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Just to clarify that my referral to sect and cult is directed towards  
'inclusionality'.  In my PhD thesis, I spend thirty single spaced  
pages showing how 'inclusionality' is little more than a cult and a  
sect and suggesting that LET should go back to the dialectics of  
Gadamer and Colliingwood and Freire.  I invite readers to read and  
challenge my claims about 'inclusionality'.

My own feeling and experience is that a self-study has an expiry date.  
  I used the self-study, a profound ontological/cathartic one, to go  
back to the social world.  I now enjoy far more to work with others on  
their catharsis, well-being and ontological security than on myself  
and my own.  I tested my tool on myself and see no need to go back to  
my 'I'.  I get pleasure working with others on their well-being,  
catharsis and security and on my approach as an idea and possibility.   
I am now in a stage where I feel it is all about dialogues and  
interrelationships not auto-dialogical reflection.

Quoting Joan Walton <[log in to unmask]>:

> Dear All
>
> This is indeed an interesting discussion, and like Sara it has encouraged me
> to really think through and articulate my views and perceptions of living
> theory and other approaches to action research.  Thank you very much for
> your excellent analysis of living theory Sara - I think you express its
> essence and value clearly and eloquently.
>
> I am somewhat sympathetic with your starting point Alon, as I too in my
> thesis was more concerned with questions of meaning than I was about how to
> improve my professional practice; mainly because I needed the first to
> decide what I wanted to do about the second.  I am also very sympathetic to
> the view that the social and cultural conditions of our materialistic world
> present a real challenge to those working at a grassroots level, who can
> feel devalued and disempowered.
>
> However I really do not understand your critique of living theory.  I am
> also puzzled about this notion of Jack being responsible for starting a
> 'cult' which I have heard stated in other contexts.  I am not sure what it
> is about living theory that even indicates such a suggestion.  There is no
> attempt to enforce people to join a 'sect', or to adhere to a particular way
> of doing things, or dire consequences threatened if they try to leave .....
> There is a certain methodology suggested, which people are invited to engage
> with and to evaluate - and to share their accounts of doing so with others
> so that any claims to knowledge can be validated (or otherwise).
>
> You are also critiquing, if I understand accurately what you say, the claim
> that living theory can contribute to improving the world.  My starting point
> is (similar to yourself I think) that we live in a crisis-ridden world.   I
> think we stand at a real pivotal point for well rehearsed reasons -
> environmental, terrorism, extreme materialism etc.  My view however, is that
> there is no global, one-size-fits-all solution - no one person who can
> provide 'the anwer'.  As part of my thesis I report on a 3 year
> collaborative inquiry where the focus was 'transforming the world through
> transforming self' - based on the conclusion group members had reached after
> a long process of shared reflection that the only way the world would
> transform would be through the transformation of each person within that
> world.  So all each person could do was take responsibility for their role
> in that; they could not take responsibility for others.
>
> It is in this respect that I think living theory has much to offer.  For in
> its essence it enables people to engage  in the process of transforming
> self.  As Jack must get bored of repeating, it really is about each person
> identifying the educational influences that have brought them to the place
> they are in right here, right now;  thinking through what their values are
> and how they would like to make a positive difference in the world (in other
> words how they would in their own way improve the world - even if that is
> 'just' improve the quality of their teaching in the classroom [but the
> potential ripple effects of that are tremendous if you think of the impact
> of each child leaving having been influenced by an inspirational teacher]);
> working out and accounting for their influence on others as they put their
> values into practice;  and if possible what they are then able to do to
> influence the wider social/cultural contexts in which they live and work.
>
> What this means in practice is different for every single person.  For you
> it may mean developing a 'tool' which can be used to help others in whatever
> way you identify.  Your challenge then is to demonstrate how that can 'make
> a difference' and account for your influence in doing so, in ways that
> others validate.
>
> In your last email, you state:  "the problem is......it is no longer
> possible to teach, practice and work with love.  Teachers and practitioners
> are far too busy fighting for their own survival, values, well-being and
> self-care to love anyone else".
>
> I would absolutely and categorically want to refute this. I work with many
> people who 'love what they do'.  Get frustrated and demoralised at times yes
> - but the love for their work and those they work with and for is not
> eradicated.  I am often so impressed by how much the qualities of hope and
> love sustain, whatever the circumstances a person is working or living in.
