I have about five minutes so I thought I'd say that what I am loving about working within the AR paradigm is the balance between doing/being and thinking/articulating. I think you know where I stand on the gap between theory and practice and especially the language we may develop and use to express the theory.  I echo the question 'what does it look like?' because it seems to me that it's essential for to ask that if I am going to keep the balance between abstract thought and concrete embodiment. 



Finally, I plan to film my own classroom this semester if I can summon up the courage (and persuade the video dept. to lend me a camera!). If I do, I'll post it somewhere accessible.

Love 



Sara

________________________________________

From: Practitioner-Researcher [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Marian Naidoo [[log in to unmask]]

Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 5:45 AM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: Is what I am doing a good idea?



Hi All,



I have been reading this thread with great interest and thinking and forming my responses in my head - but alas a very complex ethics submission is getting in the way of all communication at the moment - when I find a moment to respond the conversation has moved on.

So briefly - some of you know me but for those who don't I am a visiting research fellow at university of Bath.  I began my relationship with Bath while as a Director of clinical development in a local mental health trust.  I am a nurse, actor and teacher.  I started my relationship with Bath - firstly doing  an MSc in social Research (so familiar and experienced with a variety of methodologies) and completed a PhD in 2005. (I am because we are: the emergence of an epistemology on inclusional and responsive practice.) I work with my husband Shaun and over the years we have been working together we have explored, shared, practiced and reflected on many theories and ologies that have raised very similar questions as the ones you are sharing here.  Many of these questions are reflected in my thesis (which you can access on the action research website).

For me (us) what is really really important is how we practice - what we actually do on a day to day basis.  Years of working within a modernisation agenda in the NHS has reinforced this.  People in organisations - be it health, education etc fall into patterns of behaviour.  When we think and talk and develop theories of our practice based purely on our language, there is very often a gap between those theories and what actually happens in practice.  In my experience of organisations people are very often unaware of their own practice - so need space to explore and find other ways of being as practitioners.

The ethics submission we are preparing at the moment relates to an evaluation we are doing of a small theatre company called Ladder to the Moon who are working in residential care homes for older people some of whom are living with Dementia.  the focus of their work is improving the quality of life of the residents by working with the staff as part of a staff development programme.  Again those of you who know me will also know that we (Shaun and I) have been pioneers of this way of working - again too lengthy to describe here but accessible in my thesis for anyone who is interested.

Someone talked about a management team engaging in a creative exercise as part of their planning time.  For me this is key to understanding the practice of "Who am I and how have I become who I am and Who are we (team, classroom, NHS ward, M&S canteen staff etc) and how have we become who we are and what do we want to do / say / change."

We use the flocking birds (originates from complexity theory) as a metaphor for emergence and self organisation.  We then follow this with a game, where we take people through a playful exploration of ourselves as flocking birds (self organisers, in relationship with other) and live the experience of emergence.  This for me (us ) is the important bit - what do we do?  Not what do we think or theorise - but how does that manifest in our practice.  I made the decision early on in my doctoral thesis to show myself in practice - as well as thinking and developing a theoretical framework - when I do it, what does it look like?  what about when I fail, make mistakes, get it wrong?  What does that look like in practice?  I know not everyone is comfortable with holding themselves up to public scrutiny in this way,  as an actor I am happy to do so.  Working with people in organisations it is also possible to co-create a safe space for this way of working.   I watched a documentary recently called "Can Gerry Robinson fix Dementia".  This exposed the kind of practices that we become aware of every now and again in places where we care for the most vulnerable in society.  They also of course identified a place of excellence, they put these 2 very different care homes in touch with each other and expected that the poor one would then come up to scratch.  Of course it failed.  Why did it fail?  Because the staff from the poor performing home were told how bad they were and asked to be better.  Yes they were given some resources and it all failed miserably - why?  because they didn't know why they were failing and they didn't know how to be any different.  They just became more immersed in poor practice and felt even more like failures.  Creative practice helps us to work differently in this kind of context.  What I am interested in is what people - and in particular people who subscribe to this list do - how do you practice? How do you live your values and theories - be they servant leadership or inclusionality.  Where can I see you practice?



Anyway - back to the submission - you can imagine our work is a nightmare for ethics committees!



Love



Marian



Dr Marian Naidoo FRSA

Naidoo & Associates



Visiting Research Fellow

University of Bath

Mob:   07810822820

Tel:     01666 840991

Fax:    01666 841463

[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

















On 19 Aug 2010, at 07:34, Pip and Bruce wrote:



Hi all



Have largely kept out of this conversation, but now popping in briefly. Sara, please do forward your paper. I have already sent your message (below) and amazing bird YouTube video to senior staff at my university, where it's very pertinent, and one at least is waiting to read the paper! (Hope this is okay; recognising that it's designed for 'inhouse' purposes).



Alan, you are a ground breaker. If you have ever read Bell, Gaventa and Peters' work (largely on Paulo Freire) called "We Make the Road by Walking", then I think you are a 'first walker'. You are stubbing your toes on unseen rocks in the course of making a road for others to follow. You are the one with the vision. This is painful, but you are the one with the sight to see the road that needs walking. Please be patient with those of us who stumble along behind, wondering where we're going, but suspecting that the journey will be one hell of an adventure.



