Thank you Pip. 

Your response is enlightening. I appreciate you hearing me; for reaching out to share and include. 

Blessings

Diana

On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 12:04 PM, Xtra <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi Diana

I do understand what you're getting at here. When I was writing my PhD thesis, from a background of working in staff development with people as diverse as arborists, mechanical engineers, potters and nurses, I strove to write in 'plain English'. But my thesis supervisor said "Don't forget you're writing for an academic audience here. Write the popular novel next!" 

It can be difficult, as many on this list might attest, to 'change voices' when you're stuck in the midst of 'writing for an academic audience' and this voice can be off-putting to folk who are not going through that process themselves. I have learned, over time, to look for the essence of what people are saying even if their voice is couched in language that's not my natural medium of communication.

In response to your three questions, my context currently is doing teacher development in a University, where they expect a high degree of academic language. I strive to help them to connect with their students and to better support them - and sometimes this involves both helping the students to understand the 'voice' of their particular discipline, and also to encourage the staff to bridge the gap between 'normal' and 'academic' speech. Sara Salyers' paper, published late last year on EJOLTS, explores this really well from her work in the Appalachians.

So I guess my work is 'big picture' to the extent that I am trying to help our staff want to ensure equity and achievement of potential for all their students. What do I do? To connect with staff who are used to an academic voice, I use an academic voice. But I also encourage them to try to recall how THEY felt when they first encountered such language, and to find ways of assisting their students (the compilation of an ongoing glossary is one such technique that can be easily done, and kept online for checking when those pesky terms show up!

Hope that helps!

Warm regards

Pip (New Zealand)

On 11/01/2013, at 7:12 AM, diana manning-squire <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Guys, I'm inspired by many of your posts, and yet, they do my head in. 

May I humbly offer an insight from the bleaches?

In my experience, effective communication is SIMPLE communication.

Is the GOAL to increase your audience; to grow inclusion?  What IS your context; is it big picture? What is it that you do; REALLY? These three questions that, when addressed creatively, may give fresh oxygen to your groups great work.

A book called "Make it Stick" is an excellent resource for clear, simple, context focused communication. It spells out how to say what you want to say with the listener/audience in mind. When connect with your listener/audience - when you are in rapport, you take responsibility for having yourself heard. 

Does my observation trigger stimulate your curiosity; your willingness to step outside of the square?  

You may be interested in having a peep at a website that does book summaries and, usefully, suggests actions that can be taken to implement the big ideas of each title 'rapped'. It is: bookrapper.com  The writer 'rapped' an insightful book "Make it Stick"; you'll find it on the website. I found the content, and context, to be an excellent tool in getting myself heard by the reader/viewer. Still learning; and hope to continue to do so!

Hope my comment is received in the caring spirit that is intended.

Thanks for permitting a keen amateur to be on the sidelines of your interesting - yet overwhelmingly words - postings..

Kind regards

Diana

On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 1:39 AM, Salyers, Sara M <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear Jack and Everyone,

This is extremely timely for me also. I am in the process of (slowly) submitting my application for a D.Prof by public works, whose thesis is provisionally titled 'Breaking the Silence - The Power of Giving Voice to the Voiceless'. In one way or another, I have been pursuing this aim throughout my career in television production and latterly, college teaching.  But it is just one, though crucial, element of a world-view in which people, their needs, aspirations, values and abilities, are *not* means to an end, (as in the ends of a privileged few!), but incalculably valuable ends in themselves.

I am certain that education - at least in the English speaking world - is designed to fail. That is, designed to succeed according to objectives and assumptions that belong to the Victorian/Edwardian industrial era. Those objectives and assumptions still underpin the edifice, unseen and usually unquestioned as one reform after another is tried and failed.  Ira Socol has useful information and analysis on this. http://speedchange.blogspot.co.uk/p/counting-origins-of-failure.html:

"If education in the United States of the 21st Century is failing, that failure has been built over a very long time. And I do not think that it can be “fixed” in any meaningful way unless people understand that the failures we see today are our system working exactly as it was intended to.
Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Our American public education system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It is separating “winners” from “losers” and it is reinforcing our economic gap. The system was designed in the 1840s and at the turn of the 20th Century to separate society into a vast majority of minimally trained industrial workers and a small, educated elite. It was designed to enforce White, Protestant, Middle-Class, “Typically-abled” standards on an increasingly diverse American population. A few blessed children in each generation who met those standards might move up in society. The rest would be consigned to low wage manual labor. It was designed to ensure that the children of the elites had the opportunities they needed to remain the elite. Everything about the system – from the way schools are funded, to the way standards are created, to the system of tests, to our peculiar form of college admissions, to our notions of disability – was created to meet the employment goals of the United States from the mid 19th Century to the mid 20th Century."

