Dear Jack
I am now reading the whole of your AERA paper again. And noting what it is specifically that I like about it. There is so much. I think that what is most important to me is that it carries a positive and affirming energy in so many ways.
I also like the fact that you express ways in which we take responsibility for what we do. On page 2, para 2, line 1, you identify the Academy as '(the global collection of Higher Education Institutions)'. I like that identification because I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the demands of the 'Academy' and find myself more comfortable with the notions of 'Scholarship'. When I reflect on this distinction, I can see that I am influenced by Boyer - "Scholarship Reconsidered", and also by the notion that, for me, 'Scholarship' is independent of any specific institution or groups of institutions. For me, 'Scholarship' is an institution of its own, without walls and all that that implies. Perhaps this is so because I am mindful of scholars who, following a time honoured tradition, still 'wander' carrying their - metaphorical or real - 'chairs' on their backs, and settle wherever there is an audience, and stay to converse for only as long as the audience is present. How else could they have 'educational influence'? I like the spontaneity of the practice. I like its 'naturalness', its organic nature, its authenticity. And I ask myself "How can I use my educational influence to support and develop instances of spontaneous, organic and authentic scholarship in the academy?" Because if I could do that I would be very grateful. It would give me joy.
(When I reread this before sending, I am beginning to wonder if TEDTALKS is not a space for modern itinerant scholars to set down their 'chairs' for a bit? Ken Robinson. Adichie Chimamanda. Sugatra Mita. Mae Jemison. Margaret Wertheimer. Karen Armstrong. It certainly feels that way to me.)
On page 3, para 1, lines 3/4, you mention "the conceptual, methodological and practical challenges and opportunities inherent in understanding how and what people learn." When I think of what I have learned in respect of each of the "conceptual, methodological and practical" in my preoccupations with the Oral Tradition of knowledge, whether indigenous or otherwise (at which point I pause and ask myself "What and when is knowledge not indigenous?" and because that is a long and convoluted debate in and of itself, which is too long to accommodate here, I conclude that for the purposes of this comment, I will simply talk about the 'Oral Tradition' (OT) as distinct from the 'Literate Tradition' (LT).) (Whew!!) because it is precisely the "conceptual, methodological and practical challenges and opportunities inherent in understanding how and what people learn" through OT that is important. I think that this is important because there is so much in the way that we all learn, teach and assess that is essentially that of the OT. In fact, everything we learn, teach and assess has to go through the process of orality to reach its literate record and expression, given that orality is all those ways of conceiving, recording and expressing without scribal alphabetic writing. We all do these things all the time, and we do it all very well without really understanding what it is that we are doing, because it is innate. And I do mean 'we', because this is an anthropological capacity. So by viewing what we do in these processes from an OT perspective, with an OT lens, and with an OT world view, we have a better understanding of what it is that we are doing. When we understand then we will be able to answer the question "How do I improve my practice?" in new ways that might give us new insights. In addition to many other sources on this topic, I have been specifically influenced by Frederick Turner's writing ...
1986 Performed Being: Word Art as a Human Inheritance. Oral Tradition, 1/1: 66-109.
1991 Toward an Evolutionary Ontology of Beauty. Oral Tradition, 6/1 (1991): 126-129.
Turner, F and Poppel, E n.d. The Neural Lyre: Poetic Meter, The Brain, And Time. http://www.joelorr.com/neural.htm
These insights have helped me to address the complexity of ecologies that I am faced with in an increasingly complex and challenging world.
Do I see these complexities being addressed in the research of individual action researchers? Indeed I do. In every living theories thesis, but also every meeting of SeStuTHE at DUT is a revelation - and we now have five two hour sessions weekly! I am hoping that the NMMU meeting in August will reveal some of this. I can see the positive difference that using Self-Study and Living Theories Methodologies has made to the 'appropriacy', 'authenticity' and 'personal authority' of the SeStuTHE researchers at DUT. I think of it like this, "When I find my own voice, I can speak. The more I speak with my own voice, the more value I can share." This motivation is not only cognitive, but also affective. And I am inclined to ask "How can the cognitive be separated from the affect? Or are they inseparably intertwined?" I think that they are. I am supported in this belief by the work, inter alia, of Candace Pert, the biophysicist who identified the existence and operation of neuropeptide transmitters as long ago as 1972. The account of her discovery, is accessibly recounted in "Molecules of Emotion" - A Great Read! The indications of inseparable 'cognitive-affective' learning are clear and unambiguous in the science of Candace Pert.
