Dear Sara,

It has been a delight to read all your messages - intended and not 
intended - and the responses to them!

I do feel that in these you have been expressing your personal experience of 
the deep meaning of 'natural inclusion' as 'the co-creative, fluid dynamic 
transformation of all through all in receptive spatial context', for which I 
have been trying to provide a reasoned as well as emotional understanding in 
terms of variably fluid boundaries and space that cannot be cut. I have had 
the same experience in the lecture room that you describe when I present my 
final year transdisciplinary course, 'Life, Environment and People' (see 
attached introduction). But I am also now noticing that students coming into 
the University now are less and less receptive to my open-hearted 
educational approach and more and more demanding to be spoon-fed in glossy 
boxes. One first year student last year came up to me after every lecture 
session I gave (as it happens on fungal diversity) demanding 'tell me 
exactly what I need to know to pass the exam'. Others demanded 'which book 
can I find this in?' or 'Why won't you put it all on Moodle?' Pigeons coming 
home to roost from years of prescriptive school-teaching to the test, I 
guess.

Thank you also for your gentle reminder regarding my 'gut response' to the 
term 'Servant-Leader' - language that I do indeed find deeply offensive for 
the reasons you describe. If you take a look at my semi-autobiographical 
book (downloadable from www.inclusional-research.org), 'Inclusional Nature', 
you'll discover that my first eight years of life were in British colonial 
Kenya, that my mother was about to be Mayor of Nairobi when we had to leave 
in a hurry and that we had African servants and I HATED the disparity 
between their living conditions and ours, as well as the pomposity of my 
Mother's robes of office, which rendered her a stranger to me.

I have much the same visceral response to anything that smacks to me of 
prescriptive and formulaic schooling according to a simplistic 'model' or 
'rule-book' - what I sometines call 'Smart Poodle Training' that produces 
'clever clots' able to jump through amazing intellectual and technical hoops 
but devoid of empathy, humility and any ability to think in a discerning, 
open-minded and creative way. To my mind there is a huge difference between 
instructive training (which has its place) and education (assisting out into 
greater awareness). Opportunities for the latter are disappearing fast in 
the UK.

Just to provide a little further insight into the personal context of what 
'presses my buttons', if I may:

1. Imagine you see humanity in a desperate plight, like Kathy's Great Blue 
Heron.

2. Imagine that you can see, it seems all too clearly, what is aggravating 
its plight by way of a lethal combination of perception and behaviour that 
leads it into a vicious repetitive spiral.

3. Imagine that you can see this because of a lifetime being caught 
painfully and terrifyingly in your own repetitive vicious spiral of what is 
labelled by your cultural context as 'obsessive compulsive disorder' and 
treated with empathy-damping drugs and cognitive therapies urging you to 
'think positive'.

4. Imagine that you can also see, all too clearly, a way out of the spiral 
into a more compassionate, sustainable and creative way of living and loving 
for you and your natural neighbourhood.

5. But you can also see that to find that way out, utterly simple as it is, 
requires turning inside-out thousands of years of proud and prejudicial, 
definitive logic, which has become deeply embedded in just about every 
aspect of modern human life and academic 'discipline'.

6. Imagine yourself encountering others who share your concerns and desire 
to help, but remain stuck fast in that very combination of perception and 
behaviour that imposes complete definition ('wholeness and partness') and 
hence 'discontinuity' on things instead of dynamic distinction and limitless 
spatial continuity.

7. Imagine trying to communicate your findings, but everywhere being blocked 
by language barriers, resentfulness, pomposity, ridicule, career breakdown, 
psychological projection and a proliferation of obfuscating theories 
grounded in the very abstract rationalism - for which there is no support 
from actual evidence or consistent [non-paradoxical] reasoning - that you 
are trying to help show the way out of.

8. Meanwhile you are obliged to stand by helplessly as the Great Blue Heron 
approaches the buffers and everyone teaches it to carry on regardless whilst 
wearing a broad grin on their faces.



