Hi

This is a conversation capturing my interest.

Let me tell you my story. I am by training an academic development practitioner, economist and teacher educator. I therefore understand Alon's positions on neo liberal capitalism and wish to point out that absolutely free market economies don't exist - there are various combinations of the key role that prices and markets play in the allocation of scarce economic resources and forms of government intervention in societies. Freire's ideas are extremely useful but they cannot be the only views for our future, as any 21st Century inclusionalist might argue. The economy and society and technology is very different today than what it was in Freire's era, and it is going to be very different tomorrow.

I also understand what Geisha means about students willingness to engage in "dialogs" - they have been conditioned by "monologs" and by single / few / limited perspectives and voices. They don't really see how the self, the other and the social formation are interconnected.

In my own teacher educator classroom of first year of study students (B.Ed UKZN South Africa), I try to open up the spaces (inclusionality) and get flows going. I try to make sure my lecturing, my classroom, is dialogical and dialectical, that it is not a monologue and different perspectives are allowed. I also find Halliday's linguistic notion of register (field, mode and tenor) and context a useful tool. I also attempt to engage in dialectics, in the sense that I work on the process of thesis / antithesis / synthesis. In this way I attempt to include different perspectives and resolve difference in my classroom.

This kind of pedagogy (by pedagogy I mean the teaching, learning and assessing i.e. they viewed as not separated, as intertwined, interconnected processes) is necessary because my South African classroom is diverse (different languages, cultures, religions, ontologies, epistemologies etc.) and the language of teaching, learning and assessing is English. The pedagogy is also a reflection of my values.

What is also emerging from my educational practice is my living educational theory and an understanding of the importance / significance that it is our values (my values) that precedes our ontology (my ontology, my way of being), which in turn precedes our epistemology (my epistemology, my way of knowing). The importance and significance given to values is critical to the future of humanity and the planet as well as to pedagogy.

Lawrence






-----Original Message-----
From: Practitioner-Researcher [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alon Serper
Sent: 12 May 2011 06:25 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: How to establish an environment that calls out the most and the best of everyone

Here is the URL for my thesis
http://actionresearch.net/living/serper.shtml

The Introduction introduces my alternative and thesis. The first part
explains what LET is and relates it to the field/s.  The second part
criticises it and offers an alternative that is based on ontology
preceding epistemology and b/logging.  The third part concludes.  The
thesis was written in haste in two weeks as what I wanted to do
originality as my PhD could not be drafted into a 90k PhD.

I think the critique is very generous to Jack and Jean and others.  It
is my retirement gift to Jack.  It was timely and needed. There was
never a critical engagement with LET.  It was mostly ridicule and
dismissal, that Jack's 1993 book and 1991 paper did not help.  Or an
unconditional acceptance.

I also think Freire is the future.  I was very surprised that Jack
never properly engaged with Freire or Dewey.  It is very hard to
discuss dialectics and values without those two giants in education.

Alon
Quoting geisha rebolledo <[log in to unmask]>:

>
> Hi!!!
>
> SORRY i AM LATE TO THIS INTEESTING DISCUSSION!!!
>
> I would like to know more about LET . Please send me information. On
>  the other hand I find exciting Alon views. However, I would like to
>  know more about why he puts forward Ontology instead of
> Epistemology?_. I always thought it was the opposite..... Somehow
> that view allowed me to understand peoples points of views if i find
>  out   their views of reality... This relates to how i have try to
> put in practice Freire's dialectical and emancipatory views in my
> classrooms * I teach at the Pedagogic University in Caracas ,
> Venezuela* Somehow it takes me time and effort to convince my
> students of using dialogs during  Curriculum classes as they feel
> surprised of this methodology  which "their teachers do'nt seem to
> use" The latest we started was an online  forum to put forward our
> reflections. Somehow  what they write about is concerned with their
> values and ways to see reality.
> For example a girl student that confessed this dialog on equal terms
>  seem strange for her as she  thinks she is authoritarian because
> that is the way she was educated by her grand ma..... So  to  try to
>  put in practice Freir'es  in the classroom make one's wonder  many
> ideas like if  it will lead to change and  emancipation ??
> Many greetings, geisha
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>> Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 07:08:40 +0100
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: How to establish an environment that calls out the
>> most and the best of everyone
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> On 11 May 2011, at 17:15, Alon Serper wrote:
>>
>> My critique was that LET follows the very traditional and
>> positivist research in education and the social sciences of
>> epistemology preceding ontology. I argued that this is mistaken and
>>  that ontology should precede epistemology. I also argued against
>> that bizarre turn to 'inclusionality' and youtube from Gadamer and
>> Ilyenkov's dialectics and auto-ethnographic texts. My present work
>> is trying my dialectical tool on other people and as a means to
>> resolve conflict, propositional stereotyping, alienation, exclusion
>>  and abstraction of groups and individuals, racism and colonialism
>> and to summon a true Freireian dialogue of equal, pluralism and
>> mutual understanding.
>>
>> Alon
>>
>> Hi Alon - I've read your critique and understand and share your
>> desire to avoid the abstraction of groups and individuals. My own
>> response is that in referring to 'LET' and 'the LET approach' you
>> seem to have reified the ideas in your own abstraction of 'LET' and
>>  'the LET approach'. In my understanding of living educational
>> theories each individual expresses their own creativity in
>> generating an explanation of their educational influence in their
>> own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of the
>> social formations in which they live and work. In my view there is
>> no such thing as 'the LET approach' or 'LET' apart from the kind of
>>  reified abstraction you wish to avoid.
>>
>> Love Jack.
>

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