Dear Sara,
I am one of those side-lines that forms part of Joan's story. For a long time I wandered around being criticised by all and sundry who said that what I was doing was not worthwhile. In trying to get to conferences I was told that this is not a travel agency. It was assumed that I was trotting the globe for tourism purposes and not to learn.
Research seems to be about pushing back the boundaries of ALL knowledge and not just those sections that the establishment feel is justifiable. How has the Durban University of Technology got this critical mass of like thinkers together is amazing. There are some important criteria that are necessary. There must be a leader. Joan has been that in DUT. Her mind has been open to all things. This has been form one of my student's interest in Umthagati (witchcraft) to another mother's interest in virginity testing in rural areas. I could have shut these students down but indigenous knowledge is out there and for some this life is very real. The group of people that meet once a week are willing to accept the vastness of knowledge, beyond what is written or known (in academic circles). The type of people make the group and we have that.
Weekly meetings are populated with different people every week. Some come from the arts, some from the sciences, some from health, and some from other academic institutions. But growth takes place. It is a place to ask questions and a place to practice your own presentations. The other important point is that it does not fall on the shoulders of one person. There are at least two administrators that seem to keep things together and some three people who lead. Then there are the outside people brought in every so often which spices up the interest, but probably the binding meeting is the once a year get together of everyone where workshops are held.
You will never know how wonderful it is to be in the presence of others who accept what you are doing and feed into your growth. Everyone is drawn in and I hope that one or two others agree with me.
Perhaps you would like to join the next get together that Joan holds in Durban. Already there are more than 50 people at these three day meetings but place for one more will always be arranged for a fellow researcher who wants to benefit.
Graham in Taxation
-----Original Message-----
From: Practitioner-Researcher [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Salyers, Sara M
Sent: 13 January 2011 07:49 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Educational influence and Social Formation
Dear Joan,
That's a really incredible success story. Thank you very much for sharing it. I love your summary of what you are doing as "a 'journey of awareness', where one's 'laboratory' is oneself as both 'point of departure'." That's expresses just what it is for me too.
I can't tell you how difficult it is to get any kid of practice based research approved here. Even when it is clear that the subject of the research is your own practice (and the benefits to the students have the VP saying he'll try to find you a grant!), the view that 'you can call it what you like but you are doing research on our students' in the academic research dept. is nearly impossible to shift. The idea that there is an embodied knowledge or a living theory that we can share and develop in a community is just light years away. I'd like to know how you changed that - although I'm hoping I won't be here next semester but will be working on my contribution to humanizing myself and my practice and to transformative education,"For the future of humanity." :) I do believe, with my whole being that education has been used, or misused, to implement a kind of slavery more often than not. The possibility that it might become the route to both personal and social freedom and transformation is so moving that it feels almost overwhelming. And in stories like yours, I can see - incredibly - that I might actually be a tiny part of the movement of hearts and minds that is imagining that possibility into existence. So I - and I think many others - will want more!
I'm fascinated by the inquiry into the fact that your first learners learned something other than what you taught them. Mine often seem to do that; I'm never quite sure what's going to happen (which is strange for someone who is really a bit 'controlling', despite my best efforts not to be!). I enjoy it immensely - so long as they are also acquiring the skills to pass the course at the same time. One of my outgoing students wrote in his semester 'wrap up': "I hope everyone in my class, who was there to the very end; have learned as much as I have. I know Sara has learned from us also. I wouldn't trade this semester for anything." One of those things that makes your heart smiles as if it just came home... It feels to me like most of them are getting 'it' - the whole point of the process, the journey into awareness. But I'm not sure what 'it' is. It's certainly something more and beyond whatever I'm teaching. And I'd love to explore and understand a bit about this contradiction between the 'teaching' (if there really is any such thing) and the learning which seems to have a supra-natural component. Where can I find out?
love
Sara
________________________________________
From: Practitioner-Researcher [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Joan Lucy Conolly [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2011 12:59 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Educational influence and Social Formation
Dear Sara
Thank you for your interest.
