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PRACTITIONER-RESEARCHER  January 2013

PRACTITIONER-RESEARCHER January 2013

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Subject:

Re: Researching Our Own Practice

From:

Susan Goff <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Practitioner-Researcher <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 09:11:20 +1100

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text/plain

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Whoever is here are the right people, whatever happens is the right thing!


On 11/01/13 6:01 AM, "Salyers, Sara M" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I'm very much afraid that my last post distracted from, rather than enlarged
> on, what Jack was asking.  Jack, it might be better if you removed it
> altogether?
> 
> The short answer to your question is that I think this is a great idea.
> 
> Geisha, I am interested in the transformative power that is unleashed when
> people find their voices, in different ways and different contexts and
> whatever that takes. There are so many ways in which we may be silenced. You
> give many heartbreaking and acutely observed examples. But always, when that
> silence is broken, amazing things happen. The task is also, always the same, I
> think: to discover how that may happen. It may require vastly different
> things, in different situations according to the context.
> 
> I believe the inhumanity of economic rationalism, with its concomitant
> de-valuation and demoralisation, stems from a worldview in which people are
> seen as a means to an end for others. I also believe that, though powerful,
> longstanding and pervasive, this is a bankrupt and increasingly exposed
> apologetic for oppressive and dehumanising practices. And I believe that there
> is a new paradigm evolving, one that is based on being/living rather than
> doing and having. Perhaps there is not just one, but many! The conversations
> you suggest, Jack,  could only be good and might well further the evolution of
> such paradigms.
> 
> I've used Google+ with online students, glitchy and a bit unreliable at
> present in my own experience. It might be the best route at present but I'll
> put some thought into it along with everyone else!
> Love
> Sara
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
> On 10 Jan 2013, at 18:18, "geitza rebolledo"
> <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
> 
> Dear Jack, Sara and all,
> 
> What a broad topic you have put forward for discussion..... I  find Sara´s
> point on giving voices to the speechless a facinating one. I t is difficult
> for me  to built theoretical   generalizations  as the context play such an
> important aspect when considering the speechless...
> In our Venezuelan context 40 % of the population that voted against the
> elected president last October is considered by the winners as none  existant.
> We are the speechless when political decitions are taken at the Congress. I
> addition though we belong to Consejos Comunales in our neighbourhoods(
> Community groups elected by the neighbours), if you are from the so called
> opposition  your community projects are useless for monetary founding from the
> Community Bank (runned by the government) . I could  give a long lists of ways
> found to make us silent withing a so called "Socialistic " State.  Two days
> ago a highschool girl was playing basketball at  the Liceo Andres Bello in the
> center of Caracas. Somehow a bullet killed her . How could this happened ?
> Violence has increased in this socialistic society during the las 14 years of
> government. But Violence is a Tabu subject for inspectors and decition makers
> at the Ministry of Education.It is not a thema.... Mothers loosing their youth
> every weekend  because of violence in the Barrios of Caracas are speechless
> because there are no oficiall statistics of this problem and there are no ways
> to express their talk. Hence, what can we do when we work at the Pedagogic
> University, in  trainning teachers  according to the most beautiful theories
> of humanism, democracy, participation and Pedagogic  learnning ? How to help
> them when our students tell us that  we are  at Mount Ollympus  and that we
> need to go down to earth !!!
> Sorry, if this way of describing  this social context  might sound hard to
> tell, but we as academics need more Action Research  as ways to help our
> students  to develop competencyes to  face this reality.....
> Greetings, g.
> 
>> Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2013 09:39:14 -0500
>> From: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Re: Researching Our Own Practice
>> To: 
>> [log in to unmask]<mailto:PRACTITIONER-RESEARCHER@JISCMAI
>> L.AC.UK>
>> 
>> Dear Jack and Everyone,
>> 
>> This is extremely timely for me also. I am in the process of (slowly)
>> submitting my application for a D.Prof by public works, whose thesis is
>> provisionally titled 'Breaking the Silence - The Power of Giving Voice to the
>> Voiceless'. In one way or another, I have been pursuing this aim throughout
>> my career in television production and latterly, college teaching. But it is
>> just one, though crucial, element of a world-view in which people, their
>> needs, aspirations, values and abilities, are *not* means to an end, (as in
>> the ends of a privileged few!), but incalculably valuable ends in themselves.
>> 
>> I am certain that education - at least in the English speaking world - is
