For the Monday group and an invitation to colleagues to contribute to a conversation on inclusional and postcolonial living educational theories

5.00-7.00 1WN 3.8, 9 May 2005.

Our conversations with Bob have focused on the nature of standards of judgement in educational action research and we will miss the pleasure of his company on Monday evenings when he leaves Bath on Saturday on his way back to the University at Buffalo The State University of New York. Let's see if we can keep in touch and possibly develop a proposal for a session at AERA 2006 in San Francisco. I'm already working with Jackie on a proposal for Division A that builds on our e-poster from AERA 05 – this is in the What's New section of http://www.actionresearch.net

Robyn has a contribution to make to our conversation on the nature of living educational theories and I was hoping to link this to the discussion framework produced by John Furlong and Alis Oancea on Assessing Quality in Applied and Practice-based Educational Research - you can access this from the BERA website:

http://www.bera.ac.uk/news/newsdetail.php?id=68

Our conversation on Monday will help to inform the responses of those of us who are going to the BERA Seminar in Oxford next Tuesday on Understanding Research Capacity - a US View - A BERA Seminar on the Future of Educational Research in the UK.

Dean Tian Fengjun's and Moira's latest paper is in the review process for AR Expeditions and you can access the latest publication in this Journal by clicking on the Article section in the left hand menu bar of:

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

Mathew Perrement's Feature article on the work of Dean Tian Fengun, Moira and their colleagues at China's Experimental Centre for Educational Action Research in Foreign Languages Teaching,Action Research revolutionises the classroom, is in the May 2005 issue of China Development Brief. China Development Brief receives funding support from the Kadoorie Charitable Foundation (Hong Kong). There is, at present, no charge for this new, monthly newsletter. To be added to the mailing list, simply send a blank message to news@chinadevelopmentbrief.cn copied to news@chinadevelopmentbrief.com with 'subscribe' in the subject line. I think you'll be delighted with the article. Maggie's paper proposal on Developing a New Scholarship of Educational Enquiry in Higher Education through use of Information and Communication Technologies, has been accepted for presentation to the Irish Educational Technology Conference this Summer. You can view the proposal together with the living theory proposals of Fiona Williams and M Fitzpatrick by clicking here

The details of our accepted Symposium for BERA 05 with Marian, Maggie, Paulus, Alan, Je Kan and Jack on:

CREATING AMD TESTING INCLUSIONAL AND POSTCOLONIAL LIVING EDUCATIONAL THEORIES

are at:

http://www.jackwhitehead.com/bera05all/bera05semallhtm.htm

so do please have a browse through our individual proposals as the ideas could contribute to our ongoing conversations on the nature of inclusionality and postcolonial theory and the development of inclusional and postcolonial standards of judgement in the creation and testing of our living educational theories. Ken and Stefan are going to work with the Bereaved Parent's Circle (Palestinian and Israeli parents whose children have been killed in the conflict) in November and we could think about how this visit with its focus on Dance, might help us to develop a better understanding of inclusional and postcolonial ways of being. Alon's doctoral writings on his heuristic of human existence are getting to the point where I should have three of his sections to respond to in a few weeks. Marian is working on the final touches to her doctorate to ensure that her meanings of passion for compassion are clearly communicated through the visual narrative. Ram has produced two papers from his doctorate and I'm hoping to have these available from actionresearch.net in a couple of weeks.

You can access the e-forum Living Action Research from the bottom of the What's New section of

http://www.actionresearch.net and the details of Action Research for Teachers (McNiff & Whitehead 2005) are at the top of this section.

Any news I've missed do please send it in to share with the group if you can't be here on Monday.

Love Jack.