Hi Brian and others
I am inclined to agree with your 'exoteric' plea below, Brian!  Having tried
to offer professional development opportunities to classes that included
media arts, nursing, business, mechanical engineering, catering and
horticultural tutors (all in the same class) I have found that 'simple' is
better, as far as reaching a wide audience is concerned.  One does, however,
risk resistance from those who prefer to communicate in postmodern dialogue,
or in terms that are preferred by a smaller group.  Alon's recognition that
if he reaches one, that's a 100% improvement on previously, is a case in
point.  Respect, Alon; you choose your audience and seek to appeal to that
audience.

However I also very much value Yaakub's insight in his comment, "If the
other (person) isn't drawn to bracing invitation then that's an important
piece of life knowledge for that person isn't it."  I think that it then
becomes the choice of the 'contributor' to recognize whether his/her words
are attracting the kinds of responses that he/she seeks, and mediate his/her
language if the desired responses and 'recognition' are not forthcoming.

So my inclination is to try to communicate simply - not necessarily
simplistically I hope - to appeal to as many practitioners as I can, be they
agriculturalists, traditional scientists, social workers or garbage
collectors.  We can all learn, using action research, to improve our
practice.  I'm thinking, here, of an example my second supervisor for my
PhD, Dr Neil Haigh, gave.  He was facilitating action research in the
commercial environment of a local engineering firm.  All the staff were
engaged in the improvement of their practice using Neil's AR facilitation.
An innovation was suggested by one of the cleaners, which saved the company
thousands of dollars.  This company manufactures electric fences, and uses
copper wire in the process.  The cleaner had noticed, as she moved down the
production line, that she was sweeping up and discarding lengths of copper
wire from one part of the assembly line, and further along the assembly
line, workers were cutting smaller pieces of copper wire from a large coil.
By recycling the pieces she swept up, the company was able to avoid this
duplication and save the company $$$.  If the AR facilitation had occurred
in language that this particular worker could not understand, the company
would have missed out on her valuable input.  Might help to make the point?

Respect to all contributors, and thanks for your varied and rich sharing.
Kind regards
Pip


-----Original Message-----
From: BERA Practitioner-Researcher
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Brian
wakeman
Sent: Wednesday, 6 December 2006 10:45 p.m.
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Judging the educational influences

Dear All,


1.    It seems to me that we have examples of "World
Class" practitioner research among the postings over
the past two months, that have been recognised and
appreciated by respondents.  

(I have valued Pip's wisdom, Sarah's practical
classroom-based work with colleagues, Alan's amazing
creative thinking, and Yaakub's scholarship.)

What is it that makes these contributions "World
Class"?

2.   I think we have an issue with the expression 
"practitioner research".  

From the postings we seem to have a very broad
inclusive understanding of "practitioner". 

I have an anxiety that colleagues with a narrower view
thinking of a practitioner as a person involved in
hospital, social work, business, police, church, and
school settings, may feel excluded from our
discussions.  

It's the complex, academic, philosophical
language....what I call "esoteric"....that is the
problem.
   
I understand esoteric as:
 "intended or understood  by only a small number of
people with a specialised knowledge or interest".

Many posting express appreciation and admiration for
these discussions.

However, for  colleagues busily working in various
professional settings reflecting about practical
issues, seeking to improve their practice, or clients'
experience, their students learning.......in the
everyday language of their profession.....

what constitutes "quality" in terms they can
understand?

Do we need different qualities of judgement for this
'practitioner' research in a narrower sense so that
our discussions are EXoteric...likely to be understood
by a wider audience...?

In the spirit of Advent......"light to all"


Brian



###
--- Keith Kinsella <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi Yaakub, Pip, and others
>  
> I'm just 'coming up for air' after being swept along
> in the multiple wave 
> minor  'tsunami' of ideas, references, questions,
> and suggestions that my little 
> query  about what being 'invitational' seemed to
> generate. Thank you both, 
> especially  you Yaakub, for your warm responsiveness
> and generosity of spirit and 
> time, in  helping me expand my understanding both of
> this 'theory' (I didn't 
> know I  was 'doing a theory' - therefore, I fit into
> the unintentional 
> category - thanks  for the references, Pip) and the
> exciting flow of ideas about 
> Ubuntu that  accompanied these.
>  
> I printed out your last three postings,  Yaakub - so
> I could get a sense of 
> the whole as well as the parts - and found  that
> you'd written over 5000 words 
> in the short space of a day, full of ideas, 
> references, suggestions for 
> further study, personal appreciations, and so on. 
> Amazing! And all written in what 
> I'd now call a 'bracing' invitational  style: it
> felt like I'd been guided on 
> a difficult walk  along the cliffs in a high wind,
> that I'd been taken to 
> the(my) edge on a number  of occasions, but had been
> enabled to return safely 
> feeling a little tired and  spaced out, but full of
> ideas and possibilities.  
>  
> So thank you for making the effort to generate 
> those Ubuntu inspired waves 
> within me....it will take a while for me to make my 
> own sense of them, and see 
> how I might work with the many aspects  you've
> offered, both to help myself 
> as well show the two African students on the  MA
> programme, a possible path 
> they might want to tread in their dissertations. 
> I'm thinking particularly of 
> the Zimbabwean who I'm sure is desperate to find 
> ways of making his and his 
> family/friends/colleagues' lives more livable. And I
>  think this is where your 
> point about situating ubuntu in its historical 
> context could be so powerful as, 
> at the moment as you indicate, this has been 
> subjugated/marginalised by 
> mainstream thinking from the Western canon, and  in
> danger of re-appearing cut off 
> from its roots and context. More on  this
> later....but definitely interested 
> in working towards crafting 'a multiple,  complex,
> and inclusional 
> epistemology of Ubuntu'
>  
> Still pondering on the many ideas you  offered on
> the impact and 'doing' of 
> invitational. As I read it the first time,  and
> using Polanyi's formulation of 
> tacit knowledge,  I got the feeling I  was becoming
> more aware of the many 
> 'subsidiaries'  that synthesised/were integrated to
> form the 'proximal' of being  
> invitational. And this will allow me to dig deeper
> into these roots of the  
> invitational, and expand my practice/behaviour into
> the larger space created by 
>  the languaging we've been doing. I hope this isn't
> mysterious: I'm just 
> saying  that talking about invitational and
> exploring its meaning has given me a 
> kind of  permission to actually do more of it.
>  
> Your references to the 'vessel' metaphor and the 
> letting go of others' 
> categories also resonated as it's something I'm
> still very  much in the process of 
> doing. The 'conduit' or connectivity metaphor that
> you're  now exploring 
> reminded me of the pair practice of 'pushing hands'
> in t'ai  chi - something very 
> subtle is passing between the hands just enough to
> define a  very dynamic 
> boundary where it's unclear who is
> pushing/retreating and  where any 'edges' might 
> be, all within a conduit of continuous  movement.  I
> wonder if this might be a 
> crude illustration of Alan's  inclusional boundary
> which connects rather than 
> separates? Does it suggest in a  physical/energic
> mode how we might take 
> steps 'towards mutual  availability', that would be
> experienced as invitational, 
> appreciative,  shared? And what kind of standard of
> judgement would this help 
> us live in  supporting the education of others
>  
> Regards
> Keith
>  
>  
>  
>  
> 


Brian E. Wakeman
Education adviser
Dunstable
Beds