>> designed to fail. That is, designed to succeed according to objectives and
>> assumptions that belong to the Victorian/Edwardian industrial era. Those
>> objectives and assumptions still underpin the edifice, unseen and usually
>> unquestioned as one reform after another is tried and failed. Ira Socol has
>> useful information and analysis on this.
>> http://speedchange.blogspot.co.uk/p/counting-origins-of-failure.html:
>> 
>> "If education in the United States of the 21st Century is failing, that
>> failure has been built over a very long time. And I do not think that it can
>> be ³fixed² in any meaningful way unless people understand that the failures
>> we see today are our system working exactly as it was intended to.
>> Yes, that¹s what I¹m saying. Our American public education system is doing
>> exactly what it was designed to do. It is separating ³winners² from ³losers²
>> and it is reinforcing our economic gap. The system was designed in the 1840s
>> and at the turn of the 20th Century to separate society into a vast majority
>> of minimally trained industrial workers and a small, educated elite. It was
>> designed to enforce White, Protestant, Middle-Class, ³Typically-abled²
>> standards on an increasingly diverse American population. A few blessed
>> children in each generation who met those standards might move up in society.
>> The rest would be consigned to low wage manual labor. It was designed to
>> ensure that the children of the elites had the opportunities they needed to
>> remain the elite. Everything about the system ­ from the way schools are
>> funded, to the way standards are created, to the system of tests, to our
>> peculiar form of college admissions, to our notions of disability ­ was
>> created to meet the employment goals of the United States from the mid 19th
>> Century to the mid 20th Century."
>> 
>> The same can be said of the similarly Prussian based systems of Britain and
>> her former colonies. (I have done enough research to corroborate Socol's
>> assertions, as have many others.) No matter what reforms are implemented, we
>> continue to retain the original factory/programming model of education: by
>> 'date of manufacture' (Ken Robinson); by the bell and in artificial and
>> intelligence-destroying units of time; by memorization and testing; through
>> reward and punishment; using colonizing subject matter unrelated and
>> irrelevant to students or worse, (e.g. teaching only English history in
>> Scottish schools, teaching geography from world maps that grossly
>> misrepresent that true physical sizes of countries such as Britain and the
>> USA), and colonizing practices (e.g. teaching the disappearing dialect of an
>> English upper class as the norm - 'proper' English' while all others are
>> inferior and 'improper') and the overall and underlying horror of basing
>> education upon the notion that children/students are deficient to begin with
>> and it is our task as educators to 'fix' them, turning them into that which
>> 'society' requires. (Ye gods!)
>> 
>> I believe there are many, many people who recognize that we need an entirely
>> new model, an entirely new paradigm for education, currently still operating
>> as the machine that turns out fodder for the economic machines of a world
>> that has gone. But we can't imagine a new model unless we have already
>> embraced a new paradigm. And, I believe, we can't embrace a new paradigm
>> unless we can create one - together. One of my ambitions is to create an
>> 'Institute for Transformational Studies'. It is an ambition based on this
>> truth: everything we do, every relationship we have, every decision we make
>> and every belief we hold, is ontological in its foundation. *Who we are
>> being* is what leads to whatever we are doing, however we are doing it and
>> what we believe about the choices we are making. Questions such as 'Who am I
>> being and who could I choose to be?' assume very different values and
>> outcomes for education from the unspoken but ever-present, "How can I prove
>> how much I know and that I know the right things?" We questions and measure
>> what we know and what we can do - not who we are being and what we could
>> choose to be. WE live in the paradigm of the noun ; I suggest that we need a
>> pradigm of the verb!
>> 
>> My proposition here, is that the values and morals we cherish in this
>> community depend on the assertion that a human being is an end in himself or
>> herself and not a means to some economic or social (whose society?) good. I
>> suggest that this moves the arena of debate into ontology and opens the way
>> to a new paradigm for collective endeavor, one that would inspire a new model
>> for education. I would like to explore what this means, how Action Research
>> and Living Theory express just such a paradigm and most of all, how would we
>> build curricula for living around such a paradigm.
>> 
>> Sorry for being long-winded. Excited and thinking out loud!
>> 
>> Love
>> 
>> Sara
>> 
>> 
>> From: Practitioner-Researcher
>> [[log in to unmask]<mailto:PRACTITIONER-RESEARCHER@JISCMA
>> IL.AC.UK>] On Behalf Of Marian Naidoo
>> [[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>]
>> Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 5:23 AM
>> To: 
>> [log in to unmask]<mailto:PRACTITIONER-RESEARCHER@JISCMAI
>> L.AC.UK>
>> Subject: Re: Researching Our Own Practice
>> 
>> Hi All
>> Happy New Year
>> 
>> This is an excellent idea and for me and Shaun incredibly timely. Robyn I can
