Hi Jack and all

A timely new year message indeed! I am on leave in a hot New Zealand summer (not as hot as Australia, fortunately - they're in full bush fire season again, poor things) and reflecting on an item in this morning's paper. Our right-wing government is currently in negotiation with a number of other Pacific-based countries including the US of course, on a 'Trans-Pacific Partnership' that is being conducted in secret, and looks likely to substantially reduce New Zealand's sovereignty in some key areas. Dr Jane Kelsey of the University of Auckland is active in opposing this. If it is signed, and signing looks inevitable, we risk losing control over aspects of our own national functioning (see http://www.itsourfuture.org.nz/tag/trans-pacific-partnership/ if interested in the detail).

Our National government has forced into schools, against the advice of the principals and teacher unions, a National Standards measurement scheme that risks establishing the kinds of simplistic league tables that can hurt those schools that are already vulnerable. And last year, the government approved the establishment of 'charter schools' whose teachers - wait for it - don't even have to be properly trained! You can imagine the response of the teacher unions to THAT little scheme.

So yes, Jack, I do think that 'eternal vigilance is the price of freedom' and, towards the end of my paid employment life, I see once again this country aping policies that have been tried, and have failed, elsewhere, seemingly having learned nothing in the interim. It's quite depressing, so the opportunity to hold hands internationally and encourage each other in our respective attempts to transcend the influences of economic rationalist policies is appreciated.

I am unlikely to post any YouTube videos that show this kind of work however, admirable though I recognise these are. In our culture, this kind of capturing and publication can easily be seen as self-promotion, and at best intrusive. But happy to contribute in other ways.

Kia kaha (stand strong) and happy new year all.

Pip Bruce Ferguson

-----Original Message-----
From: Practitioner-Researcher [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jack Whitehead
Sent: Thursday, 10 January 2013 9:15 a.m.
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Researching Our Own Practice

Here's wishing everyone a most pleasurable and productive New Year as we continue our conversations.

Dear Je Kan, Maggie, Marie, Andy, Nigel, Chris, Lynn, William, Julie, Kate, Joan (C ), Delysia, Phil, Sigrid, Joan (W), Maureen, Shelagh, Sonia, Pete (Mellett), Yvonne, Fran, Steve, Pete (Mountstephen) Jackie, Liz, Cathy and ALL

There's an intuition and an idea I'm curious about and that, if you are willing, I'd like to explore with you over the next few months. 

My intuition is that something significant, generative and transformatory could emerge from making available on youtube, video-conversations in which we share with each other what we are doing. I'm thinking of sharing in ways that allow us all to understand more about the contexts in which we are working, the values we use to give meaning and purpose to our lives and the accounts/research reports we are producing as knowledge-creators. 

I believe that we are all living, working and researching with relational perspectives which, if we clarified these in the course of their emergence in what we are doing, they could help to both transform what counts as educational knowledge and transcend the influences of economic rationalist policies that lead to de-valuation and de-moralisation and which we are all experiencing to different degrees:

"Nevertheless, the new ‘economic rationalism’ is a worldwide phenomena which ‘guides’ not only the conduct of transnational corporations, but governments and their agencies as well. It does so with increasing efficacy and pervasiveness. I use the term ‘guides’  here in quotes to make a particular point. Economic rationalism is not merely a term which suggests the primacy of economic values. It expresses commitment to those values in order to serve particular sets of interests  ahead of  others. Furthermore, it disguises that commitment in a discourse of ‘economic necessity’ defined by its economic models. We have moved beyond the reductionism which leads all questions to be discussed as if they were economic ones (de-valuation) to a situation where moral questions are denied completely (de-moralisation) in a cult of economic inevitability (as if greed had nothing to do with it). Broudy (1981) has described ‘de-valuation’ and de-moralization’ in the following way:
De-valuation refers to diminishing or denying the relevance of all but one type of value to an issue; de-moralization denies the relevance of moral questions. The reduction of all values – intellectual, civic, health, among others – to a money value would be an example of de-valuation; the slogan ‘business’ is business’ is an example of de-moralization (Broudy, 1981: 99)"    (McTaggart, 1992, p. 50).

McTaggart, R. (1992) Reductionism and Action Research: Technology versus convivial forms of life,  pp. 47-61 in Bruce, C. S. & Russell, A. L. (1992) Transforming Tomorrow Today.  Brisbane, University of Queensland, Australia.

The idea I'd like us to explore together if you feel like it, is that we could pool our life-affirming energy (Sonia's idea), the values we believe carry hope for the future of humanity and our knowledge-creating capacities, in a co-operative enquiry in which we work at living our co-operative values as fully as possible. I like Maureen's editorial for the December 2011 issue of the Journal of Co-operative Studies in which she outlines co-operative values.

See - http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/breeze/mbeditorial.pdf

Breeze, M. (2011) Guest Editorial. Transforming Education Through Co-operation – A Force for Change. Journal of Co-operative Studies, 44(3); 2-4.

All I'm asking you to do at the moment is to think about this intuition and idea. 

This Friday (11/01/130 I'm part of Chris (Jones') Ph.D. transfer seminar at Liverpool Hope University and hope to video the conversation in which Chris will be sharing some ideas on 'living empowerment' within her question: 'How Do I Promote Inclusion by Living My Values and Developing Standards of Judgement to which I Hold Myself Accountable' (Working title of Thesis)

I'll think a bit more about my intuition and idea before writing any more, but if you feel like sharing your own thoughts/feelings please do.

Shelagh has already responded:

On 9 Jan 2013, at 18:13, Shelagh Hetreed wrote:

Hi there,

Food for thought indeed.  Your description sparks many thoughts that are jangling around unconnected at the moment.  Or are they?
I see how education reduces learning and knowledge to a tried and tested formula that works for some and so is applied regardless of the consequences for those for whom it clearly doesn't work.
I think of my BME elders and the elderly in general who are reduced to stereotypes and labels of being 'burdens' with little to offer society.
I see professionals who operate inclusivity above a thin veneer but when you scratch the surface below that veneer, their values become shaky.
I see the 'us' and 'them' being a cunning device to compartmentalise us to be 'with us' or 'against us' and have been following the astonishing explosion of anger over the flying of a piece of cloth (or not) by the so called 'loyalists'.  Loyalists, now there is a thesis waiting to be written!
I am learning so much about India, attitudes to caste and gender in the aftermath of the appalling Delhi murder.  It is not ok for Indian families to be selective about aborting their girl babies but it is ok for us in the West to abort any baby that is not wanted.

There is so much that I am thinking and questioning, that I am saddened or appalled by.  It does all tie up for me and relates to your notion of reductionism.  I am thinking of key words like belonging, including, tolerating, accepting is where we need to focus.

I am very excited by your intuition and look forward to discussions, debates and challenges and us each caring about the others field of study and personal journeys.

Hope some of this makes sense!

Shelagh