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Dear Jack, Thank you! This is all very much appreciated and treasured. And I am grateful for the experience of seeing, hearing, feeling the importance of visual data made available by the numerous action researchers who have availed of themselves in this way. My thanks to all. Juin Ee Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 14:41:10 +0100 From: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Education and Learning Virtual Networking Stream for ALARA's 8th World Congress To: [log in to unmask] In her posting of the 23rd May, Marie made the point: ¡°I would contest that educators need to show and account for their educational influence in learning. Over the next few weeks I will try to create an account, building on what I have learned from preparing and offering the workshop on ¡®children and young people as researchers¡¯, which explains my practice. I will post it on my website for anyone who will help me test the validity of my claim to know what I am doing and to be making an educational difference in learning, and offers a response to Brian¡¯s questions: - What is your rigorous analysis and experiential testing of your way of thinking which underpins your efforts to improve what you do? - What are your presuppositions, the world-view lying underneath your ideas and the questions you ask of your claims? And mine: - What is your educational explanation for your educational influence, in your own learning, the learning of others and the social formations in which you live and work, as you hold yourself to account for your practice? I hope that others might also be willing to make their accounts public and in doing so make a life-enhancing difference to the learning of self, others and the social formations in which we live and work, and ultimately improve the educational experience of more children and young people.¡± I¡¯ll follow Marie¡¯s lead in making my own action learning and action research public over the coming months, as I explore the educational implications of my commitment to ALARA. In February 2010, Susan and Jacques highlighted the nature of my commitment in accepted the Chairing of the Education and Learning, Virtual Networking Stream for the 8th World Congress of ALARA. ¡°We are delighted that you have agreed to take on this significant role in facilitating a global dialogue to explore the foundations, current applications and future hybridisations of Action Research and Action Learning in the field of Education across all life stages and sectors, on a world stage.¡± As part of this dialogue I want to share some insights that I¡¯m hoping will help to enhance our understandings of who is doing what and where in extending the influences of action learning and action research. Through sharing such understandings I am hopeful that we will strengthen our feeling of belonging to a global community. Margaret Riel, the Chair of the American Educational Research Association¡¯s Special Interest Group on Action Research is already contributing to this forum and you can access details of the SIG at http://sites.google.com/site/aeraarsig/ar1world-blog I think that you will also want to look at Margaret¡¯s Online Office at Pepperdine University. http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/mriel/office/ Margaret presented at the 7th Annual Action Research Conference at the University of San Diego on the 14th and 15th May. At the Collaborative Action Research Network study day on the 13th May , Lonnie organized a visit to the San Pasquale Academy. Here is a 2:52 clip of Juan Orozco at the Academy talking about his values, boundaries and energy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8MJJGErsZM Juan¡¯s love of life, expressed towards the end of the clip in response to a question from Angel, resonates with my own and I hope that you can feel, see and hear the importance of including such visual data in our action research accounts. On the 17th ¨C 20th May 2010, the Council of Europe funded a workshop in Zagreb, Croatia, on 'Action Research in the Function of the Professional Development of Teachers' with some 55 participants from 15 countries, including Vinko Filipovic, Renata Ozorlic Dominic, Debravka Kovacevic, Sanja Milovic and Ninocka Truck-Biljan from the Croatian, Education and Teacher Training Agency. Here is a video in two parts of Sanja Milovic from the Agency talking on action research in the professional development of advisers and teachers. I¡¯m hopeful that everyone on the list will become familiar with the support given to action research from the Croatian Education and Teacher Training Agency. You can see some of the contributions being made by Croatian action researchers in the archives of the Educational Journal of Living Theories at http://ejolts.net/ . Here is the video of Sanja: Part 1 of 2 8:43 minutes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPSmUiBcOb0 Part 2 of 2 6:26 minutes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbWt5GHyfEI You can also read my report on the workshop at http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/jack/jwcroatiareportar.htm Several sessions about the action research cycle and the importance of writing up action research accounts were led by Tim Cain from the University of Southampton in the UK and Alan Markowitz from the College of St. Elizabeth in the USA. (Jean has just sent through this review of Doing and Writing Action Research http://www.abdn.ac.uk/eitn/display.php?article_id=18 ). 14 members of the Self-study for Transformatory Higher Education (SeStuTHE) are presenting at the action research workshop organized by Prof. Lesley Wood at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University on the 19/20th August 2010. Lesley, Cupane, Vincente and Joan Conolloy are sharing ideas on how I might be able to do a workshop on action research with Vincente in Maputo in Mozambique on my way back to the UK from NMMU. I¡¯m hoping to post the accounts of the SeStuTHE group from Durban University of Technology on the web before the workshop. Here is Alan Markowitz talking about a systemic implementation of action research in graduate education ¨C following the end of the Council of Europe Workshop in Zagreb. Part 1 of 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzaUPnt6e2M 9:57 minutes Part 2 of 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb5HH9VTMes 9:57 minutes. Over the coming months I¡¯m hoping that Alan will share an explanation of his systemic influence in developing action research within his organization to help to strengthen our understandings of how we might enhance the systemic influence of AR. (Dear Tim and Alan ¨C do please send on any urls to your work that you would like me to connect to the other homepages section of http://www.actionresearch.net - see the left hand menu). Perhaps we could all bear Marie¡¯s (and Brian¡¯s) questions in mind over the next few months/years: "- What is your rigorous analysis and experiential testing of your way of thinking which underpins your efforts to improve what you do? - What are your presuppositions, the world-view lying underneath your ideas and the questions you ask of your claims? And mine: - What is your educational explanation for your educational influence, in your own learning, the learning of others and the social formations in which you live and work, as you hold yourself to account for your practice?" I like Kate Kemp¡¯s latest master¡¯s writings on ¡®All you need is love¡¯-or is it? How can I contribute to creating an educational learning environment? at http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/tuesdayma/katekempullmay10.pdf . I also like the way Kate has drawn insights from the ideas of others into her writings. Here¡¯s hoping that these notes can help to extend our global understandings of what is going on in action learning and action research. Love Jack. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft¡¯s powerful SPAM protection. https://signup.live.com/signup.aspx?id=60969