Dear Eleanor,

Sadly, as the pot said to the kettle, I am utterly bamboozled by the 
language of those Peter McLaren quotes!



But I can relate to:

"Going with the inclusional flow perhaps means thinking, acting and writing 
with awareful, hopeful, pragmatism, carrying the sense of wishing
for common ground, being inspired to make important contributions, allowing 
for the making of mistakes, and ready to rethink and sometimes to say 'Mmm, 
I got that wrong'.  Not very revolutionary is it?"


This sounds more like the open-to-possibility enquiry/navigation 
characteristic of inclusional educational leadership of humility ('sailboat 
leadership' as described in Chapter 9 of 'Natural Inclusion')than the 
rationalistic leadership of arrogance('powerboat leadership'). Given that 
powerboat leadership currently predominates, sailboat leadership, of the 
kind I feel is manifested by practitioner researchers is truly what I might 
call 're-evolutionary'. And understanding the reasoning that underlies 
sailboat leadership and its huge implications is a profound contribution, I 
feel, to skillful evolutionary educational craftsmanship.

Pasted below is an excerpt from my piece on 'inclusional questions and 
answers', which I have placed at http://people.bath.ac.uk/bssadmr.



Warmest

Alan

-------------------------------------------------



9.	Are you calling for a revolution?

Yes, but not in the mechanical sense of the turning of a wheel or the 
overturning and replacement of one form of governance or understanding by 
another. I am calling for a revolution in the sense of a re-evolution, an 
evolution that includes loving receptivity in its thinking and framing of 
reality. I am calling for a transformation from the solid fixtures and 
oppositions of the logic of the excluded middle, to the fluid dynamic 
receptive-responsiveness of the logic of the included middle, with space 
incorporated. I feel this transformation is vital if we are to bring our 
sense of human place in Nature back into more realistic proportion and 
navigate the psychological, social and environmental troubles that we have 
made for ourselves through fearfully disregarding the enormity of our 
immaterial aspect.


10 Where can the re-evolution begin?

Here and now! In fact I might question whether a revolution really can have 
a beginning, for that idea is itself based on a linear view of history 
referenced to an abstract time frame. But perhaps, for now, that’s another 
story to be explored in far more depth than is possible here.

Meanwhile, let’s liberate our minds from the mechanistic, confrontational 
and competitive thinking that binds us in old patterns of being, thinking 
and acting. Let’s transform our scientific, mathematical, artistic, 
philosophical, governmental, social, religious and educational practices so 
as to be more attuned with one another and the re-cycling processes of 
Nature. Let’s recall what Leonardo Da Vinci once said: ‘Human subtlety will 
never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than 
does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is 
superfluous.’

Let’s accept our transient no thingness and work imaginatively, 
common-spiritedly and respectfully together within our natural 
neighbourhood as our flow-forms emerge and subside!

We might just transform global crisis into a story with a happy non-ending!


