Jack –

I think the following distillate from our recent conversation does not 
distort the form of our overall intended meanings as I heard them (what do 
you think?). I believe it shows us evolving the idea of living standards of 
judgment arising from within a process of co-generation – as people work at 
using dialogical and inclusional forms of collaboration in order to make 
new meanings from within their individual and shared forms of life. The 
standards are tacitly a part of their evolving educational enquiry that is 
generating new living educational theories of their own practice(s).  

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P.  what we have said to each other so far makes me suspect that the 
appropriate logic we are seeking to understand might not actually allow for 
the separate existence of ostensive concepts called ‘standards of 
judgment’. So, is it that we’re trying to reconcile together things that 
don’t actually belong?

J.  in terms of the meanings that are emerging in the course of the 
dialogue itself you are forming distinguishable understandings. … we 
haven’t, I think, yet found appropriate expressions of meaning to 
communicate what inclusional standards of judgment – which are as you say, 
process, standards – literally look like . . when you’re trying to 
communicate something which is highly original, you’re actually living 
within a culture where the language and logic dominates and so you can’t  
communicate your meaning. 

we’ve got to be careful of the meanings of the words we use … rather than 
the process of understandings . . you don’t treat it as an object . . if 
you take a phrase like ‘passion for social justice’ then I think I can show 
inclusionally the living meanings that are actually expressed through the 
body and can actually then be articulated.

P. Certainly, we don’t try to define what they are but we need to identify 
them in order to be able to validate the work that we do.

J. We do – and it’s a different form of awareness I think. if you work from 
a relationally-dynamic understanding, I think that the meanings then 
literally emerge in the course of their clarification in practice.  

P. But to say whether that meaning is educational or not, you’ve got to 
bring up to them standards of judgement that are in them or part of 
them.  “If we relate in ways that are educational within an inclusional 
gathering whose members are receptively responsive so that we each ‘sing 
with the voice of the other and know the meaning’ then the standard of 
judgment should be implicit within this process. We do not have to name 
them as separate entities – they are not content but process.”  

J. OK I’m agreeing with that – now what I start to focus on is when you 
say ‘you don’t need to name them’ I agree – as if they are separate  - and 
yet I do have a desire to communicate meanings which are being expressed 
bodily … using words that I feel other people are right on the inside of – 
an attractive use of language that we can articulate together.

P. So that if we are to share living standards of judgement, to which we 
will appeal to validate or show as educational what we do, then to hold 
those in common we need to communicate them to each other or to co-generate 
them together. If you want to communicate them, then we’re stuck with the 
language thing or some sort of semiotic god-knows-what, but if we generate 
them together and then know tacitly that we are generating the same thing 
individually within ourselves, then we have our set of standards of 
judgment. 

J. I think so. . . so when (after a couple of years) Moira says “Jack I 
have finally understood what it was you saw in that videoclip of me at the 
end of that lesson” . . so there is that sense of co-creation in “Look – 
can’t you see?” and later “Ah – I can see” .  . a sense of a mutuality of 
understanding -  I’ve offered my meanings and actually the validity of what 
I’m claiming about Moira’s who says “Ah I see” and then tells me what she’s 
seeing. It’s that crucial point where you say ‘yes – I now know that you 
understand what I mean’. 

P. So over time as you exchange words and whatever else, you shift your 
perspectives until you achieve a parallel view – as much as you can you’ve 
grasped it in the same way – so the standards of judgment you have used to 
test its claim to be educational and that you have cogenerated (through 
dialogical, inclusional exchange over time) are the same and you say ‘yes, 
we agree, that is educational’. 

J. . . so there is the thought that we could be showing a living logic 
because we are willing to place our own forms of life (up for scrutiny).

P. So if you think of the ways in which we relate in those forms of life 
and the things that we invest our ongoing lives in . . in the case of 
Eden’s PhD thesis, something must have crystallised early on as his 
intention, so it started from that one little point at that time in his 
life – and then over time it evolved and he wrote his 100,000 words.

J. In the process of supervision  … 

P. . . you reflect back to anyone you are supervising what they’ve done, 
what the implications are . .

J. Yes and what I’m feeling is of significance  . . struggle to see ‘are 
you really on the inside of the other?’ and not projecting onto the other 
your own biases and prejudices. Or have you really been open to the 
understandings that the other has and the values they have. 

P. So as a supervisor you are actually looking at – in the case of a thesis 
that is generating living educational theory – in order to appraise the 
development of the thesis, you have to develop your own standards of 
judgment that fit that evolving theory. You’ve used those standards of 
judgment that you have generated during your relationship with the 
student . . and yet those are not the standards of judgement that are 
applied by the external examiners in the course of the viva.

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I am now left thinking that the process that leads to the production of 
a ‘living educational theory’ PhD thesis is one of the most clear-cut 
examples of where the co-generation of living standards of judgment is at 
work, within the process of the supervisor and the student negotiating 
their way towards the production of the final thesis (the argument, not the 
artefact). That process of co-generation is not explicit within the thesis 
itself – it is tacitly a part, a substantial thread that runs through the 
whole, but it is hidden. I think there is a case to be made for someone to 
engage with you in the PhD student-supervisor roles with the prime 
intention of using the thesis production process as the vehicle to reveal 
the nature of your relationship and the nature of the standards of judgment 
you agree as the thesis develops. Any takers?

- Pete