My story is inextricably intertwined with the stories of so many other people. I am happy to tell you that these stories are now mostly informing masters and doctoral degrees using 'self study' in action research, auto-ethnographies and/or living theories approaches. Our 'self study as scholarship' aspirations have recently been recognized with an award from the National Research Foundation of South Africa amounting to R740 000,00 for 2011, 2012, 2013, for a project titled "Transformative Education/al Studies" (TES). In South African terms, in the humanities, this is a generous award, and most importantly, this is a confident vote for the methodologies that we are adopting, a confidence building vote for 'self study' as respectable scholarship. This is our great joy! After decades of being told that 'you cannot study yourself - it is not academic', and 'you are lowering academic standards', AT LAST the use of our accumulated wisdoms of our classroom and life experience to simultaneously improve our practice, the lives of our learners, and earn the senior degrees that we, and the system, so sorely need, is being recognized as scholarship. I hope that our success will infect those not yet infected, and encourage and support those who are infected but still experience resistance within their institutions, so that self study for transformative education and social action can become a common preoccupation globally. For the future of humanity .. as Jack so frequently reminds me.
The TES project proposal is on Jack Whitehead's action research website http://www.actionresearch.com for easy access at http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/southafrica/TESproposalopt.pdf Thank you, Jack, for this support, and so much else. Your generous encouragement and support are beyond price.
The history of the origins of the TES project is a long and winding one with what appear to be detours of no consequence, (but on reflection, nothing is of no consequence when one is engaged in a 'journey of awareness', and where one's 'laboratory' is oneself as both 'point of departure', and 'frequent critical and reflective return'.) I think that I have been grappling with TES's central issues all my professional teaching life (which is 40++ years at this point). Jack captured this in an interview at DUT in 2009 when he asked me a question about the origins of my preoccupations about learning and teaching, and I found myself talking about an issue that I had never articulated previously - that my first learners somehow learned other than what I taught them, and this first made me feel a failure. Then when I heard other teachers' stories of the same phenomenon, I realized that there was something going on that had not been accounted for in terms that made sense to me, and of my experience. Using self study, action research, auto-ethnographies and living theories closes the gap - 'addresses the nexus between practice and research'.
Many of the TES story tellers are on this listserve, (and on the ARAN listserve). Perhaps they would like to share their 'feelfulthinkamalinks' here ... I do hope so ...
Again, Sara, thank you for asking ...
Take care
Joan
-----Original Message-----
From: Practitioner-Researcher [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Salyers, Sara M
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 9:57 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Educational influence and Social Formation
Dear Joan,
thank you and I hope so too... I would *love* to hear those stories. It is so inspiring to feel that you're part of something larger, something that is really happening 'out there'! On which note - *please* share the story of your own initiative, group and recognition?
love
Sara
________________________________________
From: Practitioner-Researcher [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Joan Lucy Conolly [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2011 12:17 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Educational influence and Social Formation
Dear Sara
Thank you for the reminder that "there is always hope and that everything we do matters even when it does not seem to...". A timely - and heart strengthening - reminder for us all.
I am so delighted that your imagination, creativity and sheer hard work, all infused with so much love, has been recognized for what it is. I share your joy! Not only because it has happened to you but also because my group and I have had similar recognition for our work where we are. I am hoping that there will be many more stories of 'recognition, acceptance, and support' for such initiatives reported in this conversation space in 2011.
Take care
Joan
-----Original Message-----
From: Practitioner-Researcher [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Salyers, Sara M
Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2011 9:53 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Educational influence and Social Formation
Wow! White collar and blue collar? (Alan, do you still doubt that the industrial model persists?)
1. Learning styles are important but the tip of an iceberg; context, meaning and relationship are more significant factors in and predictors of success than texts or teaching style.
2. Brain research hows that, unless there is a physical/neurological impediment, every human being has the capacity to become an Einstein or a Da Vinci; 3. We cannot create learners; human beings are already created as phenomenal learners and our job is to facilitate (rather than mutilate) what is already there; 4. I teach blue collar 'types'. They are exactly the same as white collar types once they have learned the language of formal/universal English.
5. The essential distinction is not between formative or creative-style teaching. The difference is between impositional and oppressive, 'engineering' education (reflected int he notion that we do something to our students), and human, non oppressive contextual, authentic and relational education (reflected in the notion that we do something along with out students. Personally, I regard it as helping to get them out of their own way so that they can be as amazing as they really are.) 6. I can verify the effectiveness of the latter from the results coming out of my classroom which are both holistically significant (in terms of levels of satisfaction, pleasure, self awareness, empowerment, and self expression), and academically significant (in terms of fluency and voice in good 'correct' formal English). Incidentally, I teach formal English entirely as the means to an end - the medium of communication in the endeavor to explore and communicate, through with and to, self, world and other. It is a matter of emphasis that is crucial in its effects.
