Alan, Alan and Joan
In these three emails below there are important questions relating to practitioner action research. Although the main discipline represented here is education I am finding that many practioners across disciplines are motivated by similar values and ways of being practitioners. I can only speak from a living theory in community health (and recently youth/family) prespective but would like to make a stab at answering the questions I see here:
- what is a good idea in living theory practitioner research?
- what knowledge base does living theory use?
- what is the role of values
- what makes a theory?
- how does this research have relevance beyond the individual?
- does it matter that practitioners are doing self study?
- what is the difference between a good idea and value-led practice?
- how does all this differ from other types of action research?
Alan R only you can know if this is a good idea for you to stop offering to this list. You have had plenty of recognition for your insights in inclusional ways of knowing which must show you that many many people find you inspiring for your help with their enquiries into how to live and work. From my perspective feelings of discomfort usually tell me that there is a contradiction between values I claim (for me values of 'alongsideness') and what I am actually doing/living. As an aside, I felt some of that in my recent emails to this list which I feared were critical, but I wanted to say it - so did. (One of my personal questions within alongsideness is how to be proactive, and I still do not feel I get it right).
Alan, to me your questions 'How do I improve what I am doing?' and 'Is what I am doing a good idea?' are different. 'Is this a good idea?' seems to me to be a purely cerebral activity where as 'How do I improve what I am doing?' is behavioural in relationship with others. Alan I do believe you are beginning to notice your own living contradictions in your 'unsolicted offerings' when you feel your intentions may not be well received by others. I do hope you continue to communicate how you work this out for yourself and it is not by stopping communicating with us.
Alam M, the knowledge base for a living theorist I believe is within themselves and what they do in practice. I discovered this when asked by one of my supervisors over about six years 'where is your research grounded?' and I didn't know because my working knowledge and search was across many disciplines beyond my public health arena and shifted as my interests scanned my horizons to improve my understanding of what I was doing. My original literature search was a nonsence as I moved from a human rights agenda to encompas a range of other influences on my practice in relationship with individuals, families and communities. I began by wanting to find ways of stopping parents hitting their children at a time when it wasn't even a topic of debate amongst professionals working with children. I ended up with my personal theory of alongsideness in working with parents/anyone.
More important for me is that I came to realise that alongsideness is not just a way of living/working it is also an epistemology - for me a way of constructing and testing my knowledge as I learn more about being and how I practice alongside others. We are all enquiring, finding out, theorising and checking widely together. In this way our own personal but to some degree shared theories of how to be are relevant beyond ourselves. Not generalisable in the traditional sense because we all put our own slant on what we value, but to a surprising extent there appear to be common values that motivate good practice for living/learning that are widely held amongst parents, practitioners and others. This is why I believe we are often all saying largely similar things but with our individual slant and language. For me the theories are the values of alongsideness because they are the standards by which I test my
practice (am I doing as I claim? why not? - what competing value has intervened?). The uniqueness of living theory for me is that everything is real, open and honest. No fudging, pure pleasure.
Joan, I love the way you explain things. I believe you can enter self study from any starting point. I had a problem - parents at the time were commonly hitting or threatening their children. What could I do about it? I could't clearly articulate what was important to me because it felt complex. At that time I was in a lonely place and there were very few people asking the same questions. Britain has changed immensely for children over the last two decades and now all child-centred professions have respect policies (including no hitting taken for granted!) and principles for practice that sound like alongsideness.
I couldn't begin my research by identifying value contradictions because I didn't know what my values were. Just as I think I have my values taped another contradiction appears when I see I have behaved badly and I realise there is another strongly held belief intervening that needs to be explored so I can improve how I act in practice.
This is long enough for now
Robyn
From: Alan Markowitz <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Is what I am doing a good idea?
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Saturday, 14 August, 2010, 18:15
Dear Joan and Alan,
I was wondering if you can help me understand the role of the knowledge base in our respective fields in this process. In teaching, for example, we know that certain practices can either positively or negatively impact the probability of learning. To me, the purpose of our AR model is to determine which of these professional practices will most likely allow us to continue our growth as professional practitioners in light of our current context. It seems to me that this critical knowledge is replaced by "What would I like to do better?" which to me must be seen in a contextual manner. Your feedback to help me understand is greatly appreciated.
