Dear All,

I thought it might help to 'melt the ice' of this thread to paste in below 
an account of some of my own experiences of trying to 'bring out all the 
talents' of a group of students within the context of a final year 
undergraduate course entitled 'Life, Environment and People'. The course is 
still running, and although I receive little or no acknowedgement from my 
colleagues, one student this year was moved to write:

'Thank you! This single unit has been worth four years of hard work to 
reach. I learned more here than from any other unit during my career at the 
University of Bath, and in this short unit, Alan Rayner almost 
single-handedly justified to me the reputation of this university and the 
tuition fees I have been paying'.

Maybe some of my experiences will resonate with others on this list, 
providing both encouragement and warning. The piece below is taken from my 
not-formally published book, 'Inclusional Nature: Bringing Life and Love to 
Science', which can be downloaded in pdf format from our new website at 
www.inclusional-nature.org. Another not-formally published book, based 
directly on the 'Life, Environment and People' course is called 'Natural 
Inclusion: How To Evolve Good Neighbourhood'. This can also be downloaded 
from the website.

Warmest

Alan


PS 'Neoteny' is the retention of juvenile characteristics in adulthood, and 
is thought to have resulted in some of the most dramatic evolutionary 
transformations in Life on Earth, including the origin of backboned 
creatures like ourselves from sea squirts! Many consider the creativity of 
Homo sapiens to arise from our being a neotenous ape....

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

Holding Openness in Education - A Personal Experience of Lifelong Learning 
Put Into Practice



Upon returning from my own excursion into the Academic Wilderness in 1999, I 
wanted to bring a very different dimension to my role as an educator at the 
University of Bath. I wished to relinquish any semblance of being a 
dictatorial authority transmitting my expert knowledge and understanding to 
students in the hope that they would reproduce it in their examinations and 
careers. I wanted students to be lively recreations, hopefully influenced by 
my guide-lining spirit, not reproductive clones dully and dutifully 
following my prescriptions for their success. As I will describe again in a 
later chapter, I wanted to be an Arthurian gatherer-together of diverse 
perspectives, not an Authoritarian dictator of the status quo. In short, I 
wanted to transform the dynamic geometry of the educational process, rather 
than training exercise, in which both I as learning teacher and the students 
as teaching learners are engaged, so as to sustain an ever-present neotenous 
possibility for transformation.



And so I set about designing a new course, coded BB30108, about which I felt 
passionately inexpert, a real amateur - literally meaning 'lover in public - in the midst of the professional practice enshrined by my Institution. I became intent on becoming a professional amateur, prepared to play with my disciplinary boundaries whilst still having a source of financial income to keep me going. But being a professional amateur in this way, as I was soon to find out, was no easy ride! In the following passages I will describe my own learning process, navigating the complexities of relating both to students accustomed to being recipients of authoritarian teaching and external assessors accustomed to transmitting 'received wisdom'. I hope that this description may convey something of what 'holding openness' really means in an educational context, by way of remaining alive to possibility as we learn, teach and encounter resistances together during our unique individual experiences as dynamic inclusions of our living space.



After much thought about how to summarize its full scope and depth in a few, 
reasonably familiar words, I called my new course 'Life, Environment and 
People'. In tune with the ternary theme of inclusionality, this three-in-one 
coupling connected 'inner', 'outer' and 'intermediary' as well as 
'Complexity, Uncertainty and Information'.



When I first presented course BB30108 in 2001, I stated my 'intention' to 
the biology and natural science students attending it as being:



'To improve your and my awareness of the dynamic properties that underlie 
the functioning and ecological and evolutionary responsiveness of living 
systems, with a view to developing patterns of relating to these systems 
that enhance quality of life both for them and us'.



Four years later, I modified this statement as follows:



'To provide an opportunity for us to reflect and learn together about how to 
apply our scientific and biological knowledge effectively and creatively in 
a social and environmental context. This joint reflection and learning will 
include an enquiry into methods of scientific enquiry, perception and 
communication in order to identify possible limitations in current thinking 
and prospects for the development of approaches that can enhance and deepen 
our understanding of human relationships with the living world'



I believe that this shift in the way I expressed my intention demonstrates 
my own practice as a 'learning teacher', open to the influence of those 
whose learning I was trying to engage with. It reflects my gradual 
transformation from a remote, 'Authoritarian' to a co-responsive, 'Arthurian', 
style of educational leadership, which, as it turns out, actually enhances 
rather than diminishes the value of my unique knowledge and experience.



