As I said in my thesis and here.  LET is either, and mostly,  
ridiculed, dismissed and not bothered with or unconditionally accepted  
by few.  This is fine.  The critique got me the PhD and closure and a  
moving on.

I think I got my answer about critiquing my critique.  Having reached  
closure, I am now able to move on to use my dialectical  
ontological/therapeutic AR to bridging, health and wellbeing. Which I  
regard to be far more important and meaningful, to me at least, than  
this endless incomprehensible rambling on and on and on about 'energy  
flowing in space', the 'bad Western academy and ways of knowing',  
'ubuntu', chi, and the idea that will, not less, save humanity from  
the inevitable doom, - 'incusionality' - and how we cannot express  
ourselves with verbal language and need to resort to youtube clips.  
And many more ingenious ideas that I was too busy with my  
ontological/cathartic AR and creative therapeutic writing for health  
and wellbeing to attend to.

There are enough cults in the world.  One more will not hurt.


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

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> Dear Sarah and Alon,
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> Sorry !! But I have the feeling after reading your mail today  that   
> I read this ideas before . Let!s the light of God to  be with you to  
>  clean old remorses, love, geisha
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>> Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 18:13:37 +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]
>>
>> 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
>> >
>> >
>