>
>  Like you, I am concerned about how we challenge power structures in the
> world.  One of my main concerns is the kind of world we are creating for
> children, who are indeed the future of our planet.  The common terminology
> used is the 'well-being' of children which is an overall term to include
> poverty, relationships within the family, emotional well-being etc.etc  A
> UNICEF 2007 report identified that across a range of indicators, the UK came
> 21st out of 21 rich countries;  the USA came 20th.  I think this a huge
> indictment of the UK and the USA.  Yet there are billions of pounds spent on
> research into child-well-being.  However, when you look at what that
> research is, it is mainly to do with what indicators we can use to measure
> well-being, how we make those indicators the same across a number of
> countries so that we can make comparable analyses, what methods we then use
> to discover what children are actually feeling and experiencing so that we
> can make use of those indicators - etc.  I suppose the hope is that this
> information will then be used to improve what actually happens with
> children.  However it seems that most of the research stops prior to that
> point - it is more interested in describing and explaining, rather than
> improving.  And the result is that the UK and USA stay bottom of the
> rankings.
>
> And yet through my own professional experience I know that there is much
> excellent practice, and yes, 'love and care for what they do' from people
> working at a grass roots levels with children - teachers, early years
> practitioners, foster carers, childminders, residential social workers, etc.
>    My question is, why is their passion, embodied knowledge, experience,
> expertise, not being 'garnered' and disseminated outside of the contexts in
> which they are being generated;  and why are they not being used to
> influence the worlds of research and policy making?   it seems a vast amount
> of knowledge and experience is not being acknowledged or used in the way it
> could or should be.
>
> I wanted to bring together the idea of 'transforming the world through
> transforming self' with the notion that research needed to be grounded in
> the experience of those directly responsible for the wellbeing of children
> and young people.  I have been doing this with a group of early years
> practitioners over the past year, using a combination of collaborative
> inquiry (based on the fundamental principles of John Heron's co-operative
> inquiry), and living educational theory.  I have just written an article
> that writes up the experience of this collaborative inquiry, that I am
> willing to send to anyone who is interested.
>
> In essence, though, the main learning has been that the lack of value a
> society gives to these practioners is reflected by the lack of value and
> significance they see in their own role.  Once they understand how important
> their role is on a day-to-day, moment-by-moment basis with the children in
> their care, then they begin to be motivated to articulate what this means
> for them, and how to present the signifcance of their knowledge and
> experience of the child to the outside world - including to the 'experts'
> who have the status, power and money, but not the knowledge of the child
> about whom key decisions are being made.
>
> These practitioners are presenting their learning at a conference on 23rd
> June (I sent round details of this to the group a week or two ago).  A year
> ago, they would not have dreamed that they could possibly have done this.  I
> remain convinced that we will only create real change in the well-being of
> children if we start to value and support the development of those having
> direct responsibility for children on a day to day basis (including partents
> of course - and they too are involved in the project).  The are doing this
> by developing their own unique living theories, based on their own unique
> gifts, talents, values and experiences, and based on their own unique
> motivations and ideas for how they want to make a difference in the world.
> They build on their own ideas and experiences by sharing with others on a
> regular basis in a collaborative learning process.  The integration of the
> individual and the collective is very powerful.
>
> I have been reading lately that the Labour party in the UK are looking for a
> 'big idea' and failing to find one.  I would suggest that their 'big idea'
> should be how to support and liberate the energy of those working at a grass
> roots level.  (You could say that this is reflected in David Cameron's idea
> of the 'big society' - except I would then go into a rant as to why the
> values and ideas Cameron reflects are not exactly what I am talking about
> here...)  For anyone who has watched it, what I learn from the 'Secret
> Millionaire' which I have sometimes watched on UK Channel 4 TV is nothing to
> do with the millionaire, but to do with the fact that they go into the most
> deprived areas of Britain - and in every single area there are gifted and
> committed people devoting their lives to making a difference to people in
> that community.  It is these people who should be supported to enable their
> influence to spread way beyond their immediate environment - for them to be
> able to reflect on their values and how they influence others, and to be
> encouraged to influence wider  sociocultural contexts.
>
> So clearly I am a supporter  of living theory as a means of providing people
> with a  process that allows them to engage in a way of living that is
> transformative for themselves, and helps improve the world in some way.
> However ......there is a difficulty ....and I think this lies behind some of
> the emotional and critical responses that living theory receives.  I will
> demonstrate what this is through two examples from the project in which  I
> am currently involved.
>
> In developing a living theory, individuals are encouraged to reflect on
> their values and where those have come from.  Sometimes those values derive
> from positive life experiences - but often they come from less positive
> ones, that people have shut away in their memory.  Some practitioners in my
> project have written accounts of such childhood experiences - that have been
> powerful to read - and liberating both for them to write, and to gain the
> responses from other people.  However, others are not able to handle this.
