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the value of my experience for the future - an inquiry? Hi Francis, Hello All, I'd like to know more about this open source development model when I have my thesis written. I like your idea about how your values in your practice can be experienced ostensively by colleagues around you. I am intrigued by your interest in 'affecting' future teachers through your values. I liken this to Jack Whitehead's encouragement of me to frame my practice as a contribution to evolving postcolonial social formations. There is something similar here, but its beyond my reach of words for the moment. It could have something to do with how your 'research story' as a teacher could influence the evolution of future social formations of teachers for 'good'. I don't know if you have seen James Finnegan's doctoral thesis. There could be a connectivity here. It is on Jack's web page www.actionresearch.net Your ideas about collective memory and tacit knowledge embodied in your practice is a powerful framing for your research. I relate to 'collective memory' because it is often enacted and shared through communal story telling. There is a link here to the knowledge of indigenous peoples. Though to extend the idea of indigene, figuratively, perhaps you would see yourself as an 'indigenous teacher'. 'Collective teacher memory' as knowledge, as expertise, as insight, and as wisdom I suspect. I work in a context of agricultural people, especially people associated in some way with farming. Farmer's have an incredible tacit knowledge, and a profound 'collective memory' in a community of practice. Okay - I am really absorbed by your idea: "There is a considerable analysis to be done over the effects of institutionalised oppression of rural communities and particularly the denial of educational opportunity through policy. (My school is in a very rural area and has suffered immensely due to political policies. The suffering is personal, collegiate, humanitarian, educational and institutional.)" This has rich, multiple layers of significance, Francis. You point to them powerfully. Let's not be sanguine about the effects of institutionalised oppression of rural communities and the denial of educational opportunity through policy. This is framed with huge energy for special justice and expresses the pain of injustice, felt personally, not merely in the abstract. As I craft my own 'Live Theorising' what excites me is the way that the wider social an political context of oppression. When oppression is institutionalised Joy James refers to it (in another context, that of the institutionalised oppression of racism) as 'state violence'. In the excerpt from your posting above I can see a most powerful way of placing your phenomenal enquiry into values, existence, quality of work-life balance within a wider social and political context. This makes great sense to me. The nature of the educational research that you could craft would have a better self-socio-political balance. I am disappointed by those living educational theory accounts that seem to have a 'self balance', not a 'self~socio-political' balance (to borrow your phrase). I am riveted by your grasp of an emergent self study~institutionalised oppression balance. Your research enquiry framed in this way would have such significance, and could make such a difference within the Academy. As well as enabling you to fulfil your values concerning work-life balance, too. I really am drawn to the sub-text emerging as text as commitment to social justice. But what is fascinating about the questions you are trying to bring about is that the questions you have already brought about are so pertinent, so urgent. In the Action Masters I convene, an MSc in Management Studies by action research, this complex and muddy mix of what is profoundly personal, professional, social, political is what participants seem to be working with. It is the clay of their life sculpting, the clay from the grounds of their own lived experience that they use to sculpt possibility. The contradictions, the managerialism, the organizational imperatives, the rhetoric of care, and the abandonment of a duty of care in law. This encounter with oppression masquerading as 'quality management' or 'leadership', or whatever in organizations seems to fuel my pleasure in both Critical Theory and Critical Management Studies (CMS) http://aom.pace.edu/cms/Competition/Dissertation%20Award.htm Just read through this web page until you get to the Critical Management studies domain statement...I think it could resonate with you. http://www.rac.ac.uk/~paul_murray/Documents/Tescoisation%20and% 20Walmartization38.doc This was written in conversation with a business management student, James Staples, who has achieved a 2.1 in his degree I learned today! I am struck by the desire permeating your writing to do this messy but incredibly important and delightful kind of research enquiry, Francis. A self of values and relationships, and a self of socio-political commitment. Not a dualistic separation, but a synthesis held in your life, threaded through your teaching and your social analysis. I lecture in Human Resources, Organization Studies and Action Research at the Royal Agricultural College (Cirencester, Gloucestershire). Yes, I imagine a space, a public policy space, for your teacher self study, which incorporates a socio-political analysis of the effects of institutionalised oppression of rural communities. Yet what would give this a live dimension is that your research would be held in the first and second person grounds of your own lived, subjective experiences. What I can imagine is a psycho-social doctoral self study of your teaching practice that would be a carapace to explore your inextricable personal, professional and wider contextual questions. I can imagine the delight of a life fulfilled, as well. Best Yaqub