Warmest

Alan



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Salyers, Sara M" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, August 16, 2010 11:01 PM
Subject: Re: Is what I am doing a good idea?


Dear Joan,
I'm stunned by this. Thank you. Gosh...

This is exactly what I think I am looking for. If 'collective intelligence' 
is what happened, then what Bache writes about is real; it's nothing to do 
with belief or interpretation or personal conviction. It is a real, out of 
the box, life altering thing that happens like a kind of magic. And as 
little as I know about it, I know that it is incredibly important. Jack told 
me that what happened in my class, whatever it was that turned us into a 
'unit', was what I needed to concentrate on for my dissertation. I wasn't 
sure he was right because I thought the phenomenon was too diffuse, 
something that was the result of too many factors (for me) to distill. Now I 
think he was absolutely right. I am really dazed by this explanation, which 
feels right as well as a bit overwhelming.

Although it may be slightly 'out in left field' for this forum, I do think 
that this phenomenon can be related to Alan's 'inclusional' space and to the 
practice of 'alongsidedness'. As I've said more than once, I think, it's an 
outcome - an end in itself of which the academic gains, the transformations 
that take place seem to be natural by-products. But who in the world would 
allow me to conduct my doctoral research into this phenomenon and 'the 
dynamics of collective consciousness in the classroom'? (That is *not* a 
rhetorical question.)

love
Sara
________________________________________
From: Practitioner-Researcher [[log in to unmask]] On 
Behalf Of Joan Walton [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, August 16, 2010 5:28 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Is what I am doing a good idea?

Hello Sara

I am not sure if you will find this useful, interesting or even relevant - 
it goes beyond the normal focus of conversations here - but Christopher 
Bache, Professor of Religious Studies in the States (Youngston State 
University) has written a book called The Living Classroom. It is grounded 
in transpersonal psychology - what he is basically saying is that over time, 
"well taught courses generate 'learning fields' around them, forms of 
collective consciousness that can trigger new insights and startling 
personal transformations".  He is talking about his own personal experience 
as a university professor for nearly 30 years.

His introductory paragraph is:

"This book is an invitation to explore the deep interioirity of teaching and 
the dynamics of collective consciousness.  It studies the subtle 
mind-to-mind and heart-to-heart connections that spring up between teachers 
and students in the classroom, unbidden but too frequent and too pointed to 
be accidental.  It investigates what I call the field dynamics of mind, 
examining influences that radiate invisibly around us as we teach.  It 
explores the emergence of a true collective intelligence that skillfully 
integrates the many minds present into larger patterns of discovery and 
transformations.  In short, it invites teachers to meet their students in a 
classroom that is more alive and more interconnected that we had previously 
thought possible, and in the process to take their teaching to a more 
conscious level".

Bache has for a long time explored different states of consciousness and the 
dynamics of the collective consciousness - his kind of exploration is not 
for everyone - but given you write "That gradually led to an energy, or a 
presence, in the classroom that was like nothing I can adequately describe" 
which was similar to the experiences which triggered his exploration, you 
might be interested in at least some of his ideas,  and accounts of his 
experiences.

Best wishes,

Joan



On 16 August 2010 19:58, Salyers, Sara M 
<[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Well, thanks. But if that's what I was doing, I really didn't know it at the 
time!

The thing is, I don't feel that anything I did was praiseworthy or 
creditworthy. I *do* feel that if I see what occurred in that class as a 
measure of my own accomplishment - any kind of measure - I will invalidate 
something else, something that became present to and for everyone, out of 
what we *all* brought to that writing lab. I think of it as 'the miraculous' 
and it was the truest aspect of the whole experience. Maybe there is some 
kind of accomplishment there but if so, it is completely different from the 
kind of cultural accomplishment that we are schooled in from infancy - the 
kind that reflects on our value as important/successful selves in the world.

