wonderful stuff this, I am just fascinated at the absolute assumption
that the self exists as a separate form of being, separate from every
thing else that is in western forms of knowing...smile. Could this
enforced separation of a discrete form of being be responsible for so
much suffering and isolation ? I often ponder that natural enquiry,rich
with its questions embedded forms of knowing and feeling, that can be
expressed in a carving, a painting, a song ,a poem, or a smile, a touch,
laughter, and tears. Often have the cold logic of imposition forced a
pone it in order to be understood by the chatterbox of the logical mind
with its aversion to flows of forms, empty spaces and what it perceives
as chaos. Do we really need the validation of others to validate a form
of self hood that live in the neighbourhoods of multi dimensional
awareness? Surly such a form of selfhood is an expression of a perceived
self and as such can only be valid to the individual who constructed it
and with those individuals whom share an agreed understanding to what
they are seeing? Are those who do not see the same thing or have
different neighbourhoods of knowing , self or existence any less equal?
It would appear that in terms of expression and validation of different
forms of knowing have no academic place??? for those who are looking, do
check out EJOLTS you may find a space there that will fill the void in
your soul..It is a place to start for the longest journey begins with
the first step. My love to all as I check out yet more frogs in the life
long search for my princes ....smile Je Kan
Pip/Bruce Ferguson wrote:
>
> Hi Susie and others
>
> What a fascinating account of your work! But I can see why you are
> having problems in getting it published. “Reconstructing it to suit
> the accessibility issues of a commercial market” must be the most
> incredible challenge. It is the same kind of challenge that I face in
> my work as a contract researcher, particularly working with Maori
> communities for whom consultation is so vital, and the time for which
> so frequently does not fit into the contracting body’s schedule. I
> shall say no more; but it certainly does put one in a difficult
> situation at times. That issue you raise about ‘being as true to your
> life’s intent as you would like to be” certainly resonates with me.
>
> I’ve just tried to track down electronically a most interesting paper
> written by a researcher named Fran Cahill, whose thesis and a
> published paper that I read subsequently, grappled with the problem of
> taking over the voice of others. I /think /she’s of Samoan ancestry
> but could be wrong. I have been unable to find the paper
> electronically, but if you’re interested the reference is *Cahill, F.
> (2004). “Crossing the road from home to secondary school: A
> conversation with Samoan parents"* and the paper was printed in Volume
> 12, 2006 of the Waikato Journal of Education, produced by the
> University of Waikato. I cited it in a literature review I co-wrote
> with colleagues investigating Pasifika educational achievement in the
> classroom a couple of years back. It’s a most interesting paper – she
> goes for presenting the respondents’ voices in large chunks rather
> that rewrite their knowledge from her perspective.
>
> I wish you wisdom as you negotiate this turbulent voyage. I also reach
> out my hand ‘across the ditch’ to Australian friends such as you, at
> this time of severe trauma over the Victorian bushfires. May we all
> learn how to be more active on our planet to combat the perils of
> global warming, so that such tragedies may be less likely in the future.
>
> Pai marire (peaceful thoughts) to you all
>
> Pip
>
> *From:* Practitioner-Researcher
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *Susan Goff
> *Sent:* Friday, 13 February 2009 11:38 a.m.
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* Re: Explaining our educational influences in learn...
>
> Hello Pip
> This IS interesting and thanks so much for relaying the framing to us.
> I wrote my thesis with these concepts in mind (even though I had not
> heard of them until you bring them to my attention now) and its really
> challenging. I made a promise in the text not to regard the experience
> of the co-researchers as my object for analysis. This required that
> each chapter had to move to a new standpoint to avoid the settling of
> voice that for me, leads to objectification of self, other and
> standpoint. It also required never reaching a point of conviction
> about a truth claim - ironically as an expression of truth – the
> subjective reach to truth remained alive for myself, the reader and
> the living content of the text/experience that that text moved forward
> from. This raised moral issues for me – whether indetermination was
> morally true. It was really difficult for people to read as texts tend
> to be accepted initially, in western culture at least, in a passive
> sense – with the paternalistic voice of the author telling the reader
> one way and another what is (I am aware of Bakhtin’s revolutionary
> texts on polyvocality about these issues but they are not well known
> or used). My text provided a poetic encounter with the reader and the
> writer, which at times was mindfully a bridge between us, allowing
> both reader and writer to be in unstable relationships with each other
> – this instability generated ambiguity, not knowing and patterned
> interconnections reaching forward and back so questions that were not
> predicted by me could find their realisations at the readers own
> making. I was also aware of implied or perhaps emerging questions that
> I did not answer in the text at the point that they were pushing up,
> but that I came back to later on – as a clue to the reader about their
> own questions. I left all this architecture largely invisible,
> understanding that to explain it would return me to the paternalistic
> and objective mode. Two of my examiners seemed to get it, the third
> wanted a rewrite but admitted his recommendation could be off centre
> because he just didn’t get it. So the risk is high. I felt complete
> with the architecture in the end – and internal sense of truth that
> was like integrity with a flow of life, but now as I am working
> towards a publication, I am reconstructing it to suit the
> accessibility issues of a commercial market. I feel sad about this –
> but I guess being as true to my or life’s intent as I would like to be
> almost ensures that the work will never be read.
