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Jack – I think the following distillate from our recent conversation does not distort the form of our overall intended meanings as I heard them (what do you think?). I believe it shows us evolving the idea of living standards of judgment arising from within a process of co-generation – as people work at using dialogical and inclusional forms of collaboration in order to make new meanings from within their individual and shared forms of life. The standards are tacitly a part of their evolving educational enquiry that is generating new living educational theories of their own practice(s). ----------------------------- P. what we have said to each other so far makes me suspect that the appropriate logic we are seeking to understand might not actually allow for the separate existence of ostensive concepts called ‘standards of judgment’. So, is it that we’re trying to reconcile together things that don’t actually belong? J. in terms of the meanings that are emerging in the course of the dialogue itself you are forming distinguishable understandings. … we haven’t, I think, yet found appropriate expressions of meaning to communicate what inclusional standards of judgment – which are as you say, process, standards – literally look like . . when you’re trying to communicate something which is highly original, you’re actually living within a culture where the language and logic dominates and so you can’t communicate your meaning. we’ve got to be careful of the meanings of the words we use … rather than the process of understandings . . you don’t treat it as an object . . if you take a phrase like ‘passion for social justice’ then I think I can show inclusionally the living meanings that are actually expressed through the body and can actually then be articulated. P. Certainly, we don’t try to define what they are but we need to identify them in order to be able to validate the work that we do. J. We do – and it’s a different form of awareness I think. if you work from a relationally-dynamic understanding, I think that the meanings then literally emerge in the course of their clarification in practice. P. But to say whether that meaning is educational or not, you’ve got to bring up to them standards of judgement that are in them or part of them. “If we relate in ways that are educational within an inclusional gathering whose members are receptively responsive so that we each ‘sing with the voice of the other and know the meaning’ then the standard of judgment should be implicit within this process. We do not have to name them as separate entities – they are not content but process.” J. OK I’m agreeing with that – now what I start to focus on is when you say ‘you don’t need to name them’ I agree – as if they are separate - and yet I do have a desire to communicate meanings which are being expressed bodily … using words that I feel other people are right on the inside of – an attractive use of language that we can articulate together. P. So that if we are to share living standards of judgement, to which we will appeal to validate or show as educational what we do, then to hold those in common we need to communicate them to each other or to co-generate them together. If you want to communicate them, then we’re stuck with the language thing or some sort of semiotic god-knows-what, but if we generate them together and then know tacitly that we are generating the same thing individually within ourselves, then we have our set of standards of judgment. J. I think so. . . so when (after a couple of years) Moira says “Jack I have finally understood what it was you saw in that videoclip of me at the end of that lesson” . . so there is that sense of co-creation in “Look – can’t you see?” and later “Ah – I can see” . . a sense of a mutuality of understanding - I’ve offered my meanings and actually the validity of what I’m claiming about Moira’s who says “Ah I see” and then tells me what she’s seeing. It’s that crucial point where you say ‘yes – I now know that you understand what I mean’. P. So over time as you exchange words and whatever else, you shift your perspectives until you achieve a parallel view – as much as you can you’ve grasped it in the same way – so the standards of judgment you have used to test its claim to be educational and that you have cogenerated (through dialogical, inclusional exchange over time) are the same and you say ‘yes, we agree, that is educational’. J. . . so there is the thought that we could be showing a living logic because we are willing to place our own forms of life (up for scrutiny). P. So if you think of the ways in which we relate in those forms of life and the things that we invest our ongoing lives in . . in the case of Eden’s PhD thesis, something must have crystallised early on as his intention, so it started from that one little point at that time in his life – and then over time it evolved and he wrote his 100,000 words. J. In the process of supervision … P. . . you reflect back to anyone you are supervising what they’ve done, what the implications are . . J. Yes and what I’m feeling is of significance . . struggle to see ‘are you really on the inside of the other?’ and not projecting onto the other your own biases and prejudices. Or have you really been open to the understandings that the other has and the values they have. P. So as a supervisor you are actually looking at – in the case of a thesis that is generating living educational theory – in order to appraise the development of the thesis, you have to develop your own standards of judgment that fit that evolving theory. You’ve used those standards of judgment that you have generated during your relationship with the student . . and yet those are not the standards of judgement that are applied by the external examiners in the course of the viva. ------------------------------- I am now left thinking that the process that leads to the production of a ‘living educational theory’ PhD thesis is one of the most clear-cut examples of where the co-generation of living standards of judgment is at work, within the process of the supervisor and the student negotiating their way towards the production of the final thesis (the argument, not the artefact). That process of co-generation is not explicit within the thesis itself – it is tacitly a part, a substantial thread that runs through the whole, but it is hidden. I think there is a case to be made for someone to engage with you in the PhD student-supervisor roles with the prime intention of using the thesis production process as the vehicle to reveal the nature of your relationship and the nature of the standards of judgment you agree as the thesis develops. Any takers? - Pete