Jack Whitehead's contribution to the e-poster presentation on Demographic and Educational Influence of Our Leadership and Administration Practices Using Democratic Accountability for a Division A (Administration) session at AERA 2005, Montreal, 12 April.

My self-study of my educational leadership over the course of the 32 years of my educational research programme at the University of Bath is focused on my accountability for my educative influence in my own learning, in my students' learning and the learning of others, and in the education of social formations. In this e-poster I am focusing on accounting for my educational leadership as a Higher Education Tutor in relation to my educational influence in students' learning.

The evidence for the influence I have in mind is in the learning of practitioner-researchers as they create, validate and legitimate their living educational theories in the Academy. I want to stress that I do not see this influence as the 'direct application' of my ideas in this learning. I see that this learning is influenced by my ideas through the mediation of the creativity and critical judgement of the other. The ideas I have in mind from my own research are:

1) The inclusion of 'I' as a living contradiction in enquiries of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?' and in claims to know one's own educational influence in one's own learning. I am thinking of such claims to know as explanations for learning in these enquiries.

2) The idea that living educational theories are constituted by explanations for learning in educational enquiries of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?' The distinction between propositional theories and living theories are that the former are constituted by relationships between statements that eliminate contradictions between the statements in the theory, while the latter embrace living contradictions in the sense of holding together mutually exclusive opposites within the 'I'.

3) The idea that the meanings of embodied valued can be clarified in the course of their emergence in a process of action and reflection and that this process of clarification can produce living epistemological standards of judgement. The action-reflection process involves the expression of concern when values are not being lived as fully as the individual believes to be possible. It involves the exercise of imagination in the creation of an action plan that it intended to realise values more fully. It involves acting on the plan and gathering data on which to make a judgement on the effectiveness of the actions. It involves evaluating the effectiveness of the actions and modifying the concerns, ideas and actions in the light of the evaluations.

4) The idea that living educational theories can contribute to the education of social formations with the help of analyses of social formations from social theories.

The idea I want to focus on here is that of the educational influence in students' learning of my expression of my ontological values in my educational relationships and the transformation of these values into living epistemological judgement in the course of their clarification through their emergence in practice.

I want to focus on the pleasure of a productive life as one of my ontological values to see if I can communicate my meanings. When I say 'focus' I mean that I want to show you two video-clips that I think together with this visual narrative can communicate my meanings. The first clip is at:

http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw//multimedia/jimenomov/ajwjdwis.mov

and shows the expression of pleasure between Jackie Delong and I with a comment Jackie makes about me not referring to her wisdom. This comment was made in the context of the doctoral supervision sessions that have been part of my sense of living a productive life. A much fuller visual narrative and analysis of this clip is in:

"How Valid Are Multi-Media Communications Of My Embodied Values In Living Theories And Standards Of Educational Judgement And Practice?"

at: http://www.actionresearch.net/multimedia/jimenomov/JIMEW98.html

which in turn is included in Part 11 of my analysis of:

Do action researchers' expeditions carry hope for the future of humanity? How do we know?

An  enquiry into reconstructing educational theory and educating social formations,

at: http://www.arexpeditions.montana.edu/articleviewer.php?AID=80

The second clip is of Jackie Delong at the 2001 International Conference of Teacher Research (ICTR) where she is responding to a question about sustaining a culture of action research. Jackie t explains how affirmed she felt in a response by a teacher who writes to tell her about the support she is receiving from colleagues she has influenced, through her educational administration and leadership to provide support for teacher-researchers. A much fully visual narrative of the significance of such multi-media expressions of ontological values is in my keynote address to the 2005 ICTR on 'How can we improve the educational influences of our teacher-researcher quests?'

at: http://www.jackwhitehead.com/ictr05/jwkeyictr05.htm

Jackie and I are agreed that we both experience, as we view the clip, the expression of a life-affirming pleasure in living a productive life. This intersubjective agreement establishes the meaning we are giving to the expression of pleasure in living a productive life. So, from the ontological value of this pleasure we have clarified the meanings of this embodied values, in the course of its emergence in our practice. In this process we have also formed a living epistemological standard that we can use in accounting for our learning as we seek to enhance the flow of this life-affirming energy in our different spheres of educational influence.

I do not want to give the impression that the flow of pleasure in living a productive life is my only ontological value. I am thinking here of the values that give meaning and purpose to my life. But it is highly significant in my continuing sense of vocation in education. My purpose here is to draw attention to the importance of grounding living epistemological standards, our standards of living or our living standards, in the ontological values that give meaning and purpose to our lives.

In other publications I have drawn attention to other values such as freedom, love and justice (see

http://www.jackwhitehead.com/ictr05/jwkeyictr05.htm ) and intend to return to the development of this e-poster as a living document through which to account for the educational influence in my own learning in living a loving and productive life.