> For example I was working with a staff team of nursery nurses - one of them
> was reading one such powerful account, and after doing so, walked out of the
> room, not to return until near the end.  She had been upset by what she read
> because it reminded her of experiences she had had as a child that she did
> not like to be reminded of.  She worked in a supportive environment, and one
> way or the other, she would be helped, either to work through those
> memories, or to place them back into the hidden part of her memory.  This
> was unsettling for her and to a certain extent for the team.
>
> In another setting, a very bright and energetic woman in her 40's has so
> much come to realise the significance of what she does, that she wanted to
> go out and influence all other child care workers in a wide range of
> settings.  The problem is that although articulate and able, she is at the
> 'bottom of the heap', has never been encouraged to gain any qualifications,
> she has a young child, and has neither the money nor the means to start the
> process that she would like to engage with.  So the process is almost
> counterproductive - and I feel quite bad about it.   Yet I don't think the
> answer is to back away and not do this.  Perhaps just the opposite.  I am
> suggesting that this woman speaks 'her reality' at the conference (videod
> because she wouldn't have the confidence to go live) - and talks about the
> frustration.  And who knows what opportunities may arise from somewhere - my
> experience of life is that if people remain true to themselves and open to
> possibilities, something unexpected occurs ....
>
> These people are very open and 'real' about these issues when they
> experience them.  What I find more difficult are the responses to living
> theory at the university where I work (and I am sure would be the same at
> any university).  Because we live in a culture which promotes separation of
> researcher from that which is researched - which says that we have our
> professional lives and our private lives, and never the twain shall meet -
> that is more concerned with image and status, than with really finding out
> what it means to be human - then when methods such as living theory are
> proposed, all kinds of defense mechanisms are put in place, because it
> wouldn't be very good to really start to explore and, heaven forbid, share
> how I come to be here, and who I really am.  And the easiest way for people
> to deal with defenses they set up is to be critical - and to be sometimes
> offensively critical of those suggesting that it might be a good idea if
> they were rather more open about what they are about.
>
> Finally in this tome, for anyone who has got this far - Jack and I have
> challenging (as well as hugely rewarding and constructive) conversations.  I
> have on several occasions presented a critique on aspects of his ideas on
> living theory.  In terms of ontology, I think the only words we can find to
> agree on are that life is ultimately a mystery - and yet despite the
> inability to agree on language all the time, our way of working together is
> actually far more in harmony that I might find with someone whose ways of
> expressing themselves may be closer to mine.  The important thing, though,
> is that in the group meetings with the early years practitioners, many of
> which Jack has attended, the main view they have of him is that he is a
> warm, caring, genuine human being.  The would not see Jack, or anyone taking
> a lead role in developing living theory, as having anything to do with their
> understanding of cult.  All they would say is that they have been provided
> with an opportunity to learn to develop confidence and belief in themselves,
> and to begin to assert themselves more with other professionals who
> traditionally are given greater status and power.
>
> If we are going to enable the next UNICEF study of child well-being to move
> the UK and USA up the ranking scales so that they are no longer at the
> bottom, then I think it is this kind of process we need to be encouraging
> and fostering.
>
> With love and best wishes,
>
> Joan
>
> On 18 May 2011 17:07, Salyers, Sara M <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>> I would like to thank Alon and Sarah for the opportunity to re-examine and
>> articulate my own position on Living Educational Theory, Reflective Practice
>> and Action Research as a transformative and generative process. In
>> reflecting on their posts, I have been forced to  distinguish better the
>> ground of the debate and so distinguish and articulate what *I* think we are
>> doing here a little more deeply.
>>
>> The case being made against LET as I understand it (and the MAs and PhD's
>> being granted under its auspices), is that the concepts of, for example,
>> energy and flow, ubuntu (which says that we do not exist at all except in
>> relationship to one another), inclusionality etc. are not merely 1. vague,
>> 2. subjective and 3. unmeasurable, but 4. wrong because they destroy
>> academic rigor in the name of something imaginary and, (from Sarah's e-mail
>> to Geisha), hypocritical in practice. (Of course, hypocrisy is a common
>> human failing but it's expression in any human life has never, to my
>> knowledge, been an argument against the validity of the 'pretended' virtue
>> or truth in itself!) These charges are important because, in fact, they are
>> all true from a certain perspective!, (except the hypocrisy charge about
>> which I know nothing and wish to know less):
>>
>> 1. The phenomena *are* vague and ill defined by our noun based (English)
>> language, because: a, they are verb based and b, we have not yet created a
>> full and truly descriptive language for them. We are still distinguishing
>> these realities, or mechanisms of experience, and their operations. (As
>> though we were fish who had finally begun to describe the ocean in which we
>> swim.) I think this is something we can be aware of and, from my own
>> perspective, deeply excited and inspired by. We create the world when we
>> name it in this way.
