the implications of Pete's
posting on relational accountability?
I tend to add 'dynamic' to relational accountability, to stress the
living nature of educational process and standards of judgment and my
commitment to inclusionality, following Alan, as a relationally
dynamic awareness of space and boundaries. What I would like you to
hold me to account for, in my accounts of my research, is for
enhancing the flow of love, hope, care, respect, trust, integrity,
compassion and educational knowledge in the contexts in which I work
and live.
I thought I'd start my contribution to this thread of relational
accountability with my concern/interest in enhancing the flow of
values and understandings that carry hope (following Mohsen) for
sustaining humanity. I'm contextualising my actions in my tutoring
of a masters programme, in my supervision of doctoral research
programmes and in a workshop I am organising for the Ontario College
of Teachers in Toronto on the 20/21 November on their publications on
'Living The Standards'. You can follow my tutoring and supervision
and the accounts of practitioner-researchers from the left hand menu
of http://www.actionresearch.net . I would appreciate your help in
strenghtening my relationally dynamic accountability to living as
fully as I can the above values together with any further values that
you could share with me and that I could include within my enquiry as
I seek to enable the embodied knowledge of educators and other
practitioner-researchers to be legitimated in the flow of knowledge
from the Academy.
I have a long standing engagement with the ideas on standards from
the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT) and in 1998 with Jacqueline
Delong I argued for the need to continuously regenerate standards of
practice (see the Ontario Action Researcher Paper at: http://
www.nipissingu.ca/oar/archive-Vol1-V113E.htm ) and more recently, in
the 2006 publication have focused on living inclusional values in
educational standards of practice and judgement (see http://
www.nipissingu.ca/oar/new_issue-V821E.htm ).
What I like about the OCT ethical standards of trust, care, integrity
and respect (see the ethical standards and standards of practice
poster at:
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/tuesdayma/octstandards.pdf ) is that I
can relate to them as ontological values that relate to those that
give meaning and purpose to my existence (not only in my professional
practice in education, but in my life). What I would like to do over
the course of the 2006-7 seminar is to explore their meanings in the
course of their emergence and clarification in my practice. In this
process of clarification I imagine that I will be formed the living
epistemological standards I use in my practitioner research to
evaluate the validity of my contributions to educational knowledge
and theory and hence contributing to the theme of the e-seminar. I
am using 'educational' in its widest sense to mean valued learning
throughout life and I believe that there is a distinct and direct
connection between my ontology and epistemology.
As I work at supporting the development of standards of practice and
judgment for sustaining humanity I am aware of a tension between
imposing any existing framework in 'Living The Standards' and using
existing ideas and frameworks in generating one's own standards, as I
think we are working on here. I know we are all living and working
within social systems that have power to influence what we do. I
imagine most of us have experienced this power as coercive at times,
in imposing inappropriate standards on our lives and work, and as
being supportive at times.
What I would like to be held accountable for is in supporting an
educational process in which individuals are encouraged to generate
their own standards of practice and judgment while recognising the
realities of power relations that might be serving the interests of
hope in sustaining humanity and those that are serving other
interests. Looking forward to sharing your own educational journeys
in this thread on relational accountability.
Love Jack.
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