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Hello, Jack, and others here.

If I have anything to add to the conversation here, it is in relation to 
what might be implicit in my understanding of the nature of 
practice-relevant research, as I worked up to express it in my master's 
thesis.

I was drawing on some of the themes and work of a number of participants 
here in this list, and some of my expressed, and some unposted engagements 
with the debate here and at JeKan's LAR site.

The following links might take your other readers to what I have done.

Access to Thesis:

http://www.library.uow.edu.au/adt-NWU/public/adt-NWU20050901.105532/index.html



Access to My Current Professional Interests:

http://www.cfkeep.org/html/snapshot.php?id=60792183653258



I also append an attachment of extracts from my final thesis chapter for 
those interested.



In summary, I find that in exercising my judgement about standards of 
educational practice, I use a multitude of criteria, applied to the multiple 
evaluative dimensions associated with educational practice.



From Donald Schon, I understand practice to be the exercise of multiple 
evaluations, over multiple dimensions, in sequence, where the sequence can 
be re-cast, if the solution proves unsatisfactory, in-practice, taking us 
into 'creativity', or what Schon called 'reframing'.



From my understanding of inputs from Michael Patton, Stephen Toulmin, Chris 
Argyris, Donald Schon, Gregaory Bateson, and John Heron, and the engagement 
of John Heron with Egon Guba and Yvonne Lincoln, I have come to the 
understanding that



"My more nuanced understanding of the nature of inquiry, and of inquiry into 
practice, in-practice, including inquiry into the practitioner's thinking 
that is informing action, suggests that reflective research of practice can 
never be a singular, undifferentiated activity.   Consequently, there can be 
no simple formulation for evaluating the quality of reflective research of 
practice.   The methods employed to conduct any research of practice need to 
be various, so that there can be a match of what is being inquired into, by 
what method, and with a view to the kind of knowledge that needs to be 
formed by such a process, including consideration of the intrinsic values 
being applied to humanness in the way such knowledge is developed."





Dianne Allen

Kiama Australia