>>
>> 2. They *are* subjective… and that's the whole point, of course. The
>> understanding of the continuum of observer and observation is almost a
>> century old, and yet the tyranny of the Victorian holy grail of clinical,
>> (spurious), detachment/objectivity still demands - and gets - our worship.
>> To assert the role of the observer as *predicating* the observation is still
>> so radical that it makes us subversives of the kind that have always been
>> universally detested in their time; smelly, wild eyed, long haired,
>> idealistic, dangerous, naive etc. etc. :) (See early Christian church,
>> abolitionists, pacifists, socialists, civil rights activists, hippies, and
>> so on.) In the powerful sense of the wrongness, actually the dangerous and
>> 'corrupting' influence of LET evident in the language, we too can recognize
>> a reactive, 'establishment' position which is by no means unique to Alon and
>> Sarah.
>>
>> 3. They *are* unmeasurable because they belong to the realm of love and
>> faith, self-awareness and courage, disillusionment, personal courage and
>> honesty and transformation.
>>
>> 4. And they are indeed 'wrong'… within the old paradigm by which it is
>> impossible that mere shadows of discreet, clearly defined things and ideas
>> should be treated as the ground or yardstick of intellectual endeavor. Sarah
>> calls LET a 'movimiento sombras', a movement of shadows. She is right about
>> the shadows. She means that LET is deceptive, destructive and dark and
>> there, I disagree.
>>
>> What all this can tell us is that we are in the process of creating a
>> living language and from language, as we know, reality itself is
>> constructed; that the reality we are exploring as we create the language
>> with which to distinguish it, is a reality that (physics tells) us, is much
>> more truthful than the objective model which our noun based language
>> presently constructs. (As much more truthful as the interpretation of a
>> spherical earth is more truthful than a flat one.) And we may also have a
>> 'mission' to explain for ourselves and others, the direct relationship
>> between what is immeasurable (life affirming energy, flow, intangible
>> presence and so on), and its results.
>>
>> I am baffled by one thing though - the accusation of woolly or fuzzy
>> results, which I also heard from a few voices at this year's SOLES
>> conference in San Diego. There is a dreadful muddle going on in that respect
>> which, I suspect, arises from our reflexive need to control and
>> define-to-death. (I think that this need keeps human beings in a state of
>> near blindness because we prefer not to see than to see how much of what we
>> are, and what we experience is not discreet but intangible and uncertain ;
>> we prefer not to see that control-by-definition is an illusion. The
>> uncertainty is supplied by a power we may explore, work through, with and
>> within but cannot 'define to death'; the illusion we cling to is control of
>> a world of discreet objects that we *can* define, dissect and dispose of.)
>>  Investigating the conditions that *produce* transformation is as important
>> as investigating brain based learning; life affirming energy, (or any other
>> phrase or word you want to use to describe it), may be impossible to measure
>> - but its results in the classroom most certainly are not! In other words,
>> the transformative power *is* evidenced in its effects, as trees bending
>> testify to the wind. (N.B. LET is not a *creation*, but a distinction and
>> articulation of a real process in which a kind of personal confrontation
>> with inauthenticity, creates the opening for powerful transformation. This
>> process is also described in different terms in Christian, Sufi, Buddhist
>> and Hindu mysticism to my knowledge.) Thus I might describe the specific and
>> measurable results of my own work as analagous to matter emerging out of
>> light... These would have been impossible without that dynamic which LET
>> describes. It is true that we can measure only one side of the 'equation'
>> i.e. what materializes out of the 'light' (energy) as specific, observable
>> result. But we have to learn how to *live* in the energy/experience that
>> produces that result. When you cut away matter from energy, what remains is
>> a corpse. And I am naturally alarmed at the voices I have been hearing who
>> seem to be demanding nice, predictably safe corpses rather than a dread,
>> living and mysterious power.