Also, though I haven't clearly identified this before, there was definitely 
a process for which the starting point was a response grounded in *being* 
something/someone rather than *doing* something. Of course there were 
doings - some quite radical strategies - but they were all being informed by 
this 'being-ness' that kept pulling me into different shapes far beyond the 
boundaries of my own identity and all informed by the love I had for that 
class. That gradually led to an energy, or a presence, in the classroom that 
was like nothing I can adequately describe.  I got so much more than I gave. 
It was like discovering a new country or even a new reality, but a reality 
that doesn't *belong* to me. Whatever it might be, I know it's not something 
I want to lay claim to - like the colonizers of old - with my own patented 
definitions. In fact, I do not want to kill it with anyone's definition. 
(Definition, from the Latin 'definire', to bring to an end, has a tendency 
to kill the thing defined - necessary as it may be in order for us to 
communicate!) It's very hard to explain, but I don't want to teach anyone 
about it, be 'the expert' on it or show the world how clever I am or how 
well I have done. I don;t want to make it fit educational theory - although 
I might use some of that theory to help 'map' it. Instead, I want to yell 
about it at the top of my voice until everyone else comes to this magical 
place to see it or else they yell back, 'Hey, me too! I'm over here!' I 
would not argue that Servant Leadership might be a very appropriate way of 
describing/distinguishing, at least in part, what led to the outcome. But 
that outcome is what really matters to me and, in truth, it took a real 
coming together of fifteen incredibly different people to produce it. I 
imagine the view from Mount Everest would be something like it - 
overpoweringly awesome. But everyone should get to see *this*! Maybe I now 
know why mountain climbing gets addictive. I'm certainly going to keep going 
back for more. :)

Best,
Sara
________________________________________
From: Practitioner-Researcher 
[[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>] 
On Behalf Of Alan Markowitz [[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>]
Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2010 5:19 PM
To: 
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Is what I am doing a good idea?

Hi Saras,
Congratulations on your work in your writing class. I would classify yout 
efforts at helping them get what they felt they neded is a fine example of 
Servant Leadership. Well done!!
Alan
Dr. Alan Markowitz
Director, Graduate Programs in Education
(973) 290-4328


On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 1:54 PM, Salyers, Sara M 
<[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>> 
wrote:
Dear Kathy and Alan and Jack,
yesterday - while nursing a headache that my grandmother would have 
described as 'enough to frighten the French', I was swithering over whether 
to write and say something about Kathy's e-mails or just keep quiet for a 
while if not altogether.

Alan, the irony here is that it was your frustration at banging your head 
against a wall that led to Kathy's response and then Jack's and that thus 
brings me back to this forum. (You know, the trouble with banging your head 
on the wall for a while is that, with all that ringing in your ears, you may 
not notice when you've made an impact!) So now I would ask, could you stay 
and be the the struggling life that pulls those like me into the river? 
(Thanks for the wonderful living metaphor , Kathy.) Because *this* is the 
conversation I'm looking for - the one that I'd give a lot to be allowed to 
enter.

I've been looking for a particular kind of conversation. (Not a better 
conversation, nor one that excludes joining in with other conversations - 
just one that I badly need to have at this stage of my own evolution.) Like 
Kathy, my head has been 'exploding' with all that has been opening up in 
front of me, in my own case for the past eight months. There are many things 
I really want, maybe even need, to share with others in a way that is true 
to the experience itself. I want to say, for instance, that I fell in love 
with my whole class last semester and that I *know* that was why our 
classroom became a magic lab instead of a writing lab. I want to find out if 
others have seen and felt the same things. I long to share my amazement as I 
watched myself becoming whatever they needed me to become: an indefatigable 
cheerleader for every person there, without exception; technologically 
proficient (yeeaaarrrgh); preternaturally perceptive on occasion and on 
others just looking over and over again until I could *feel* what I was 
seeing in my classroom; a facilitator who helped them to 'fall in love' with 
themselves and one another. I really, really want to have a conversation 
with someone about the fact that 'what worked' among those strategies I 
invented, were the ones I came up with in direct response to what I 
experienced my students experiencing. And the fact that these hugely 
successful strategies were ones for which I only figured out the rationale 
AFTER I had already implemented them!

