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Hi everyone I have been tracking this conversation for a while and appreciate the turn it is taking. We have just "completed" a collaborative inquiry into the value of participatory practices to sustainability here in Australia... We divested ourselves of familiar epistemological stances - which in formal settings are dominated by instrumentalist assumptions here in Australia. We worked through 18 months to develop new forms of 1st, 2nd and 3rd person (Torbert and Reason) ways of knowing, using poetics, imagery, and ever deepening forms of friendship to open up our understandings with each other. Two points I would like to make in reference to our work and at this moment in the discussion: Something that we developed that was so illuminating and liberating was to invest the idea of "objectivity" with a sense of vitality - that is, to not lose the construction of "other" with all its advantages of criticality and other notions of complementary ways of knowing - but to let such objectivity be attributed with a two way dynamic (between us the knower and it the concept of other), not necessarily "human" but open to any construction of a dynamic relationship between objectivity and other epistemological stances. Our fear is, following Polanyi and Bohm, that the deep cultural root metaphore of objectivity as truth and subjectivity as bias is something that we must shift if humanity is to grasp the truths of our situation as living truth - to re-vision human "nature"; Second, and related to this playful but essential development, is while we agree that we must bring our account into the public light, as we are doing, and have it opened to epistemological scrutiny by others as some of you suggest, we should not do so until we feel strong, embracing of the fear and derision that others will communicate to us in their alienated state that objectivity creates, and equally light of touch regarding those who might leap into our experience too easily. It is a very difficult and challenging experience to open ourselves to such scrutiny, in often distorted environments. So as much as we have made a lifeworld of mystery, love and courage between us, we also need to hold the "skin" between our inquiry community and everyone else with respect and depth of humanity. If anyone has any wisdom to contribute to our path we would be most interested. Warmest regards Susan Goff On 13/10/06 4:19 AM, "Marie Huxtable" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Emotional literacy is an area of developement in schools in England at > present with huge claims made for its impact but as far as I know there are > no living standards of judgement by which to assess those claims nor an > understanding of how to produce evidence that can be used to assess them. If > anyone knows otherwise I would be very interested to hear. In the meantime > my colleagues and I are working on a living theory account as we work with > educators on developing our understandings of emotional literacy in a, > hopefully, emotionally literate fashion in a workshop. We are hoping to > video the workshop as evidence of our standards being lived as they emerge > through our practice so I appreciate Alon's invitation to > > 'Just produce an account, showing your living standards of judgement > and make it public for assessment and re-evaluation: We'll decide > and tell you if it is epistemological, clear and convincing, > contributing (ethical) and educational.'