Many thanks to you both (and other contributors)



Pip



On 19/08/2010 6:12 a.m., Salyers, Sara M wrote:



Dear Alan and all,

I believe that language is one of the *huge* elephants in the human living room. We're so used to it that we overlook how powerful it is!



Just one for instance: why do we so universally use the term pedagogy about post secondary educational theory? (Wikipedia) "The word comes from the Greek παιδαγωγέω (paidagōgeō); in which παῖς (país, genitive παιδός, paidos) means "child" and άγω (ágō) means "lead"; so it literally means "to lead the child". "  But we don't teach *children* in college or university. Adults require an androgogy - which means a very different starting point indeed for the instructor/educator. Just a word that everyone really understands? No; there's no such thing as 'just a word'. We create the world with words and the adoption of an adult 'pedagogy' does indeed step over the truth that in far too many post secondary classrooms and labs adult learners are viewed - and treated and taught - as if they were still high school students. (Explain your lateness/absence, even though the explanation does not affect your attendance record; ask before you leave the class to g

o to the bathroom. Really??!!!) I was told by a Cherokee grandmother, once, to pay attention to the simple and the obvious because they contain the answers to all the mysteries of the universe. These, she said, would become clear to me if I could just learn to see what was right in front of me. So, as you may have observed, I struggle to do just that - to master what I call the Art of the Simple and the Obvious!



Thank you for the incredibly kind offer re. my paper- and I'd be very happy to send it to you but I should clarify two things.



First, I don't know if it would be of general interest. I'd only intended to send it to Alan R. because he is frustrated by a phenomenon in the classroom that I specifically address in that document. Second, it *can't* be reviewed because it will not be published. It was written as a kind of love-offering to my college Department. The senior faculty here spend much time and energy defending against the attacks, personal, professional and departmental, of those who dislike and resent both the methods and approach of the Department. Most of this hostility is based upon a chasm of ignorance. The situation is compounded by the department's dependence on a huge part time faculty (of which I am one). The majority of these have come from grade school to college teaching and many resent the approach of the department, with its unfamiliar emphasis on group work, multiple learning styles, technology and various kinds of relatedness in the English syllabus to psychology, biology, philo

sophy et alia.  So we have an often reluctant faculty teaching a syllabus that a significant number in the traditionally based Math and English Departments *hate*! My aims were: to articulate and contextualize what the department has actually been doing; to help to educate our own faculty; to provide the Dean and Department Heads with a simple 'guide' to the program (and move us beyond the constant reiteration of evidence and argument required because of the 'opposition's' unwillingness to read any of the research), and to design an AR based dynamic such that we can both unite our faculty and enable the TS department to use its trials and errors for its own/the students' benefit. (Instead of having its newness, teething problems and hiccups exploited as ammunition with which to attack the Dept.)



I modeled this proposed dynamic on the flocking mechanism of birds. "Watching a flock of dozens or even hundreds of birds can be amazing because the separate birds often move as if they possess a single mind. What's more amazing, bird flocks often move harmoniously without any sort of leader or external cue, especially when they are traveling over short distances. Studying bird flocks may seem to be the exclusive domain of ornithologists. But physicists too have become captivated by the remarkable ability of birds - and many other living creatures - to move flawlessly as an organized group..Studying the incredible feat of how hundreds of birds can move as a single unit, physicists have devised a detailed theory of the flocking process. Their theory can potentially be extended to... any collection of independently moving animals, including humans, which rely on each other's cues to move as a group. (Birds Of A Feather: The Physics Of Flocks, from the American Institute of Phy

sics)." You can see the phenomenon here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vhE8ScWe7w It's much more easily grasped when seen than described.



It took me ten months to distill all that into one document. :) Anyway, I'll go ahead and send it (unproofed with layout that still needs polishing) just for your interest.

love

Sara



P.S. Have started looking at the site at greenleaf.org. I have some questions but will come back with those when I'm done. (And when I've caught up with work!)



________________________________________

From: Practitioner-Researcher [[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>] On Behalf Of Alan Markowitz [[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>]

Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2010 6:12 PM

To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

Subject: Re: Is what I am doing a good idea?



Dear Sara,

I truly appreciated your last comments. Langiuage is a powerful force for allowing true understanding. I do believe that, globally, we will have to communicate better in terms of meeting educatinoal needs that extend beyond our national borders. That is why I was so impressed by the work of David Hargreaves who has managed to change the paradigm in some schools in the U.K. as well as in Australia.. Leadership in the model I now aspire to requires a greater capacity for the organizatino to lead itself (having a synergistic impact). The "leader" really no longer dictates but becomes a part of the capacity so that members are provided with opportunities (AR), time and data in order to allow them to meet their perceived needs (not others mandating them)  The test for proper servant leadership is found on the greenleaf.org<http://greenleaf.org><http://greenleaf.org> site and I believce it would be difficult to argue the value of th

at measure.



I would love to review your paper. You can sends it directly to me at [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]> . I look forward to hearing form you,

Warmly,

Alan

Dr. Alan Markowitz

Director, Graduate Programs in Education

(973) 290-4328