>>
>> Everything I do and much of what happens in my classrooms, is based on that
>> 'who am I being? and who am I being with? and how can we connect
>> authentically?' type of questioning and 'living theory' that characterizes
>> this type of AR practice. And it is self perpetuating. A wonderful colleague
>> who wrote about my work as 'transformation' had no prior knowledge
>> whatsoever of AR, or LET; she wrote as she did because she saw something in
>> my classroom - something she had not experienced in a 'developmental'
>> classroom in thirty years of teaching. Last week, she came with me to the
>> SOLES Action Research conference in San Diego, where she co-presented a
>> workshop at my request. Afterwards, a group of young teachers from UCLA came
>> up to talk to us about the love they felt for their students - who were so
>> similar to those represented in our writing samples, that they said they
>> felt they knew those students personally. When they saw the transformation
>> in voice, ownership, power and ability, they were moved to tears - "it felt
>> as if we were seeing a miracle". As a group, they knew that the narrative
>> about these students was false but, now, they told us the hope and belief
>> that was in their hearts had been turned into something that they could see
>> and read. We shared love and joy, and healing and  'ba'!, and we are going
>> to work together, we and these wonderful teachers  (who are all graduates of
>> the stunning Dr Amina Humphry's UCLA class). She had brought them to talk
>> about their teaching work based upon 'positionality' (an aspect of that same
>> inauthenticity to authenticity to power dynamic that characterizes LET).
>> They electrified the conference both in the clarity and courage of their
>> self-disclosures and the love and community that flowed between them and Dr
>> Humphrey. Pam and I bring that influence back with us to our own campus.
>> Next, we will see what happens when *they* begin taking the living language
>> approach in their classes in CA. So... Intangible, powerful, personal
>> encounter leading to specific, measurable, propositional outcomes - a
>> process that can *never* occur in reverse!
>>
>> Perhaps one day every phrase or term that we are using today will be
>> replaced by a better, more descriptive and useful description. But the power
>> of LET and of every one of the distinctions- leading-to-practice that we are
>> making in this arena lies in the fact that  they are helping us as, finally,
>> we begin to move beyond the illusion of objectivity. It is as if we begin to
>> see not only the performance that is being played on the tiny stage of our
>> traditionally focussed human observation, but the theatre and the stage
>> sets, the scripts and plots, the interactions between the actors and the
>> audience, the town and the country and the climate in, through and on which
>> the performance is taking place. Now when we consider the play, we can begin
>> to consider all these things as interrelated, interdependent and continuous
>> whereas previously, we have considered merely the internal structure of the
>> play itself - as an independent and autonomous and self contained
>> phenomenon. And that is the real illusion.
>>
>> With love
>> Sara
>>
>> I have attached a long extract (in draft form) of my paper 'Formal English
>> Without Tears: Rewriting the narrative of Developmental Students'. I do this
>> in response to Jack's request and because I hope that it helps to describe
>> the relationship between the intangible, (the context of personal LET), and
>> measurable outcomes.
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: Practitioner-Researcher [[log in to unmask]] On
>> Behalf Of geisha rebolledo [[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 11:15 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: How to establish an environment that calls out the most and
>> the best of everyone
>>
>>
>> Sarah, thank you for trying to write in Spanish. The part I understood is
>> the point of view that also Alon mentioned : Your  argument  in relation to
>> the Ambiguity of Living Theories approach.Concerning this , I had the
>> experience of presenting those ideas to the Doctorate Students here at the
>> Pedagogic University and the same discussion evolved.Somehow here you need
>> to be supported by stablished theoryes in order to do research . So to  end
>> the discussion an Old Professor, refered that he saw  connections of living
>> Theoryes  with Argyris and Schon  and the Theory of Action.However, though
>> we said we will meet again for more discussions , because of the difficult
>> situation Universityes  are facing  in Venezuela , it never happened.
>> It is a pitty because  through this type of discussions it  is possible to
>> clarify ideas and take different points of view .
>> But one aspect I find difficult to overcome is  confronting  discussions
>> where both parts stay in very strong positions  and there is no possibility
>> of consensus. This I have learn thanks to Bob Dick Action Researh Course
>> that  I am taking at the moment. So I would like to find a point of
>> agreement somewhere in this living theory discussion. Because  the Hystory
>> of Science is full with denying of good knowledge that  the Academy of that
>> time denyed as Thomas Kuhn mentioned already a long time ago.
>> So again thanks for letting us take part , many greetings, g.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Dr Joan Walton
> Director of the Centre for the Child and Family
>
> Faculty of Education
> Liverpool Hope University
> Hope Park
> Liverpool
> L16 9JD
>
> Phone: 0151 291 2115
> Email: [log in to unmask]
>