The distinction between 'education research' and 'educational research' is also a key factor in the enthusiasm at DUT for what we are doing in SeStuTHE. I like its inclusionality, but I also like the way that it makes a space for holistic processes that move naturally between cosmos and chaos on an ongoing basis in the ways identified and explained by Smuts in "Holism and Evolution" (1987). I find reassurance in the explanation that Smuts provides. I find that I can deal with the chaos more constructively when I know that the chaos is merely that part of the whole which allows change and growth and learning that will find its own order before once more growing through yet another chaotic phase, and so on.
I so like the distinction that you make between the "living approach" and the "linguistic approach" (page 6, para 1, line 1/2). Your words here remind me of Marcel Jousse when he says
"If a person's life could be summarized in a single sentence, and if I wanted to sum up my life as a scientific Traditionist, I would simply say: "I have been a resistance fighter against bookish and dead Philology".
The fact is that all the studies our young people undertake under the disconcerting term 'humanities', are based on fossilised, philological theories.
Linguistic methods are philological methods.
Exegetic methods are philological methods.
Psychiatric methods were philological methods - until the great Morlaâs."
(Anthropology of Geste and Rhythm, 2000:44)
When you talk about "why we do what we do" (page 7, para 2, line 3, I am reminded of the questions we routinely ask in SeStuTHE based on Brown's 7 questions in "About writing", a chapter in "Quality in Post Graduate Education" edited by Zuber Skerritt and Yoni Ryan. The seven questions are (my paraphrase as I do not have the source with me here.)
1. What did I do?
2. Why did I do it?
3. What happened?
4. What does this tell me about my practice?
5. What does this tell me about my theory?
6. How does my reader read this?
7. What remains unresolved?
I find that these questions, answered factually in bite-size pieces (50 word responses), address your question "How do I improve what I am doing?" with immediate and useful responses. We are able then to reflect critically on what we have written, which expands our understanding of what we are writing, and what we are writing about, which then enables us to write more fully and reflectively.
It is also Brown in "About writing" who says that writing in the first person ensures taking responsibility for what we write. I have found this profoundly true of myself. I find that if I cannot write in the first person, I stop. On reflection, I find invariably that I am not sufficiently sure of myself, and need 'to do more - acting - thinking - reading' until I can write in the first person with confidence. I also find this true of the writing of my students whom I supervise.
In short, I find the process of observation and reflection on the self - in a scientific way - useful. "The true laboratory is the laboratory of the self. To instruct oneself is to develop oneself. Only the individual can know himself, whence today the ever-increasing awareness of the role of living memory and of its omnipresent adjuvant, rhythm." (Jousse, 2000:27)
When I can see what I am doing when I am learning - or not learning, then I am able to see more clearly what others are doing when they are learning - or not learning. This helps me address what I can do to improve. When I can feel and see and hear that I have a positive educational influence, I love what I do even more!
Once again, I really have enjoyed reading your AERA paper again, Jack. Thank you. The people who will be privileged to hear it at the conference are most fortunate.
Thank you for this opportunity to chat ..
Take care
Joan
-----Original Message-----
From: Practitioner-Researcher [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jack Whitehead
Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2010 2:28 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Your AERA paper
On 4 Apr 2010, at 13:18, Joan Lucy Conolly wrote:
> Dear Jack
>
> Here is the resend ... this is what Alan was referring to ...
>
> I hope that you get it this time.
> Joan
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Hi Joan - got it. I like the criteria for rigour - They will complement Richard Winter's six criteria - the more individuals (and validation groups) can focus on using these criteria the more they will help to enhance the qualities of validity and rigour in the self-study/action research accounts. I'm not too sure if Alan was meaning that the use of such criteria can be part of an unwitting support for an intransigent use of language. I'll ask him.
Just about to have a Sunday roast dinner - Rebecca and Simon have come round and Rebecca is waiting, non too patiently for the arrival of her first offspring!
Love Jack.
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