Regarding the validation:

I used the traditional PhD ones for my thesis:
critical judgement and engagement with the literature and the ideas of other
originality of mind
significant contribution
extent and merit

I think my critique of the major writings and ideas of LET, its  
sources and influences and the secondary resources and sources was a  
thorough one.  So did the examiners.
I think it is an original thesis.  So did my examiners.  No one took  
LET and ontologised it into an ontological dialectical and  
phenomenological AR approach. I think the timing was a good one for  
this and there it was a significant contribution to the field there.

As I said, the quality and level of PhDs is dropping and  
deteriorating.  My grandfather got his doctorate in the 1930.  And it  
is so much better than mine and a huge contribution to medicine.   
Every year the level is dropping.  There is an inflation of PhDs.  It  
is all becoming so commercialised.

I do make use of the social validation for my dialectical tool: Was it  
a clear transformation and empowerment in the life, interrelationship  
and learning of the researcher?
Did he/she learn to improve his/her interrelationship with self and  
others and construct a more meaningful, fulfilling and secure  
existence in the world for himself/herself?

Of course it has to be clear and comprehensible and interesting and  
worthwhile and an educational experience to/for a reader and social  
validator.

The irony is that most of my colleagues and friends who tried to read  
later Habermas said this has been a very difficult task, if at all  
possible.  I only read the earlier to engage with LET.  I focused on  
Freire and Gadamer. Language and expression and text are very important.
Alon
Quoting Alon Serper <[log in to unmask]>:

> Dear Sarah,
>
> I rejoined this list yesterday because I had this insight of the
> impressive work of Can Sonmez into poetry and cancer that I thought
> Brian can benefit from.  As I was concluding the email, I could not
> resist but asking for a critique of my thesis on a critique of LET.
>
> I should like to stress very strongly that my thesis dealt with ideas
> rather than people and was a critique of what I thought, until Jack's
> reply yesterday, was the LET approach (Jack Whitehead's website and
> publications).
>
> I do not deal with persons.  I deal with ideas.
>
> I was left unsupervised when Jack retired in 2009 and we could not
> draft the thesis I originally wanted on a therapeutic AR tool until
> then.
>
> In fact, Jack did not see the thesis until after my Viva Voce when I
> made it a point to come to him in person, the evening of my Viva, and
> for him to be the first to get me a congratulatory drink at the
> University's bar.
>
> I think it is all in my thesis that could be accessed from Jack's
> website at http://actionresearch.net/living/serper.shtml.
>
> I also summarised the major critiques here, in this forum today.
>
> I think we live in a time where practitioners require a support and a
> self-care tool.  We are objectified, dehumanised, degraded, made
> saturated and turned into tools and objects.  Then, we are tossed like
> used goods.
>
> I think the living contradictions and dialectics should be turned into
> a self-care cathartic tool in which the practitioner, with the help of
> fellow practitioners, create a dialectical AR account in the course of
> which he/she identifies, delves into and processes situations in
> his/her practice that make him/her feel and experience angst,
> frustration, anger, exclusion, isolation, alienation, poor
> relationships with self and others, and ontological void and
> insecurity.  Then, he/she can work out, with the help of colleagues,
> action plans to dialectically and poietically transmute these poor
> experiences and situations into a more meaningful, fulfilling and
> securing existence in, with and towards the world for himself/herself.
>
> To do this, I turned Jack and Jean's original question into my, how do
> I lead a more meaningful existence in the world for myself and
> developed a method that turns auto-dialogical logging for oneself into
> dialogical blogging with others.  I offered this blogging method as
> better than Jack's youtube method that I criticised.  I also criticised
> the turn into 'inclusionality' that I argued to new-agist and cultist
> and lacking scholarship.  I described my dialectical AR aternative to
> LET
>
> Hence, my conclusion is that LET should abandon its epistemology focus
> and the 'inclusionality' idea and youtube and move into a more
> ontological, cathartic and auto-poietic form of dialectical, living,
> concrete and embodied, AR.
>
> The main task in hand now for us all is to support the exhausted,
> saturated and degraded practitioner as he/she is putting his/her
> knowledge and LET accounts (explanation of practice and educational
> transformation) into the public domain.
>
> When I first said this to Jack in 2004, he said that this is the task
> of psychology not education.  I did not like this division of labour as
> I think the practitioner's well-being and health is the interest of all
> and is interdisciplinary.  I still hold this view.
>
> Alon
>
> Quoting Sarah Fletcher <[log in to unmask]>:
>
>> 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
>>
>>