> S
>
> On 13/2/09 9:15 AM, "Pip/Bruce Ferguson" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Hi Jack and all
> This is a very interesting discussion. Picking up on your comment
> about Lather’s ironic validity, Jack, I very much liked her notion of
> ‘rhizomatic validity’ which I have read about in a variety of
> contexts. I just googled it as I couldn’t find the original paper in
> which I read of it, and found a paper called “The Action Turn” by
> Peter Reason at the University of Bath and William Torbert of Boston
> College. They describe several types of validity, including rhizomatic:
>
> “New types of validity-testing of texts are also being suggested. For
> example, Lather (1993) suggests that social scientists committed to
> conducting, reporting, and encouraging first-person research/practice
> develop /situated validity/, /rhizomatic validity/, /reflexive
> validity/, and /ironic validity/. Situated validity is raised when a
> text includes not just a disembodied voice, but an embodied,
> emotional, reflective voice. Rhizomatic validity is raised when a text
> presents multiple voices defining the situation differently. Reflexive
> validity is raised when a text attempts to challenge its own validity
> claims. Ironic validity is raised by inviting further interpretation
> by readers. These forms of validity can all be seen as relating to the
> degree of validity of the written social scientific journal article or
> book /as an action in relation to its readership/—the degree to which
> the text communicates: 1) the partially self-critical first-person
> voice that guides it (situated and reflexive validity); 2) the variety
> of second-person voices that inform the text and may contest the
> first-person voice (rhizomatic validity); and 3) the creative work of
> the third-person reader/interpreters of the text (ironic validity).”
>
> Just thought readers on this list might be interested, if they haven’t
> encountered these different types of validity before.
> Warm regards
> Pip Bruce Ferguson
>
>
> *From:* Practitioner-Researcher
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]> *On Behalf Of *Jack
> Whitehead
> *Sent:* Thursday, 12 February 2009 11:43 p.m.
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* Re: Explaining our educational influences in learn...
>
>
>
> On 11 Feb 2009, at 13:37, geisha rebolledo wrote:
>
>
> I enjoyed reading your paper, for me it is a revolutionary idea.
> However after sharing some of them with collegues in a meeting
> yesterday, one asked me how do you solve the problem of validity in
> this type of research ?????
>
>
>
> On 11 Feb 2009, at 17:11, Brian wakeman wrote:
>
>
> Geisha,
>
> This question is very helpful...........
>
> Jack,
>
> A lot of people ask me this ......so it will be interesting to read
> your reply .....the stages and processes of validation......which we
> know you've developed over many years.
>
>
>
> Dear Geisha, Brian and All,
>
>
>
> One of the best illustrations of the processes of validity I advocate
> is in Martin Forrest's 1983 MA dissertation where he describes the
> validation group as a conversational research community. You can
> access a description of Martin's third validation group at:
>
>
>
> http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:qV7XuMe3zZ4J:www.jackwhitehead.com/writeup/alval.pdf+martin+forrest+validation+group&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk&client=firefox-a
> <http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:qV7XuMe3zZ4J:www.jackwhitehead.com/writeup/alval.pdf+martin+forrest+validation+group&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk&client=firefox-a>
> <http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:qV7XuMe3zZ4J:www.jackwhitehead.com/writeup/alval.pdf+martin+forrest+validation+group&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk&client=firefox-a>
> <http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:qV7XuMe3zZ4J:www.jackwhitehead.com/writeup/alval.pdf+martin+forrest+validation+group&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk&client=firefox-a>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I think that I am like most researchers in wanting to ensure the
> validity of explanations of educational influences in learning. I
> usually use the following three insights from the work of Michael
> Polanyi, Jurgen Habermas and Patti Lather when seeking to strengthen
> the validity of my accounts and to support other researchers in
> strengthening the validity of their accounts.
>
>
>
> 1) From Polanyi's Personal Knowledge I accept a personal
> responsibility for ensuring the *personal validity* of my accounts.
