For the Monday Group and an invitation to colleagues:

 

5.00-7.00 1WN 3.8 Monday 13th March.

 

There will be lots of catching up from our last conversation on the 13th February that included the group from Akershus University College, Norway, so do let's devote a bit more time than usual to this. Looking forward to catching up with news about the Unhooked Thinking Conference in the Assembly Rooms in Bath, 19th-21st April and with Alon's writings for his doctoral thesis as well as Margarida's latest workshops. Details of the Practitioner Researcher meeting, this Saturday 11th March with local teachers who are working on their educational enquiries see http://www.jackwhitehead.com/monday/arposter11march.htm


 Anat writes from Israel - "I want to tell you a story of how I really finally realized the main theme of my paper, the main underlying motive of the difficulties of being a teacher in another culture. My speciality I think, is teaching with accordance of what I see, hear and feel from my students. It goes back to the video camera where I WAS INTERESTED IN HOW THE "OTHERS" this time THE BABIES perceived their educational environment, from their point of view and then based the training of their caregivers upon their perceptions.

In the south Lebanon refugee kindergarten I write how I changed my curriculum, my interactions according to their needs and culture. I can say that in Oranim I continue to get marks as a distinguished teacher because I base my educational response to my students needs, I hear them, I help them to bloom because I am attuned to them. So that may be my special trait that I developed - seeing the other. But being in a different culture I could not see, hear, sense the "other". Only after unknowing and unlearning was I free of my self involvement and this year I was able to be open enough to listen, hear, sense and love them.

I have developed along the years the sensitivity to consider and accept what the "others" my students need of me, needs from the system - from babies up to mature women from a different culture. ( I am talking about professional circumstances, on a day to day basis I am no different then any one else,) So I find myself going back to dear old Buber who, by the way, lived next to me in Jerusalem when I was young tall and blond! Do you think anyone would be interested in what I have to say? Much love Anat"


The review process for proposals for BERA 06 in Warwick (6-9 September) seems to be complete and acceptances have come through in the last week including:

 

Marion Dadds and Jack Whitehead – Empathetic Validity in Educational Research.

 

Eleanor Lohr - How can love improve my practice?  Researching the relation of being with doing.

 

Erica Holley - A teacher-educator's self study of her personalised learning agenda and educational influence: contributing to the creation and testing of living educational theories.

 

Marie Huxtable - How can I improve my practice as a Senior Educational Psychologist?

 

Marie Huxtable and Jack Whitehead - How do i~we improve our educational practices? Creating living standards of judgment for practice-based research in the professions.

 

Chris Jones and Marie Huxtable - How can we support educators to develop skills and understandings inclusionally?

 

 Jack Whitehead - How can self study enquiries in the generation of living educational theories be validated in creating a future for educational research? (Contribution to Jean's symposium proposal)

 

Je Kan Adler-Collins and Yukiko Ohmi Fukuoka - The Process of critical enquiry and of becoming critical as a practitioner: The dawning of a new paradigm of Global co-operation and educative understanding or old colonial values repackage and represented?

 

Je Kan Adler-Collins - Different cultures, different paradigms: How lasting are our educational influence for good as our educational ideas spread their influence out side the context of our own culture?

 

Jean McNiff's symposium proposal has been accepted. (Jack's proposal was rejected on How am I enhancing my educational influences with racialising discourses of whiteness in living educational theories?). Jean is in Pretoria this week for action research workshops before returning to Cape Town for meetings with teacher-researchers in the township of Khaylitsha before returning to Ireland and the UK.  Je Kan would like to get his flight from Japan and accommodation for BERA confirmed in the next week or so and it could be most enjoyable to stay in the same hotel so do let's see if we can arrange this. Je Kan – do you want to get the ball rolling with a suggestion?

 

Marie has started her web-page on Action Research Enquiries. See:

http://uk.geocities.com/marie_huxtable/index.html

 

Moira's paper with Li Peidong has been accepted and will appear in the April 2006 issue of Action Research. Guyuan College has been successful in its application to become a University and:

 

On 2 Mar 2006, at 01:41, Moira Laidlaw wrote:

If you look at http://www.gytc.com.cn/wyx  you will find the department's new website. If you go to:

http://www.gytc.com.cn/wyx/bigClassdeta.asp?typeid=7&BigClassid=55

there are loads of lesson notes I made for staff over the years, and more importantly, at:
http://www.gytc.com.cn/wyx/bigclass.asp?typeid=7&bigclassid=53 there are loads of staff AR reports. More will be added in the coming weeks, but it's a lovely start, and the only one of its kind in China as far as I know. Wow, eh!

 

Wow indeed! Great to see this.

 

I've a couple of texts to bring along on Monday from South Africa. The first is by John Bhengu on Ubuntu; The Essence of Democracy. This was published in 1996 by the Novalis Press in Cape Town. I like Bhengu's point that:

 

"Our primary challenge, by way of strategy, is to encourage and sponsor scholars and researchers at our universities to examine and investigate Ubuntu with a view to giving it a sound theoretical/philosophical framework. Once this has been done, then there are endless strategic advantages that can be derived from the application of the philosophy to our daily lives" (Benghu, 1996, p. 55)

 

The second text is:

 

Waghid, Y., Van Wyk, B., Adams, F. & November, I. (Eds.) (2005) African(a) Philosophy of Education: Reconstructions and Deconstructions. Published by the Department of Education Policy Studies, Stellenbosch University.

 

I'd like to draw everyone's attention to the values of Ubuntu described in the Chapter:

 

Beets, P. & Van Louw, T. (2005) Education Transformation, Assessment and Ubuntu in South Africa.

 

I'm thinking of the values of Ubuntu they describe as:

 

Humanness (warmth, tolerance, understanding, peace, humanity)

Caring (empathy, sympathy, helpfulness and friendliness)

Respect (dignity, obedience, order)

Sharing (giving unconditionally, redistribution)

Compassion (love, cohesion, informality, forgiving, spontaneity).

 

Looking forward to seeing you on Monday. If you can't be here, yet have news to share do e-mail it in. (Paul it would be good to hear about developments in your work in Mexico).

 

Love Jack.