First of all, I would like to congratulate Alon for offering Jack, his PhD supervisor, such a worthy and a valuable retirement gift. Despite Jack's long standing invitation to engage with him about his ideas and his influence in educational contexts, there have been several who have attempted to do so - in fact in front of me here as I write this email I have the video (such a generous present) from David Tripp, who came all way from Australia to talk with him. Ironically, David levelled a very similar criticism of Jack's work at that time, namely that Jack was actually not drawing out evolving educational theories in the doctorates that he supervised. Instead, he was enabling reified accounts of practice about Lived Educational Theories - caught in the act of writing like, one might say, a butterfly pinned to a display board for anatomical dissection. I, too, last year tried to respond to the BERA Research Intelligence article where Jack invited discussion in an e-seminar. As Brian knows (thank you Brian for alerting me to this conversation today) sadly, Jack declined to engage in any dialogue whatsoever. Such strange behaviour, it seemed to me...
My focus, and I would be grateful to understand more from Jack himself (apologies, Marie, I know you like to answer) about his interpretation of Habermas and its application in relation to validating living educational theory doctoral accounts , resides here:
Validation appears to depend, for living educational theory doctoral submissions, on ascertaining whether an individual student has offered a credible account of events i.e. it seems believable by someone in the same location at the same time as an event described. This validator need not necessarily have even been present during a critical incident, for example, and might not be the person working most closely alongside the student as events, which he/she has recounted, progressed. The account has to be a 'believable' one. Now, taken to its logical conclusion we might have this scenario? This student decides to 'get a PhD' and elects to study with Jack. Feeling very annoyed at the apparent slow progress of his studies, he contacts another university but when he finds this will not be a speedier route at all, returns to study with Jack, he weaves his account of events around those sources of information Jack has listed for doctoral candidates to read. He adapts his language to align with others' living theories
and he tells a good yarn. That it isn't validated by anyone other than his wife (also a student studying with Jack) is no concern.
The examiner of the said thesis is unaware that there were others in the same location at the same time as events recounted and that they have been (not anonymised - that doesn't convey the nature of the depersonalisation that has occurred) rather excluded so that their voice cannot be heard. The validation cycle is closed. They are outside the validation process. I wonder if that could happen? If telling a believable account is at the root of the validation process for living educational theories, it could?
Of course, the problem then is that when the innocent (or naive?) cite the merits of the account in a justification of the living educational theory approach, they would be extending the lie, the cheating, would they not? Any listener would be unaware?
So - Alon, I would be grateful for your assistance (I admire your work, as you know). Could you give us insights into the major points where you have engaged in critique of Jack's approach to action research, please? What major conclusions were drawn?
Many thanks for reading my lengthy email!
Just an indication of my passion to learn!
Sarah
Sarah Fletcher
Editor-in-chief for IJMCE (The International Journal for Mentoring and Coaching in Education - EMERALD Press) and Convenor for the BERA Mentoring and Coaching Special Interest Group (2005 to date). My website at http://www.TeacherResearch.net
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