The same can be said of the similarly Prussian based systems of Britain and her former colonies. (I have done enough research to corroborate Socol's assertions, as have many others.) No matter what reforms are implemented, we continue to retain the original factory/programming model of education: by 'date of manufacture' (Ken Robinson); by the bell and in artificial and intelligence-destroying units of time; by memorization and testing; through reward and punishment; using colonizing subject matter unrelated and irrelevant to students or worse, (e.g. teaching only English history in Scottish schools, teaching geography from world maps that grossly misrepresent that true physical sizes of countries such as Britain and the USA), and colonizing practices (e.g. teaching the disappearing dialect of an English upper class as the norm - 'proper' English' while all others are inferior and 'improper') and the overall and underlying horror of basing education upon the notion that children/students are deficient to begin with and it is our task as educators to 'fix' them, turning them into that which 'society' requires. (Ye gods!)

I believe there are many, many people who recognize that we need an entirely new model, an entirely new paradigm for education, currently still operating as the machine that turns out fodder for the economic machines of a world that has gone. But we can't imagine a new model unless we have already embraced a new paradigm. And, I believe, we can't embrace a new paradigm unless we can create one - together. One of my ambitions is to create an 'Institute for Transformational Studies'. It is an ambition based on this truth: everything we do, every relationship we have, every decision we make and every belief we hold, is ontological in its foundation. *Who we are being* is what leads to whatever we are doing, however we are doing it and what we believe about the choices we are making.  Questions such as 'Who am I being and who could I choose to be?' assume very different values and outcomes for education from the unspoken but ever-present, "How can I prove how much I know and that I know the right things?" We questions and measure what we know and what we can do - not who we are being and what we could choose to be. WE live in the paradigm of the noun ; I suggest that we need a pradigm of the verb!

My proposition here, is that the values and morals we cherish in this community depend on the assertion that a human being is an end in himself or herself and not a means to some economic or social (whose society?) good. I suggest that this moves the arena of debate into ontology and opens the way to a new paradigm for collective endeavor, one that would inspire a new model for education. I would like to explore what this means, how Action Research and Living Theory express just such a paradigm and most of all, how would we build curricula for living around such a paradigm.

Sorry for being long-winded. Excited and thinking out loud!

Love

Sara


From: Practitioner-Researcher [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Marian Naidoo [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 5:23 AM

To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Researching Our Own Practice

Hi All
Happy New Year

This is an excellent idea and for me and Shaun incredibly timely. Robyn I can feel your frustration and it resonates with our experience working in Birmingham and Solihull since the summer. We have been working very closely with communities with a focus on frail older people and in particular those living with Dementia. We are on the brink of something extraordinary - but just when you think you are there you face an unexpected challenge. We feel we have to make this work because it is too important to the people we have connected with - people who struggle on a day to day basis and many of whom live lonely and frightened lives. We have been able to film the conversations we have been having with people in communities many of whom have been labelled as "hard to reach". Having had this opportunity to engage in this way may, I hope, create the tipping point that we need.
Love
Marian

Sent from my iPhone

On 10 Jan 2013, at 08:57, Margaret Riel <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:

Happy New Year to all of you...

I am just going to pick up on small part of the message.  What if we experimented with  google+ and its new feature to "broadcast" a session.  As I understand it, up to 10 people (possible 15 although the last time I tried it, we could not get more than 10) in a discussion but then with the broadcast function the session is saved and and can be shared.  Maybe we can have some scheduled chats that are then saved in the broadcast feature.  It would take some planning as we have time zones to deal with but it might be fun.

Margaret

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 12:13 AM, Lawrence Martin Olivier <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Hi All

I think this is an excellent idea and I welcome these kind of conversations as well as making them available on youtube - the more contextual the richer - we can then see, hear and feel the "energy", the "co-operative enquiry" - the less reductionist!

A comment on Jack's idea on transforming and transcending the "influences of economic rationalism", meaning the worldwide phenomenon of neo-liberal capitalism - the ongoing debate between the role of markets (free enterprise) and government. North Korean society is a good example to me, of how frightening excessive government control is and the USA is a glearing example of the dangers of uncontrolled markets (free enterprise) - as testified by the Wall Street financial crisis a few years ago and the gun crisis today. I see the problem as like a football match - do we need a referee, some one to regulate a good game of football, do we need rules of football etc. Of course we do. So the problem and solution for the economy is similar - we need the role of markets and prices to help make some of the decisions and we are also need to consider the public interest, we need government and we need the "the values we believe carry hope for the future of humanity". One of the best education systems in the world, in Finland is entirely state driven - people do not have to pay high prices in markets to get the best education - the best education is free!

Another point is unlimited economic growth is not sustainable for humanity and the planet - there is only one earth and we need universal / global ways to share the earth equitably - so that all of us and all on it can survive. The New Economics Foundation UK explores these issues more systematically - they "put people and the planet first" / "economics as if people and the planet mattered", please visit their website nef.

Lawrence



-----Original Message-----

From: Practitioner-Researcher [mailto:PRACTITIONER-RESEARCHER@JISCMAIL..AC.UK<mailto:[log in to unmask]>] On Behalf Of Jack Whitehead
Sent: 09 January 2013 10:15 PM

To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Researching Our Own Practice

Here's wishing everyone a most pleasurable and productive New Year as we continue our conversations.