>
>
>
> a)/ I believe that in spite of the hazards involved, I am called upon
> to search for the truth and state my findings. /(p. 299)
>
>
>
> b) /Having decided that I must understand the world from my point of
> view, as a person claiming originality and exercising his personal
> judgement responsibly with universal intent.../ (p.327)
>
>
>
> c)/ (The aim of my book)... is to re-equip men with the faculties
> which centuries of critical thought have taught them to distrust. The
> reader has been invited to use these faculties and contemplate thus a
> picture of things restored to their fairly obvious nature. This is all
> the book was meant to do. For once men have been made to realize the
> crippling mutilations imposed by an objectivist framework – once the
> veil of ambiguities covering up these mutilations has been definitely
> dissolved – many fresh minds will turn to the task of reinterpreting
> the world as it is, and as it then once more will be seen to be./ (p. 381)
>
>
>
> Michael Polanyi (1958) Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical
> Philosophy. London; Routledge and Kegan Paul.
>
>
>
> 2) From the work of Jurgen Habermas I've developed the idea of social
> validity in a validation group of usually some 3-8 peers who respond
> to a researcher's account in terms of: its comprehensibility; its
> truthfulness, in the sense of including sufficient evidence to support
> the assertions; its rightness, in the sense of an awareness of the
> normative background that influences the values of the researcher; its
> authenticity, in the sense that the writer shows, over time and in
> interaction, that he or she is seeking to live as fully as possible
> the values espoused in the writing.
>
>
>
> Here is the quotation from Habermas that I use in seeking to
> strengthen the *social validity* of explanations of educational influence:
>
>
>
> /"I shall develop the thesis that anyone acting communicatively must,
> in performing any speech action, raise universal validity claims and
> suppose that they can be vindicated (or redeemed). Insofar as he wants
> to participate in a process of reaching understanding, he cannot avoid
> raising the following – and indeed precisely the following – validity
> claims. He claims to be:
> /
> / a)// //Uttering something understandably;
> b)// //Giving (the hearer) something to understand;
> c)// //Making himself thereby understandable. And
> d)// //Coming to an understanding with another person.
> The speaker must choose a comprehensible expression so that speaker
> and hearer can understand one another. The speaker must have the
> intention of communicating a true proposition (or a propositional
> content, the existential presuppositions of which are satisfied) so
> that the hearer can share the knowledge of the speaker. The speaker
> must want to express his intentions truthfully so that the hearer can
> believe the utterance of the speaker (can trust him). Finally, the
> speaker must choose an utterance that is right so that the hearer can
> accept the utterance and speaker and hearer can agree with on another
> in the utterance with respect to a recognized normative background.
> Moreover, communicative action can continue undisturbed only as long
> as participants suppose that the validity claims they reciprocally
> raise are justified."/ (Habermas, 1976, pp.2-3)
> Habermas, J. (1976) Communication and the evolution of society.
> London; Heinemann
>
>
>
> 3) In discussions about validity I always try to bear in mind Patti
> Lather's understanding of *ironic validity* in seeing my explanations
> as representations of its 'failure to represent what it points towards
> but can never reach'. In his analysis of some tensions over validity
> in an era of paradigm proliferation Donmoyer draws attention to
> differences in ideas about validity from Miles and Huberman and Lather:
>
> /First the practical problem: Today there is as much variation among
> qualitative researchers as there is between qualitative and
> quantitatively orientated scholars. Anyone doubting this claim need
> only compare Miles and Huberman’s (1994) relatively traditional
> conception of validity <‘The meanings emerging from the data have to
> be tested for their plausibility, their sturdiness, their
> ‘confirmability’ – that is, their validity’ (p.11)> with Lather’s
> discussion of ironic validity:
> “Contrary to dominant validity practices where the rhetorical nature
> of scientific claims is masked with methodological assurances, a
> strategy of ironic validity proliferates forms, recognizing that they
> are rhetorical and without foundation, postepistemic, lacking in
> epistemological support. The text is resituated as a representation of
> its ‘failure to represent what it points toward but can never reach….
> (Lather, 1994, p. 40-41)’.”/ (Donmoyer, 1996 p.21.)
> Donmoyer, R. (1996) Educational Research in an Era of Paradigm
> Proliferation: What’s a Journal Editor to Do? /Educational
> Researcher/, Vol. 25, No.2, pp. 19-25
> You will also find accounts of validity in:
> McNiff, J. & Whitehead, J. (2006) All You Need To Know About Action
> Research. London; Sage.
> Do please ask further questions if you have any and I'll see if I can
> respond in a way that is useful.
>
> Love Jack.
>
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