This shift also reflected my efforts to clarify the educational context of 
the course for those who had no actual experience of it but nonetheless felt 
in a position to judge its content from outside, in their own terms and 
without any consultation with me. Somehow I had to quell the disquiet - and 
resultant misunderstanding, misrepresentation and threats of closure - of 
those given executive authority by the University, whose orthodox expertise 
we appeared to contravene, whilst holding true to my educational values. I 
sought to do this by co-enquiring with the students about the application of 
this scientific and biological knowledge in the social and environmental 
context that 'pure' scientists often ignore and even treat as beneath their 
dignity. Moreover, I made perceptions of space and boundaries the explicit 
ground for our co-enquiry, for which my own life experiences and learning 
had prepared me only too well.  In this way I hoped to place both the 
students and myself to explore in a non-adversarial way the uncertainty and 
exquisite form of actual nature and human experience. Maybe our explorations 
could thereby help reveal the contextual space that is so vital to our 
understanding of life and its evolution, but is so dismally overlooked by 
orthodoxy.



It wasn't long before I received my first lesson from the students during 
our opening session in February 2001. I described my intention and handed 
out detailed accompanying notes drawing on themes from my book, 'Degrees of 
Freedom'. I informed them that after nine double sessions led by me, there 
would be three 'Round-Table' sessions about environment-related themes of 
their choice, these they would organize entirely themselves. I said that in 
order for me to assess their work and allocate marks, as I am obliged by the 
University to do, there would be a coursework component in which artwork 
would be welcome, as well as a formal exam. I explained the links I saw 
between art and science, and then provided a preliminary background to 
inclusionality and its departure from conventional 'Newtonian' thinking.



Within a week, the numbers of students attending the course had more than 
halved! Seeing 'trouble ahead', I wondered at my audacity and foolishness in 
attempting anything so far removed from conventional biology teaching. What 
on Earth was I doing? Why on Earth was I doing it? What might I be exposing 
myself to?



I asked one of the students what she thought was going on. Apart from the 
students' natural fear of uncertainty and confusion in the face of 
assessment, she quickly drew my attention to what Jack Whitehead would call 
the 'living contradiction' between my intention and my practice. 'Why don't 
you include us in your discussion?' she asked. 'After all, you've given us 
copious notes, which we can read in our own time, so why not use the 
sessions to get us talking?'



Feeling rather chastened, I swallowed my dignity and took her advice. I laid 
my notes to one side and started to ask questions both of myself and of the 
students. Often these questions would superficially appear to be quite 
simple, e.g. 'what is a gene; what is a cell; what is a body; what is death?' 
But the answers to these questions were by no means simple, and often led to 
further and deeper questions. For example, I especially remember during one 
of the discussions about genes, a student asked, 'what's the difference 
between a code and a language?' This question quickly established the 
importance of context in giving varied meanings.  On another occasion a 
student insisted that we could not escape our own 'selfishness' in order to 
live in a more 'environmentally sustainable' way, however much we might pay 
lip service to the need to do so. This led to my recognition of the need to 
question our conventional view of 'self' as independent 'individual', and 
ultimately to the development of the idea of 'complex self'.



Almost immediately, the atmosphere within the class began to transform and 
attendance stabilized to a total of seventeen - not a huge number, but 
viable.  It was demanding work for me to maintain a lively, but coherent and 
scholarly conversation, whilst not imposing a fixed direction or stifling 
the students' views with my own - and it still is. But the sense of pleasure 
coming from the students as they were able to express and hear diverse views 
and play with ideas was ample reward. This sense of pleasure was confirmed 
by the 'feedback' I received from them, by the quality of their coursework 
and the 'Round Table' sessions that they organized without intervention from 
me. One of the pieces of artwork submitted was of such quality and depth 
that I felt moved to award it 100 % of the marks available. To my huge 
surprise, even the external examiners were highly complimentary.



