Well here is my two bob's worth - I confess I too am a 'lurker' - so many other pressing issues and stressors in the job that all I can do is nod in agreement and wish like anything that I could find time to respond. I am moved to respond by Pip's posting, and also as I am currently making plans to leave the academy (once again - did it 7 years ago for 3 years) and returning to my home and my practice as a nurse. Stuff happens that demoralises one to the point where one decides that there is more to life than sitting behind a computer all day and decides do the thing that one is teaching (and this after having completed a post doctoral master of education in I.T.!). The 'Old Boys' Club' basically discounted what our Chair said in our reviews and downgraded the assessment he gave us - all nursing faculty were included, even world renowned scholars and large grant recipients. So I have attached my reflection on this, prompted by reading the last few postings on BERA, as my offering to the discussion on 'toxic' environments.
PennyB.
On 8/2/09 2:03 AM, "Alan Rayner (BU)" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Dear Pip,
Thank you. Much appreciated!
But actually, I wasn't thinking specifically about members of this list when I wrote those poems, but something* much more general and sinister, of which your comments about 'not having time and how much energy it takes to stay afloat in a pressured tertiary education these days' speaks volumes. I feel the same way, and am seriously wondering whether I can stand it any longer - this led me to write the poems as a way of walking towards instead of away from what is hurting.
What is oppressing many of us prevents us from acknowledging what can ease that oppression. The result is a vicious spiral into deeper and deeper oppression that everyone feels powerless to resist. To my eyes, this spiral is intensifying relentlessly, even as a few of us may stand in the path of the tank. Meanwhile many people who are in a position to recognise what is happening and call for change are instead doing the opposite, by reinforcing the anti-logic that places false discontinuity between self and neighbourhood through imposing non-existent space and time frames on nature. It is these people who represent 'the conspiracy of silence' in my mind, and who I have found especially 'hard of hearing', not members of this list.
Warmest
Alan
* In my book, 'Inclusional Nature' (downloadable from www.inclusional-research.org <http://www.inclusional-research.org><http://www.inclusional-research.org> ), I alluded to this something as 'The Vampire Archetype'. See attached chapter.
----- Original Message -----
From: Pip/Bruce Ferguson <mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Saturday, August 01, 2009 10:26 PM
Subject: Re: Explaining our educational influences in learn...
Dear Alan and others
I am sorry that you are perceiving people's failure to respond to some of your recent work as 'a conspiracy of silence' Alan. In my own case, it is just feeling completely overwhelmed by the responsibilities of a new position, in a tertiary environment which is increasingly pressured. It is not out of any (a) failure to be moved by your work nor (b) determination to ignore it, or you. It is the same reason that I have not responded to Jack's recent requests for feedback on his work, either.
But that doesn't mean that I fail to be moved by either yours or Jack's contributions to this list, when I've found time to read them! It's just that, for many of us in tertiary education these days, I suspect, so much energy goes into 'staying afloat' that spending the time to meaningfully, respectfully and comprehensively engage with others' work may take more than we currently have available. I hope these thoughts are received in the spirit in which they are sent.
Warm regards
Pip (growing webbed feet in Hamilton's rainy winter!)
From: Practitioner-Researcher [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alan Rayner (BU)
Sent: Sunday, 2 August 2009 2:31 a.m.
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Explaining our educational influences in learn...
Dear Jack,
This morning, I put together the attached collection of my three most recently written poems, including the one you quote from below. I think I was feeling an increasing sense of demoralization and desperation, having strived so hard to help bring to light a source of understanding that I think can do so much to ease suffering and enhance human creativity, only to be met largely by what feels like a 'conspiracy of silence'. Reading your spirited draft paper, which seems to me to be more rigorously and explicitly grounded than the previous version as well as including some significant new insights, restores a little more hope.
Warmest
Alan
----- Original Message -----
From: Jack Whitehead <mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Saturday, August 01, 2009 1:32 PM
Subject: Re: Explaining our educational influences in learn...
I'm responding to Alan's poem 'Awaiting Rescue' with its Stanza:
At the end of the day
Where there's room for play
Of spirit that ventures
In children's trust
Not in musty schoolroom's force
To climb the ladder
Propelled by lust
with the delight and optimism I feel in an 'empathetic resonance' with children's trust. I associate this trust with the life-affirming energy and values I seek to express in my educational relationships and educational research.
I'm also responding to Marie's very welcome and helpful criticism of my draft BERA 09 paper, in the best sense of Popper's point about one's best friends being one's most 'savage' critics.
Because of my desire to communicate clearly a significant contribution to the keynote symposium at BERA 09 on the 3rd September 2009 on the Explication Of A New Epistemology For Educational Knowledge With Educational Responsibility (with Jane, Marie, Jean, Margaret and Christine), I'm hoping that you will help me to enhance my communication with your most critical response to the redrafted, multi-media paper on Generating Educational Theories That Can Explain Educational Influences In Learning at:
http://www.spanglefish.com/mariessite/jack.asp (just click on the title)
Alan, I'm hoping that you will feel pleasure and affirmation in the value of the originality of your idea of inclusionality in establishing, communicating and using a new epistemology for educational knowledge with educational responsibility.
Marie I'm hoping that my re-drafted paper goes some way to improving it through your criticisms. More criticisms would be most welcome.
I'm particularly interested in everyone's criticisms (and affirmations where appropriate!) on whether I'm communicating the significance of 'educational influence', the nature of 'practical principles' that include a relationally dynamic awareness of space and boundaries and the 'units of appraisal', 'standards of judgment' and 'living logics' of a new epistemology for educational knowledge.
This wet and cloudy weather in Bath is most conducive to writing ! Looking forward to strengthening the paper with your critical responses.
Love Jack.
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