For the Monday group and an invitation to colleagues
5.00-7.00 1WN 3.8, Monday 6th June 2005.
Any news from the week do just e-mail it in if you can't be here.
Robyn is off to Zanzibar for two weeks. Margarida is in
Spain and Portugal giving presentations on proprioception. Jean has finished a
complete draft of her chapter on My Story Is My Living Educational Theory for the International Handbook on Narrative Inquiry
edited by Jean Clandinin and to be published by Sage. Jean is off for a couple
of weeks of organising action research workshops in South Africa toward the end
of June and gets back on the 2nd July. Alan's paper on:
Why I Need My Space - I'd Rather Be a Channel Than a Node - has just been published as an 'outstanding article' by the Scientific and
Medical Network and you can access it at:
http://www.datadiwan.de/SciMedNet/Leadarts/Rayner_space.htm
and it would be good to hear responses in the conversation on Monday.
Marian, Je Kan, Jack and
Maggie have registered on-line for BERA 05 so that our presentations in our
symposium are included in the programme (Paulus – just checking if you've
registered – deadline today!). A paper presentation by Jean and Jack has
also been accepted. Judy McBride graduated from McGill University yesterday
with her living theory doctorate and wrote on Monday to say:
Tomorrow morning my work will be
recognised at convocation, and I'll
be there knowing that I did not
earn this degree without the help,
care, love of a great number of
people – my students and my teachers.
I'm sure you know what and how
you have contributed, and I simply want
to
say thank you.
Anat has also written in with reflections on her work with a group of Palestinian women and I'm hoping that Anat will be coming over in a few weeks from Israel to share some of her experiences and learning with us.
In last Monday evening's conversation, Joao and Marie thought that the teachers they are working with, through the Sensory Support Service in Bristol (Joao is Head of the service) and the Saturday morning workshops organised by Marie in BANES, might like the opportunity to get together to talk about their individual and shared interests. I wondered if this could be linked to a group of some 16 TTA funded students that I might have the opportunity to tutor for their educational enquiries on a CPD masters programme from next October. Alon described the framing for his thesis on a heuristics of human existence and writes about his desire to engage in a conversation about the following:
"If I come to the other and reveal with all honesty that
my intention is to construct, enquire, and ethically and pedagogically learn
with the phenomenological intention of improvement, opening up and
strengthening, then this would open up an Inclusional dialogue and transcend
and diminish resistance and defensiveness."
I've also been working on a paper to submit to the journal Educational Theory on:
Do These Living Educational Theories Validly
Explain Educational Influences In Learning With Values Of Humanity?
I'm going to wait until next Wednesday to
submit it just in case you can see ways in which it could be strengthened. Moira
and Jean have already helped with a previous draft. So, if you do have the time
and desire do have a look at the final draft at: http://www.jackwhitehead.com/monday/jwedth.htm
The programme for the visit of Dean Tian Fengjun, from China's Experimental Centre for Educational Action Research in Foreign Languages Teaching, Mr. Gao Qin and Moira, to John Bentley School from the 4 July, is being finalised. I'm seeing if they will join our Monday evening conversation on the 11th July. I'm wondering about possibilities for collaboration between Jane's and Erica's research and teaching at Oxford Brookes and the development of a masters programme with teacher and other practitioner researchers in Ningxia Province – just very tentative thoughts! Jane is moving to the final phases of her thesis with her latest writings on being a creative writer, a creative educator and a creative manager. Erica is working on papers that focus on pupil and student voice.
Love Jack.