I want to acknowledge you all and apologize for my own shortcomings - 
particularly my cowardice! Although it was deeply important to me, I let 
someone else jump into the river first. I was afraid to speak from the place 
I was advocating because I am not any kind of expert and I was afraid that I 
would sound ignorant and untutored. Along came Kathy who blurted out the 
same fear and then went straight ahead and talked openly about the way that 
her research is grounded in her neglect of her own well being and happiness 
and the hypocrisy of making a stand for others that you will not make for 
yourself. While I advocated the eye/I of the story, described the deadliness 
of academic jargon) and then included a very desiccated 'narrative' of my 
own, Kathy sent us the heron.
________________________________________
From: Practitioner-Researcher 
[[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>] 
On Behalf Of Alan Rayner (BU) 
[[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>]
Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2010 5:23 AM
To: 
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Subject: Re: Is what I am doing a good idea?

Dear Kathy,

Your message is for me a delight to read! In its own way it is a profound 
and eloquent expression of your sense of natural inclusion, which I feel so 
many of us must feel as children only to have it drowned out by the noise of 
opposition and abstract argument (what I sometimes call the 'adulteration' 
of orthodox schooling).

What you describe is what my wife, Marion, and I would call a 'Naturemoment' 
(see attached leaflet), filled with the wonder that makes a river surge 
through my chest, only to be followed by the bittersweet evidence and 
admission of vulnerability and mortality from which compassion fruits.

I offer what I do to this list in the hope that it may reach and encourage 
people like you. I have been doing so for years now, but always with the 
sense and fear of being regarded as an uninvited and unwelcome guest, 
notwithstanding Jack's encouragement behind the scenes. That sense has 
increased recently, and been confirmed by some of the responses to my 
message. I am not looking for recognition or acclaim or thanks. I am not 
seeking to serve or to lead. I cannot assume that I am right in what I say 
or know what I'm doing and where it is going. I can only try to make sense 
and express what makes sense to me. I am looking for signs of receptivity 
and a genuine sense that what I offer, warts and all, is felt to be helpful, 
and continuing to be helpful, in one way and another. Just the kind of signs 
you provide me with below. When and where I find those signs, I will 
continue. When and where I don't, I won't. A river flows where it finds and 
can create and sustain openness. Sooner or later it turns away from banging 
its head up against a brick wall and finds another way, more inviting. Life 
too. Me too.


Warmest

Alan



----- Original Message -----
From: Kathy 
Bauman<mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>>
To: 
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>><mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>>
Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2010 8:39 PM
Subject: Re: Is what I am doing a good idea?

Dear Alan,

I have a number of posting to respond to but need to respond to you first. 
You see, in the few brief email exchanges we have had, you have had quite an 
influence on my thinking.  Perhaps I shouldn't be responding today as I am 
tired and emotional.  You see, being new to research I am finding I am 
starting to see my life and work through new lenses.  It is tiring!  I am 
counting the days till I am back at school and feel overwhelmed by all I 
want to prepare and learn to share with my children there. I have essays I 
need to finish for professors.

I have tended to be trapped in spirals if negativity mentally while trying 
to give my students and colleagues positivity.  The last few days I have 
been going through thought cycles like this, "
Wow, really important researcher have responded to my words!  I am really 
touched and what to respond but what if I sound stupid?  Dr. Whitehead 
didn't respond so maybe he thinks my idea is bad.  Maybe others think I 
don't deserve to participate on this conference because I don't work and a 
university.  I've got to finish my essays and get ready for school and I 
really need a break too and I want to respond to people and why do people 
say publish or perish and read of die, how fatalistic and I really need 
to...

