Dear Sarah and EVERYONE,
I'm glad you are writing us these notes. I hope that you will continue to speak with us.
Your postings are inviting me to think about my own situation as a self-proclaimed teacher researcher in a Canadian highschool...
I have more to say. However, I need a little more time to think and write.
Take care,
Matt
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From: BERA Practitioner-Researcher on behalf of Sarah Fletcher
Sent: Sun 11/26/2006 3:27 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: esoteric language
Dear Jaime (welcome!) and Everyone,
As a former languages teacher (and teacher of teachers of languages) I agree wholeheartedly with
sentiments expressed about needing careful choice of words and clarity in word use in discussion.
The main problem is that the language that, for example, teacher researchers use in schools can
be markedly different from the language that teacher educator researchers may use in academe.
When I left teaching in school after twenty-three years to become a lecturer in a university I well
remember sitting dumbfounded in meetings called to discuss how we might work with schools...
I simply didn't understand this new language. I was mystified by the many acronyms employed. My
own solution was to regard this Academese as another modern foreign language I needed to learn!
I am reminded of Bridget Somekh's call for us to inhabit one another's castles. We are posting to
discuss practitioner research and the standards of judgement that can enable us to evaluate this.
One of the challenges this raises is to create a shared 'being' where we communicate clearly not
just with our own community but with others. Doesn't that process necessarily underpin ubuntu?
Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1999):
"A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel
threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes
from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are
humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."
How can we be open to one another, available to one another and affirming of one another unless
we all strive to arrive at a language that does not exclude? I sensed exclusion on OUR list recently
when I read (too) long streams of greetings in language I didn't understand. I felt exclusion invade
too in (a thankfully few) overtly racist and religiously bigotted postings masquerading as 'ubuntu'.
We need to move towards recognising we each have a contribution to make in reaching concensus
about standards of judgement. To complement the valuable communication of ideas in what can
be sometimes very different languages of the workplace and academe we need a regular summary
in simple unadorned English to show how far we are reaching the concensus we are here to reach.
I guess I am about to receive another email telling me I am posting too frequently and taking too
much of a lead ... perhaps another email saying I am excluded from the Bath Research Group too!
I have had both in the last few days. I believe that language can be a vehicle for and manifestation
of shared values. We need to put aside defending personal territories if this discussion is to work.
Kind regards,
Sarah
PS I've been busy off list happily engaging as a practitioner researcher in schools and in academe -
I invite you to look at the home page of http://www.TeacherResearch.net <http://www.teacherresearch.net/> under 'Downton School'.
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