I have two positive things to share. First, I had an amazing opportunity to 'spread some love' on Thursday at our first Spring semester in-service, where I'd been asked to give a presentation on the use of my audio immersion technique with my transitional writing (developmental) students. I showed a group of transitional writing instructors (an *awesome* bunch of human beings by the way), the 'progressions' of transitional students who were listening to formal English - some of which are breathtaking - and some of their written discussions at the 'oh-no!-now-i've-started-correcting-people-around-me' stage of this process. The delight and pleasure, laughter and excitement at who these students really are and what they are truly capable of (as opposed to what the story about them says they are capable of), was more than heartwarming; it was absolutely thrilling. Sharing love and delight with others: it was better than.. (I'll let you fill in the blank!)
Second, and especially for those who helped me to deal with my pain and hopelessness over the fate of our pre-transitional students (under-under prepared you might say)... something lovely has happened and I hope you will forgive me for sharing it despite the lack of proper modesty I may display by doing so. I mentioned a few moths ago the unlikelihood that, even if I were successful with this one class, we could get a grant, now that state funding has been withdrawn, to show that a different approach *could* change their prognosis - and the program outcome. Anyway, at his request, I sent our VP the final grades/outcomes for that class. Here's his reply of last week:
"I appreciate your willingness to share your success numbers with me. They are outstanding. I could tell during my visit that something important was taking place in your class; I wish you continued success with your courses this semester. I'll spend some time looking for a grant and a will similar to yours.
Best..."
I'm half ecstatic and half 'holding my breath' about the grant. (And then I have to outline a syllabus and show other instructors how to do what I did so that I can still go off - please God - and do my PhD in the Fall!) Thus I have gone from 'what am I doing this for, when there's no hope', a few months ago, to sitting myself down and giving myself a stern lesson on remembering that there is always hope and that everything we do matters even when it does not seem to...
love
Sara
________________________________________
From: Practitioner-Researcher [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alan Markowitz [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2011 9:11 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Educational influence and Social Formation
Dear Aga,
The idea of classsifying students by learning style undermines the whole premise of the theory. First of all, our goal should be to create learners who can adapt to different styles of knowledge acquisition. Secondly, the concept of differentiation of instruction requires us to present information in different formats throughout an instructional period so that all are exposed to working with other students with differing styles of learning.
Thank you for the stimulating topic.
Alan
Dr. Alan Markowitz
Program Chair- Graduate Teacher Education College of St. Elizabeth
(973)290-4328
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 3:29 AM, aga yamin <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Dear Brendan
I am sure Je Kan will provide you with the better explanation of your concerns related to creativity and productivity especially in relation to SAT and social formation. Meanwhile, please find my point of view as follows:
1. Perhaps I agree with your boss, the "right" creativity or more appropriately "Innovation" can bring better SAT results. At present, we are differentiating students according to their results by assembling them into sets. Top set, bottom set etc. Perhaps this approach is not that effective as expected as evidenced by the results
2. I think we should classify students according to their aptitude rather than results and teach them accordingly
3. For example, generally speaking, there are two types of people: one are "Blue Collar", and others are "White Collar"
4. Blue Collar learn through hand-on experience. The others can learn through conventional learning techniques. If you try to teach a blue collar student by using conventional techniques, you may find very challenging and difficult to induce concepts in them. It does not mean that they are not interested in learning. We are not applying the right approach to develop them
5. First we need to classify students into blue collar and white collar
6. Second we need to further identify their aptitude toward their learning.
7. Third we need to identify their learning style
8. It will give you the right parameters to develop your learner-focused teaching & learning strategies
8. You may conduct a pilot study and assess the results. Depending on your learning & Teaching strategies, If your results are positive then it means you have influence educationally on your students and managed to gain social validation of your work and created a new social formation in terms of students learning
Regards
Aga
________________________________
From: BRENDAN CRONIN <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Fri, 7 January, 2011 13:00:43
Subject:
Dear All,
Thanks Jack and Je Kan. Thanks Jack for those references and our thoughts on Wenger. I find Je Kan your thoughts on the self interesting. What is the relation of my self to others? Is the idea of the self illusory? But domination of one knowledge in the workplace is of course a strongly political thing, an essential part of the social formation and can act to oppress and dominate. It can contrain individual action. You are the boss, you tell me that the dichotomy between performativity and creativity is a false dichotomy, but I in my practice find this to be a falsehood. The boss says get on. I want to see you teaching in a creative way and getting first class SATs results. Who suffers? The children. me and in the end the school because it is unachievable.
I only want to try to quantify influence on colleagues and them on me in order to develop some model of workplace learning, a model which would be deeply democratic, based on the needs of the learner and essentially anarchistic. It will be a model of learning and a model of professional development.
Cheers,
Brendan
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