Greatly encouraged, I repeated the course in 2002 to more than double the 
number of students, using much the same approach. I took even more care to 
try to relate with rather than transmit to the students despite the 
impositional geometry of the lecture rooms. For example, I would sometimes 
move myself to the back of the class of desks laid out in rows facing the 
front. Once again, after some initial bemusement, the student response was 
highly creative and favourable. The 'Round-Table' sessions were of a higher 
quality than many conference workshops I have attended. I remember one 
especially where the students moved furniture around to contrast the very 
different atmosphere of confrontational 'debate' from 'sharing circle' 
styles of discussion about 'genetic modification'.  Also, this time a much 
greater proportion of superb artwork was submitted as coursework - so much 
that I decided to mount an exhibition in the Biology Department. Several 
colleagues, both from within and outside Biology 'sat in' on the course and 
were very impressed with the depth and quality of the discussions. A 
Psychology PhD student also sat in to study the student responses and shifts 
in understanding. I learned from this study that the course was having a 
powerful educational influence, but I needed to be wary of esoteric language 
and appearing to 'preach to the converted'.



I felt confident that my academic peers would again welcome what the 
students and I had been doing. I trusted that they would continue to see it 
as a very innovative development, taking Biology education into new avenues 
of exploration and exposition, highly relevant to the students' future 
careers and responsibilities.



How wrong I was! The first thing I noticed was a kind of 'deathly hush' and 
some grudging comment during the Biology examiners' meeting about the high 
marks I had awarded the students. This comment was accompanied by questions 
about how far the department wanted to go with this approach. But nobody 
actually said anything directly to me until months later, when it emerged 
that there had been complaints about 'lack of rigour', an 'anti-scientific' 
stance and 'free-fall philosophy' evident in students' work that I had rated 
highly. I was called to see my Head of Department shortly before resuming 
teaching the course in 2003 and warned to be rigorous in my assessment of 
the student's work, whilst being reassured of his support for my 'academic 
freedom'.



I went on to teach the course in 2003 in a rather more wary frame of mind. 
Again the students responded favourably after initial bemusement and again 
they produced remarkably creative work. Against my wishes, however, my 
coursework marks were 'scaled down' before the examiners' meeting, so as not 
to be out of line with those given in other courses. The examiners' meeting 
passed by with quite favourable comment and only a hint of reservation, so I 
felt that I had at least averted the criticisms made in 2002, but a while 
later, I again found myself confronted with adverse comments. I was asked to 
ensure that when I taught the course again in 2004, I would give 'poor marks' 
to work of 'insufficient scholarship', i.e. making assertions unsupported by 
evidence or showing a lack of awareness of other points of view. I had no 
problem with this because it aligns with my educational practice, although I 
disliked the emphasis on penalty rather than reward. I was also asked, 
however, to agree to the exam papers being 'triple blind marked' in order to 
reassure examiners about assessment standards. I had no option if the course 
was to continue, so I reluctantly agreed, even though independent marking by 
examiners with unequal experience is contrary to my educational values and 
principles.



In 2004, I had an even larger class. There were around seventy students 
including two studying psychology, which enriched the discussions. Once 
again the students responded very favourably and creatively and producing 
even more high quality artwork. Once again I set up an exhibition of their 
work in the Biology Department. Many, both from within the University and 
outside came to visit and expressed wonder at the creative expression and 
insights of science students ready to question received wisdom and see 
possibilities beyond. But amidst the excitement, I received a message from 
my Head of Department saying that colleagues had expressed disquiet about 
the 'anti-scientific' and 'dogmatic' content of some of the work. I was 
warned to 'watch my back' and to give this work 'poor marks'. A while later, 
after the students had sat the exam component of the course, I received a 
call from one of the blind markers asking me what I meant by one of the 
questions. It transpired that these markers had been appointed without 
consulting or informing me, and in the case of at least one of them (and 
retrospectively both of them), were not people I could expect to appreciate 
the learning context of the course.



I began to panic, fearing greatly for the prospects of the students and the 
future of the course. As it turned out, I had good reason to be anxious. It 
emerged that, based on their own interpretation of the exam questions, the 
other markers had repeatedly allocated marks that were drastically lower 
than mine. I was obliged to argue that only my marks should stand, since 
only I had any appreciation of what the students' answers might and might 
not be expected to include. Ultimately this was accepted in order, 
ironically, to keep the marks in line with those of other courses.