Alan
Dr. Alan Markowitz
Director, Graduate Programs in Education
(973) 290-4328
On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 12:54 PM, JOAN WALTON <[log in to unmask]" target=_blank rel=nofollow ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Dear Alan I think you have a different understanding to me about what the primary (by this I mean the first) question is. My understanding is that the first questions are: What really matters to me? What are the values that inform what I do? These are then followed by the question: How do I improve what I am doing (such that my values are being better lived in my practice). And that an important part of living theory is providing an account of your response to these questions in such a way that others are able to judge (and let you know) whether what you are doing is a 'good idea' (which of course is a value-laden question in its own right, and can only be judged according to the values by which you are claiming the idea to be 'good'). I am not clear what rationale or values are informing your judgement that your intention that
this should be your last unsolicited offering to the PR list is a 'good idea'? Hence I am not really able to comment on whether it is a good idea. In actual fact, I am currently running a collaborative inquiry with a group of early years practitioners, where each of them are responding to the questions of - what really matters to me; what are the values that are informing my practice; and how can I improve my practice so that my values are being better lived out in what I do (so I think we can accept that they believe what they are doing is a 'good idea' because it matters to them, and they are justifying their reasons to others....) In addition they are also asking the collective questions "How can we improve what we do?" In other words, in accounting to each other about what they are doing, they are also learning from each other, and sharing ways in which they can improve what they collaboratively do to improve their
professional service as early years day care providers. In all of this, context cannot be avoided and is very much part of the ongoing discussions, both on an individual and a group level. And service users, commissioners of the project will very quickly give feedback on whether they think what is being done is a 'good idea'. I don't think I quite follow the 'cut-space' terminology - although of course I am familiar with a lot of your ideas on natural inclusion. And I realise that my response here will not necessarily be in tune with all those ideas. All I can say is that the question 'is it a good idea' is one that I have philosophically and metaphysically pursued for a long time, responses to which have led me to engage with action research and living theory. I obviously cannot account for everyone engaged in living theory enquiries; but I personally have not encountered anyone who has not, from a values based
perspective, at least implicitly justified why what they are doing is a good idea. I'm not sure what theory could be used to justify this - because discussion as to what is meant by 'good' in an ultimate sense is the subject of age old philosphical discussions, and in a more practical way, I think can only be a values rather than an 'objective truth/theoretically' based response. And for me too, action research encourages a search for coherence and resonance between theory and practice. Indeed it it my priority in research and in life terms to work towards these two being integrated. Best wishes, Joan
From: Alan Rayner (BU) <[log in to unmask]" target=_blank rel=nofollow ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]" target=_blank rel=nofollow ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Sent: Saturday, 14 August, 2010 14:40:14
Subject: Is what I am doing a good idea?
Dear All,
I intend this to be my last unsolicited offering to the PR list. I hope this is a good idea.
Recent conversations have produced a feeling of discomfort in me, which leads me to suggest the importance of explicitly accompanying questions of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?' with questions of the kind, 'Is what I am doing a good idea?'
In terms of what I understand to be the initial conception of living theory as a way of enhancing the practice of individual educators, the primary question: 'how do I improve what I am doing?' makes a lot of sense. But with that as its focus, most attention is bound to be primarily on the individual educator and what she/he is 'doing'. As that focus deepens, so the importance of context becomes more evident - but only in so far as this affects the practice of the individual as an inclusion of his/her neighbourhood. Enormous effort is also taken up in justifying the inclusion of the 'I' within the research enquiry, in the face of predominant cut-space (rationalistic) theory that either excludes the 'I' from consideration or treats it as a 'contradiction'.
In itself, I see this as a very important and creative contribution to educational theory and practice. The inclusion of the 'I' is natural and vital to any realistic kind of enquiry.
But I also increasingly feel I am seeing a danger of this form of enquiry becoming self-limiting and vulnerable to abuse.
To avoid this danger, I think questions of the kind, 'Is what I am doing a good idea?' could be helpful both in broadening the remit and avoiding getting carried away with getting better at doing something that may not be a good idea.
It was asking that kind of question that led me to develop natural inclusional enquiry. I realized that what I was doing when on the crest of my career wave back in the 1990s was not a good idea. I was helping to perpetuate - both in myself and others - a way of thinking, founded in what I now refer to as 'cut-space logic', which I now consider to be socially, psychologically and environmentally damaging.
In asking myself questions of the kind, 'Is what I am doing a good idea?', I ask other questions, notably:
1. Is it consistent with evidence?
2. Does it make consistent sense?
3. Does it do any good?
The last of these questions is especially problematic.
Above all, what these questions elicit is a painstaking enquiry into my and others' underlying assumptions about the nature of Nature and Human Nature. Through that enquiry, I have discovered a huge number of common assumptions, both in myself and others, that answer none of those questions in the affirmative. Most, if not all of these assumptions appear to me to arise in the supposition that it is possible to cut space into discrete localities. They engender opposition and conflict (not just natural incompatibility, diversity and tension, but WAR). I don't regard war as a good idea: from a natural inclusional view it is anti-natural. By the same token - and as an illustrative example of an idea that isn't a good idea - I regard Darwinian selection as 'anti-natural'. But I equally don't think it is a good idea to oppose such ideas, because that only reinforces them with a taste of their own medicine. So, through a
natural inclusional understanding (which I express but do not claim sole authorship of), I can neither accept nor reject such ideas, but may try to find ways to help transform them into 'good ideas' if given the opportunity.
Asking the question, 'Is what I am doing a good idea?' explicitly calls for sound theory to engender sound practice and vice versa.
Warmest
Alan
PS I do think that what Jack is doing is a good idea, but I am not so sure about all that congregates under its umbrella.
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