>> feel your frustration and it resonates with our experience working in
>> Birmingham and Solihull since the summer. We have been working very closely
>> with communities with a focus on frail older people and in particular those
>> living with Dementia. We are on the brink of something extraordinary - but
>> just when you think you are there you face an unexpected challenge. We feel
>> we have to make this work because it is too important to the people we have
>> connected with - people who struggle on a day to day basis and many of whom
>> live lonely and frightened lives. We have been able to film the conversations
>> we have been having with people in communities many of whom have been
>> labelled as "hard to reach". Having had this opportunity to engage in this
>> way may, I hope, create the tipping point that we need.
>> Love
>> Marian
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>> On 10 Jan 2013, at 08:57, Margaret Riel
>> <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]
>> U>> wrote:
>> 
>> Happy New Year to all of you...
>> 
>> I am just going to pick up on small part of the message. What if we
>> experimented with google+ and its new feature to "broadcast" a session. As I
>> understand it, up to 10 people (possible 15 although the last time I tried
>> it, we could not get more than 10) in a discussion but then with the
>> broadcast function the session is saved and and can be shared. Maybe we can
>> have some scheduled chats that are then saved in the broadcast feature. It
>> would take some planning as we have time zones to deal with but it might be
>> fun.
>> 
>> Margaret
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 12:13 AM, Lawrence Martin Olivier
>> <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>> wrote:
>> Hi All
>> 
>> I think this is an excellent idea and I welcome these kind of conversations
>> as well as making them available on youtube - the more contextual the richer
>> - we can then see, hear and feel the "energy", the "co-operative enquiry" -
>> the less reductionist!
>> 
>> A comment on Jack's idea on transforming and transcending the "influences of
>> economic rationalism", meaning the worldwide phenomenon of neo-liberal
>> capitalism - the ongoing debate between the role of markets (free enterprise)
>> and government. North Korean society is a good example to me, of how
>> frightening excessive government control is and the USA is a glearing example
>> of the dangers of uncontrolled markets (free enterprise) - as testified by
>> the Wall Street financial crisis a few years ago and the gun crisis today. I
>> see the problem as like a football match - do we need a referee, some one to
>> regulate a good game of football, do we need rules of football etc. Of course
>> we do. So the problem and solution for the economy is similar - we need the
>> role of markets and prices to help make some of the decisions and we are also
>> need to consider the public interest, we need government and we need the "the
>> values we believe carry hope for the future of humanity". One of the best
>> education systems in the world, in Finland is entirely state driven - people
>> do not have to pay high prices in markets to get the best education - the
>> best education is free!
>> 
>> Another point is unlimited economic growth is not sustainable for humanity
>> and the planet - there is only one earth and we need universal / global ways
>> to share the earth equitably - so that all of us and all on it can survive.
>> The New Economics Foundation UK explores these issues more systematically -
>> they "put people and the planet first" / "economics as if people and the
>> planet mattered", please visit their website nef.
>> 
>> Lawrence
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Practitioner-Researcher
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:PRACTITIONER-RESEARCHER
>> @JISCMAIL.AC.UK>] On Behalf Of Jack Whitehead
>> Sent: 09 January 2013 10:15 PM
>> To: 
>> [log in to unmask]<mailto:PRACTITIONER-RESEARCHER@JISCMAI
>> L.AC.UK><mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Re: Researching Our Own Practice
>> 
>> Here's wishing everyone a most pleasurable and productive New Year as we
>> continue our conversations.
>> 
>> Dear Je Kan, Maggie, Marie, Andy, Nigel, Chris, Lynn, William, Julie, Kate,
>> Joan (C ), Delysia, Phil, Sigrid, Joan (W), Maureen, Shelagh, Sonia, Pete
>> (Mellett), Yvonne, Fran, Steve, Pete (Mountstephen) Jackie, Liz, Cathy and
>> ALL
>> 
>> There's an intuition and an idea I'm curious about and that, if you are
>> willing, I'd like to explore with you over the next few months.
>> 
>> My intuition is that something significant, generative and transformatory
>> could emerge from making available on youtube, video-conversations in which
>> we share with each other what we are doing. I'm thinking of sharing in ways
>> that allow us all to understand more about the contexts in which we are
>> working, the values we use to give meaning and purpose to our lives and the
>> accounts/research reports we are producing as knowledge-creators.
>> 
>> I believe that we are all living, working and researching with relational
>> perspectives which, if we clarified these in the course of their emergence in
>> what we are doing, they could help to both transform what counts as
>> educational knowledge and transcend the influences of economic rationalist
>> policies that lead to de-valuation and de-moralisation and which we are all
>> experiencing to different degrees:
>> 