Then one of the other markers, who up until then I had regarded as a 
generous minded colleague who appreciated my work and intentions - he had 
even encouraged me to design the course - wrote a report on the lines of 'Is 
There a Problem With BB30108?' This report was based purely on his own 
interpretation of the student work, and profoundly and damagingly 
misrepresented my scientific position and educational approach. For example, 
I was said to have criticised the dependence of thermodynamics on 'closed 
systems', when I had made no direct mention of thermodynamics in the course. 
I was also said to have disregarded the importance of genes in the way life 
forms interact, something I would never do (though I do criticise genetic 
determinism). He suggested that I had made students think inappropriately 
even if I hadn't intended to. He said that I had inordinately worried the 
students by seriously undermining all that they had been taught about 
science and that I should give a 'health warning' about the content of the 
course, warning the students that few people shared my views.  He made 
recommendations about how the course should be modified if it was to run in 
future, which, although well-intended, were inappropriate to its aspirations 
and unreflective of my own biological knowledge and understanding. I 
replied, pointing out the many ways in which I felt he had misrepresented 
the course and myself. He replied, re-stating his belief that I had 
misguided and confused the students in ways that had disturbed their 
appreciation of mainstream science. He said that although my colleagues were 
still well disposed towards me, they couldn't understand why I had taken 
such a controversial stance.



Ten days after the Board of Examiners, I received a summons from the Head of 
Department asking me to attend a meeting with him to discuss the 'future of 
the course'. When this meeting eventually took place, after I had taken a 
much-needed summer break, he drew my attention to very critical comments 
made by the external examiners on the grounds of 'scholarship', notably 
regarding the fact that the students had expressed views that closely 
reflected my own. He asked me to withdraw the course for the coming academic 
year, to modify it into a more acceptable form, and to run it again in a 
subsequent year, probably with a different title. I said that I would prefer 
to continue to run the course, and pointed out how some of the external 
examiners' remarks about individual student scripts - which included such 
phrases as 'scientifically worthless' - actually demonstrated their own lack 
of understanding of the concepts addressed.  I said that to discontinue the 
course on the basis of ill-informed, easily refutable comments made by 
external observers unaware of the actual course content and mode of delivery 
would be a great disservice to the students who found it educationally very 
valuable. I showed him copies of the very favourable student feedback forms 
from the current year class.





Objections to Inclusionality - A Case of Autoimmune Disease and its Possible 
Treatment



So, could anything good come out of all this? As I reflected on my 
experience, it was the fear evident to me in the reactions of my usually 
generous-minded colleague that especially concerned me. There was something 
in these reactions all too reminiscent of those directed against other 
critics of neo-Darwinism in particular, for example, the late Stephen Jay 
Gould and against heterodox reformers in general. These reactions 
characteristically seem to have two aims. The first is to belittle 
criticisms of established thought or models, by making them appear as minor 
variations that can be added on to the same fundamental proposition. For 
example, special 'epicycles' were used to account for the complex path of 
the planets in the Ptolemaic Earth-centred representation of the universe 
and 'drift' is used to account for 'selectively neutral' genetic change in 
neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. In this way the mainstream idea can still 
be sustained within a kind of 'pluralism' that  'open-mindedly' accepts some 
peripheral amendments, as long as they don't become too powerful. It is very 
tempting, as a budding reformer, to accept this belittlement or to allow it 
to continue in the minds of the powerful in order to survive and at least 
divert the mainstream a little from its hegemonic course. This is because if 
the first aim isn't achieved, the second aim is the elimination of what is 
perceived as opposition to the mainstream because it is so fundamental that 
if it were given any credibility at all, it could not possibly be ignored or 
marginalized.



Since the core belief of orthodox evolutionary thinking is in the extinction 
and replacement of objective units by force, there is embedded in this 
thinking what might be considered an 'autoimmune disease', which cannot 
admit any other possibility for fear of itself being extinguished. It cannot 
accept what it has defined itself not to be through a 'double blind double 
bind' based on the fallacy of the excluded middle. Hence it will 
automatically reject the inclusion of 'other' as an aspect of 'self', even 
though the need for such inclusion may be recognised. Pluralism safely and 
inconsequentially skirts around the inclusion of self within void, like 
froth at the mouth of the vortex. By contrast, inclusionality implies 
letting go of the concrete and immersing in the void as a dynamic embodiment 
of space. Letting go is made possible through recognizing both the fallacy 
of definitive orthodoxy and the opportunities for new understanding that 
open up when space is given room for inclusion in a non-Euclidean dynamic 
accounting for natural flow-form.



