Hello, all,
Very aware that I am just about squeezing into Jack's deadline for
submissions for the first phase of this seminar, here is my account.
I have been trying to offer explanations for my educational influence
in my own learning for some years. You can find many of these
explanations on my website, www.jeanmcniff.com You can also see the
explanations I offer for what I hope is my educational influence in the
learning of others. The data that I produce for this hopeful claim that
I am influencing others' learning is in the accounts that people have
put on the website. You can read the dissertations of people in
Ireland, whose masters studies I have supported – see
http://www.jeanmcniff.com/reports.html I also hope that what I have
just called data can in fact be seen as evidence, because I can clearly
relate the accounts that people have produced to the values that inform
my work. By making this link, as Jack suggests throughout his writings
of recent years, I can show how my values have come to act as my living
standards of judgement as I systematically try to account for myself in
terms of what I learn and do as I try to improve my work.
I think a striking element of the dissertations and other stories on
the website are that they are stories of research. I encourage all the
people I work with to make a clear distinction between stories of
activities and stories of research. While research itself is of course
a kind of activity, it is also the kind that generates evidence in
support of testing a claim to knowledge. The stories you can read
contain evidence which is linked to the authors' own articulated
standards of judgement.
In the last few years the focus of my work has shifted, from supporting
the professional education of teachers to supporting the professional
education of higher education academic staffs. I still work with
teachers, for example at the University of Limerick, where I support
teachers' doctoral studies, and I work with other education agencies in
Ireland in developing professional learning in workplaces. I also work
with academic staff at St Mary's University College, London and the
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa. A St Mary's
colleague, Jane Renowden, has today sent a preliminary research report
to an e-network that has been developed by colleagues in Ireland,
London and South Africa. Yu can access Jane's report at
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/monday/Jane.pdf Next week I visit with
colleagues at NMMU. Part of that visit will be to work with three other
colleagues on our small 'Interrogating our colour' project. We are four
researchers, all of different colours and different ethnic origins, and
we are interested in how we can dismantle the ideas and practices that
deliberately perpetuate discrimination, oppression and colonisation by
using categories such as race, colour, ethnicity, gender and religion
as the grounds for the colonisation. Like Pip, we do not believe that
we are in a 'post' phase at all. We are there, and potentially
perpetuating it ourselves. If we are to make suggestions about how and
why other people's colonial practices should be dismantled, we have to
begin with our own. I am hopeful that this kind of work, and also the
work with teachers and university staffs, will contribute to what Jack
calls the transformation of the social formations of the teaching
profession and higher education, and also contribute to discussions
about how social formations currently caught in the grip of normative
imperialistic discourses can find ways of rethinking their positions
and deciding to change their ways for the good of all.
Thanks for reading this, and best wishes to all,
Jean
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