>> "Nevertheless, the new Œeconomic rationalism¹ is a worldwide phenomena which
>> Œguides¹ not only the conduct of transnational corporations, but governments
>> and their agencies as well. It does so with increasing efficacy and
>> pervasiveness. I use the term Œguides¹ here in quotes to make a particular
>> point. Economic rationalism is not merely a term which suggests the primacy
>> of economic values. It expresses commitment to those values in order to serve
>> particular sets of interests ahead of others. Furthermore, it disguises that
>> commitment in a discourse of Œeconomic necessity¹ defined by its economic
>> models. We have moved beyond the reductionism which leads all questions to be
>> discussed as if they were economic ones (de-valuation) to a situation where
>> moral questions are denied completely (de-moralisation) in a cult of economic
>> inevitability (as if greed had nothing to do with it). Broudy (1981) has
>> described Œde-valuation¹ and de-moralization¹ in the following way:
>> De-valuation refers to diminishing or denying the relevance of all but one
>> type of value to an issue; de-moralization denies the relevance of moral
>> questions. The reduction of all values ­ intellectual, civic, health, among
>> others ­ to a money value would be an example of de-valuation; the slogan
>> Œbusiness¹ is business¹ is an example of de-moralization (Broudy, 1981: 99)"
>> (McTaggart, 1992, p. 50).
>> 
>> McTaggart, R. (1992) Reductionism and Action Research: Technology versus
>> convivial forms of life, pp. 47-61 in Bruce, C. S. & Russell, A. L. (1992)
>> Transforming Tomorrow Today. Brisbane, University of Queensland, Australia.
>> 
>> The idea I'd like us to explore together if you feel like it, is that we
>> could pool our life-affirming energy (Sonia's idea), the values we believe
>> carry hope for the future of humanity and our knowledge-creating capacities,
>> in a co-operative enquiry in which we work at living our co-operative values
>> as fully as possible. I like Maureen's editorial for the December 2011 issue
>> of the Journal of Co-operative Studies in which she outlines co-operative
>> values.
>> 
>> See - http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/breeze/mbeditorial.pdf
>> 
>> Breeze, M. (2011) Guest Editorial. Transforming Education Through
>> Co-operation ­ A Force for Change. Journal of Co-operative Studies, 44(3);
>> 2-4.
>> 
>> All I'm asking you to do at the moment is to think about this intuition and
>> idea.
>> 
>> This Friday (11/01/130 I'm part of Chris (Jones') Ph.D. transfer seminar at
>> Liverpool Hope University and hope to video the conversation in which Chris
>> will be sharing some ideas on 'living empowerment' within her question: 'How
>> Do I Promote Inclusion by Living My Values and Developing Standards of
>> Judgement to which I Hold Myself Accountable' (Working title of Thesis)
>> 
>> I'll think a bit more about my intuition and idea before writing any more,
>> but if you feel like sharing your own thoughts/feelings please do.
>> 
>> Shelagh has already responded:
>> 
>> On 9 Jan 2013, at 18:13, Shelagh Hetreed wrote:
>> 
>> Hi there,
>> 
>> Food for thought indeed. Your description sparks many thoughts that are
>> jangling around unconnected at the moment. Or are they?
>> I see how education reduces learning and knowledge to a tried and tested
>> formula that works for some and so is applied regardless of the consequences
>> for those for whom it clearly doesn't work.
>> I think of my BME elders and the elderly in general who are reduced to
>> stereotypes and labels of being 'burdens' with little to offer society.
>> I see professionals who operate inclusivity above a thin veneer but when you
>> scratch the surface below that veneer, their values become shaky.
>> I see the 'us' and 'them' being a cunning device to compartmentalise us to be
>> 'with us' or 'against us' and have been following the astonishing explosion
>> of anger over the flying of a piece of cloth (or not) by the so called
>> 'loyalists'. Loyalists, now there is a thesis waiting to be written!
>> I am learning so much about India, attitudes to caste and gender in the
>> aftermath of the appalling Delhi murder. It is not ok for Indian families to
>> be selective about aborting their girl babies but it is ok for us in the West
>> to abort any baby that is not wanted.
>> 
>> There is so much that I am thinking and questioning, that I am saddened or
>> appalled by. It does all tie up for me and relates to your notion of
>> reductionism. I am thinking of key words like belonging, including,
>> tolerating, accepting is where we need to focus.
>> 
>> I am very excited by your intuition and look forward to discussions, debates
>> and challenges and us each caring about the others field of study and
>> personal journeys.
>> 
>> Hope some of this makes sense!
>> 
>> Shelagh
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________
>> 
>> "This e-mail is subject to our Disclaimer, to view click
>> http://www.dut.ac.za/pages/22414"
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> 
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> Margaret Riel 
>> <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]
>> u>>
>> Chair M. A in Learning Technologies
>> Pepperdine University
>> Phone: (760) 618-1314
>> http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/mriel/office
>> BLOG: http://mindmaps.typepad.com/
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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