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--On 16 January 2007 12:53 +0000 E LOHR <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
> Dear Jack, Yaacub, Alan and all,
>
> I am about to ramble on in a not very academic way, so don't read this if
> you want intellectually stimulating debate! This is a 'practice' ramble
> because I find that when I journal (write to myself) I have an enormous
> amount to say, but when I write to this list I get stuck, and wonder
> where the ideas have gone.  ANYWAY...I thought I would see what happens:
> Jack quotes: "Revolutionary critical pedagogy begins with a three-pronged
> approach: First, students engage in a pedagogy of demystification
> centering around a semiotics of recognition, where dominant sign systems
> are recognized and denaturalized, where common sense is historicized..."
> Thats interesting. I remember the shock of having my beliefs about the
> world being challenged when I started college in 1963.  And the shock of
> learning about social class, about poverty, about how my middle class
> parent's ideas about whats normal were supposedly wrong!  And then there
> was the Kennedy/Cuba stand off.  Were we going to blow ourselves up?
> "Inspired by a sense of ever-imminent hope, students take up a pedagogy
> of revolution, where deliberative practices for transforming the social
> universe of capital are developed and put into practice"  So, what is
> common sense , and what matter experience now, over 40 years later?  Does
> it count if I act awarefully with common sense, or am I reflecting
> reality and promoting the same old self interest that my parents once
> did?  How would I act hopefully in relation to putting forward my take on
> educational standards,BERA, and world leading educational whatevers?
> Going with the inclusional flow perhaps means thinking, acting and
> writing with awareful, hopeful, pragmatism, carrying the sense of wishing
> for common ground, being inspired to make important contributions,
> allowing for the making of mistakes, and ready to rethink and sometimes
> to say 'Mmm, I got that wrong'.  Not very revolutionary is it?  Seems
> important though.
> With love,
> Eleanor
>
> Jack Whitehead <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On 15 Jan 2007, at 20:33, A.D.M.Rayner wrote:
>
>
>  ... we can recognise an opportunity to turn the notion of 'World-Leading
> Research' on its Head, through our understanding of inclusionality.....
> We are transforming our understanding of what 'world leading' really
> means from that which imposes itself on the world to that which places
> itself dynamically in the world.
>
>
>
> As someone committed to exploring in our seminar the world leading
> potential of Alan's expression of inclusionality as a relationally
> dynamic awareness of space and boundaries as connective, reflexive and
> co-creative and Marian's understanding of emerging living theories of
> inclusional and responsive practice, I'm wondering how to contribute to
> this exploration in a way that fully recognises the unique contribution
> of each individual to the creation of a world of educational quality. For
> example, I'm looking forward to reading the article Helle is going to
> send us about her work in Denmark. I'm wondering how we are going to
> respond to Brian's concern that we should be finding a way to document
> what we are learning through the seminar so that it can be used to inform
> policy.  In this theme of the e-seminar perhaps we could explore the
> development of a world leading enquiry into the nature of educational
> leadership with our perceptions of inclusionality. Maybe the first step
> is to see how many of us would like to explore our contributions to a
> world of educational quality with our perceptions of inclusionality as a
> relationally dynamic awareness of space and boundaries as connective,
> reflexive and co-creative?  In doing this I imagine some of you are like
> me in wanting to integrate insights from the most advanced social
> theories of the day. Yaakub has suggested that Peter McLaren has provided
> one such theory and while I draw insights from revolutionary theories I'm
> also fascinated by the processes of creative evolution that Alan writes
> about. This is what Peter McLaren says about his revolutionary critical
> pedagogy - this is from an excellent review by Samuel Day Fassbinder of
> McLaren's Rage and Hope:  McLaren’s idea of technique is discussed at
> length in an essay in Capitalists and Conquerors:  "Revolutionary
> critical pedagogy begins with a three-pronged approach: First, students
> engage in a pedagogy of demystification centering around a semiotics of
> recognition, where dominant sign systems are recognized and
> denaturalized, where common sense is historicized, and where
> signification is understood as a political practice that refracts rather
> than reflects reality, where cultural formations are understood in
> relation to the larger social factory of the school and the global
> universe of capital. This is followed by a pedagogy of opposition, where
> students engage in analyzing various political systems, ideologies, and
> histories, and eventually students begin to develop their own political
> positions. Inspired by a sense of ever-imminent hope, students take up a
> pedagogy of revolution, where deliberative practices for transforming the
> social universe of capital are developed and put into practice. (p. 59)"
> From Fassbinder's review of Peter McLaren's Rage and Hope at
> http://edrev.asu.edu/reviews/rev499.htm  .
>
>
> The paper based on the multi-media presentation Maggie and I gave to the
> 5th International Diverse, drawing on inclusionality has just been
> published (it came through yesterday) and you can access the
> presentation:
>
>
> Farren, M. & Whitehead, J. (2006)  Educational Influences in Learning
> with Visual Narratives, in Childs, M, Cuttle, M, & Riley, K. (2006)
> Developing Innovative Video Resources For Students Everywhere. DIVERSE
> Proceedings: 2005 & 2006 5th International DIVERSE Conference 5th to 7th
> July 2005 Vanderbilt Universit yNashville , USA 6th International DIVERSE
> Conference 5th to 7th July 2006, Glasgow Caledonian University Press, pp.
> 219-234. Retrieved 15 January 2007 from
> http://www.jackwhitehead.com/mfjwDIVERSEcomplete.pdf  Love Jack.
>
>