So in my efforts to convey an inclusional understanding of the dynamic 
nature of neighbourhood, I need to make the abyss seem less scary and more 
inviting. This is why I emphasize that inclusionality represents a 
paradigmatic transformation, where the old is incorporated, though radically 
re-interpreted and made vastly more applicable in a real-world context, 
within the new, as distinct from a paradigm shift where the old is made 
extinct by the new. This transformation is nevertheless very difficult to 
accomplish in the face of anyone who believes fundamentally in objective 
definition and so suffers from autoimmune rejection of the outer aspect of 
self as other.



Clearly, up until 2004, my efforts in my 'Life, Environment and People' 
course had inspired the students but alarmed the authorities, and I was in 
great danger of autoimmune rejection. Nevertheless, the course continued to 
run in 2005, with similar numbers attending, although under threat of 
closure if the external examiners again expressed concern. By then I had 
received much support from colleagues outside my own Department, who 
considered the course is needed and of high educational value. This helped 
me to stand firm in the face of great difficulty.



In 2005, students studying Management attended for the first time and showed 
great interest in understanding how ideas and knowledge about biological and 
human organizations could be linked. This corresponded with my intention to 
focus on application in a social and environmental context as a way of 
avoiding adverse reaction from anyone intent on defending orthodox 
scientific thought and method. It also widened the appeal of the course.



Two new forms of course assessment replaced the exam. These gave students 
the fullest possible opportunity to express their learning from the course 
in a balanced, scholarly way without requiring hurried responses that could 
so easily be misunderstood by external observers unaware of context. The 
first new course assessment asked the following question:



How, in your view, may the application of scientific and biological 
knowledge and concepts in a social and environmental context be influenced 
by our human perceptions of space and boundaries?



The second new assessment asked:



On the basis of the Round-Table Session in which you participated, consider 
an environment-related issue or question of your choice from as wide a 
variety of scientific, biological and other relevant perspectives as 
possible.



I also designed new criteria for evaluating the students' work, which, I 
felt were much more in tune with the distinctive educational aspirations of 
the course. These were as follows:



Reflective Quality:- does the work accurately and thoughtfully reflect 
themes emerging during the course? Are the scientific ideas that are 
conveyed and/or challenged fairly represented, in a way that demonstrates 
sound critical judgement/ understanding/scholarship in your own learning?



Creativity:- does the work display imaginative  thought and (where 
applicable) practical resourcefulness in relation to the theme/subject 
matter addressed?



Communicative Quality:- does the work communicate a clear message and/or 
evoke imagination and thought?



Quality of Execution:- is there evidence of skilful work?


Endeavour:- is there evidence of care and effort?






Both internal and external examiners accepted that the course succeeded in 
its intention to encourage creative and critical enquiry by students and the 
course ran again in 2006. Even so, I have faced continuing difficulty over 
the fact that what I look for in terms of the above criteria does not always 
match well with what orthodox scientists look for when independently viewing 
work out of context and imposing their conventions. This difficulty has 
emerged because of the continuing requirement for biology students only 
(others are beyond the Department's jurisdiction!) to have the work 
independently assessed by others who do not participate in the course. This 
'double blind double bind' has been difficult to negotiate with, as I admit 
in the following lines:



How Academic Orthodoxy Cannot Accept What It Needs to Accept to Make Sense



I will accept what you say if you can convince me to do so

For I am Fair and Open Minded

But to convince me you will have to show that I am wrong

When all I have to do

To be sure

Of my independent rightness

Is define what I am not

And have no need for further enquiry

Beyond the realm of my security



So I can wilfully

With Authority

Suppress the disquieting silence

Of your creativity

And be assured of the longevity

Of my double bog standards

Of excellent mediocrity



I have no need for receptivity

I can fix things for myself

For I am certain

Of my independence

Until you convince me otherwise

But then again I can be sure

That you're not me





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jack Whitehead" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2007 9:06 AM
Subject: AA Thread 2 07-08 How do i~we explain our educational influences in 
learning to improve our educational influences as practitioner-researchers 
within the social and other formations that dynamically include us?


This second of the three threads to start the 2007-8 e-seminar is now open