Dear Je Kan, Maggie, Marie, Andy, Nigel, Chris, Lynn, William, Julie, Kate, Joan (C ), Delysia, Phil, Sigrid, Joan (W), Maureen, Shelagh, Sonia, Pete (Mellett), Yvonne, Fran, Steve, Pete (Mountstephen) Jackie, Liz, Cathy and ALL

There's an intuition and an idea I'm curious about and that, if you are willing, I'd like to explore with you over the next few months.

My intuition is that something significant, generative and transformatory could emerge from making available on youtube, video-conversations in which we share with each other what we are doing. I'm thinking of sharing in ways that allow us all to understand more about the contexts in which we are working, the values we use to give meaning and purpose to our lives and the accounts/research reports we are producing as knowledge-creators.

I believe that we are all living, working and researching with relational perspectives which, if we clarified these in the course of their emergence in what we are doing, they could help to both transform what counts as educational knowledge and transcend the influences of economic rationalist policies that lead to de-valuation and de-moralisation and which we are all experiencing to different degrees:

"Nevertheless, the new ‘economic rationalism’ is a worldwide phenomena which ‘guides’ not only the conduct of transnational corporations, but governments and their agencies as well. It does so with increasing efficacy and pervasiveness. I use the term ‘guides’  here in quotes to make a particular point. Economic rationalism is not merely a term which suggests the primacy of economic values. It expresses commitment to those values in order to serve particular sets of interests  ahead of  others. Furthermore, it disguises that commitment in a discourse of ‘economic necessity’ defined by its economic models. We have moved beyond the reductionism which leads all questions to be discussed as if they were economic ones (de-valuation) to a situation where moral questions are denied completely (de-moralisation) in a cult of economic inevitability (as if greed had nothing to do with it). Broudy (1981) has described ‘de-valuation’ and de-moralization’ in the following way:
De-valuation refers to diminishing or denying the relevance of all but one type of value to an issue; de-moralization denies the relevance of moral questions. The reduction of all values – intellectual, civic, health, among others – to a money value would be an example of de-valuation; the slogan ‘business’ is business’ is an example of de-moralization (Broudy, 1981: 99)"    (McTaggart, 1992, p. 50).

McTaggart, R. (1992) Reductionism and Action Research: Technology versus convivial forms of life,  pp. 47-61 in Bruce, C. S. & Russell, A. L. (1992) Transforming Tomorrow Today.  Brisbane, University of Queensland, Australia.

The idea I'd like us to explore together if you feel like it, is that we could pool our life-affirming energy (Sonia's idea), the values we believe carry hope for the future of humanity and our knowledge-creating capacities, in a co-operative enquiry in which we work at living our co-operative values as fully as possible. I like Maureen's editorial for the December 2011 issue of the Journal of Co-operative Studies in which she outlines co-operative values..

See - http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/breeze/mbeditorial.pdf

Breeze, M. (2011) Guest Editorial. Transforming Education Through Co-operation – A Force for Change. Journal of Co-operative Studies, 44(3); 2-4..

All I'm asking you to do at the moment is to think about this intuition and idea.

This Friday (11/01/130 I'm part of Chris (Jones') Ph.D. transfer seminar at Liverpool Hope University and hope to video the conversation in which Chris will be sharing some ideas on 'living empowerment' within her question: 'How Do I Promote Inclusion by Living My Values and Developing Standards of Judgement to which I Hold Myself Accountable' (Working title of Thesis)

I'll think a bit more about my intuition and idea before writing any more, but if you feel like sharing your own thoughts/feelings please do.

Shelagh has already responded:

On 9 Jan 2013, at 18:13, Shelagh Hetreed wrote:

Hi there,

Food for thought indeed.  Your description sparks many thoughts that are jangling around unconnected at the moment.  Or are they?
I see how education reduces learning and knowledge to a tried and tested formula that works for some and so is applied regardless of the consequences for those for whom it clearly doesn't work.
I think of my BME elders and the elderly in general who are reduced to stereotypes and labels of being 'burdens' with little to offer society.
I see professionals who operate inclusivity above a thin veneer but when you scratch the surface below that veneer, their values become shaky.
I see the 'us' and 'them' being a cunning device to compartmentalise us to be 'with us' or 'against us' and have been following the astonishing explosion of anger over the flying of a piece of cloth (or not) by the so called 'loyalists'.  Loyalists, now there is a thesis waiting to be written!
I am learning so much about India, attitudes to caste and gender in the aftermath of the appalling Delhi murder.  It is not ok for Indian families to be selective about aborting their girl babies but it is ok for us in the West to abort any baby that is not wanted.

There is so much that I am thinking and questioning, that I am saddened or appalled by.  It does all tie up for me and relates to your notion of reductionism.  I am thinking of key words like belonging, including, tolerating, accepting is where we need to focus.

I am very excited by your intuition and look forward to discussions, debates and challenges and us each caring about the others field of study and personal journeys.

Hope some of this makes sense!

Shelagh


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