I decided to stop this negative spiral and take a day trip with my husband 
to the waterfall where he proposed 7 years ago.  As we hiked I noticed 
things I hadn't before like the blue specs in the steep clay banks and the 
cardinal flowers by the stream.  I realized that begining to research was 
going to change the whole me for the better as I was more open to seeing and 
thinking about things I hadn't before.

I thought about your words and the idea of natural inclusion.  I wondered if 
I really understood and if it would be wrong of me to ask you for a simple 
definition and example.  That was when we reached the base of the waterfall. 
The hike was much more difficult than usual as the heavy rains we've had 
this summer had increased the depth of the water and the speed of the 
current.  The current was so strong that all the little pebbles had been 
swept away and we were wading on a smooth surface.  I laughed as the current 
pushed around my legs and I fought for balance.  I speculated at how this 
poetic image would stick with me in my work this year.

That was when I saw her.  Any time before now I would have dismissed the 
bobbing shape as sticks at the edge of the pool that forms at the base of 
the waterfall.  I don't presume as easily now.  I looked again. Intuitively 
I knew I saw a living being that needed help.  I asked my husband for his 
shirt and dove into the pool.  The current was wicked and my clothes weighed 
on me but I made my way over.  It was a young Great Blue Heron.  She was 
pushed against the clay bank trying to get out but the strong current and 
slippery clay prevented her.  Wings spread out, feet braced on the edge  and 
long neck through up the back for air, she kept sliding back into the pool 
only to shove herself again against the bank and continue the cycle again. 
I covered her gently with my husband's shirt so she wouldn't harm herself or 
me in struggling and got her up the bank safely. The wings and legs were 
undamaged  but she was very weak and in shock.  From the thin brown feathers 
on the top of her body I knew she was born this year.

I waited where she couldn't see me to see if she could spread her wings and 
start to preen the water logged feathers.  She would move a bit and was 
breathing. Night was moving in fast and with it the predators would finish 
her.  We decided to move her. We got her into a warm dry box and the 
darkness and quiet seemed to help.  We found a safe place and watched over 
till about 4 a.m. when she died.  The Naturalist said she probally had 
internal damages and there was nothing that could have been done.

I am very sad.  What was the point of seeing her and saving her if she 
didn't survive?

I just woke up and read your message Alan.  I hope my writing here didn't 
add to your discomfort.  I love reading your words and learning from you and 
you are an important part of the whole of my learning now! When you wrote, 
"Recent conversations have produced a feeling of discomfort in me,"
I wanted to say that I am sorry if I contributed to that discomfort.  I am a 
teacher and outside the world of upper level academia so I don't know all 
the rules of relating to professors and the language of advanced writing.  I 
keep getting words like epistemoplogy and ontolgy mixed up!

What I do know is that discomfort for me has often met that I am rubbing 
against something that challenges the way I think.  That is usually good and 
useful as it makes me think about my values and what is good in my mind. 
Does everyone in the e-conference need to share the same definitions?  If 
action research draws people here but we don't all agree with each other or 
each others values or beliefs, isn't that a good thing?   I may not agree 
with  "all the congregates" under the umbrella of action research at this 
site but I think it is wonderful that the voices are here and being shared 
together.  We can challenge each others assumptions, invite each other to 
look at things in new ways as you have helped me to see that to heal and 
grow as an individual I will need to be dynamically tied to my community.

I know that I am new to your ideas and the ideas of natural inclusion, but 
isn't this a part of it or do I misunderstand?

I do very much look forward to many more words from you here at this site 
and from all the rest of you as we invite each other to learn and grow in 
our research.  I am not going to spell check or edit this in any way (which 
is unheard of for me) but send it will all my love in the hopes that it is a 
good idea.  I apologize if I have offended anyone in my writing but  I find 
with reflection that I don't apologize if I have made you uncomfortable as I 
have grown much by the discomfort of different thinking as I embrace the 
dynamic writings of all of you.

Sincerely Kathy Bauman



--
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]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>