Living Educational Theory research references
'Essential'
Papers
Whitehead, J. (1989). Creating a living educational theory from questions of the kind, "How do I improve my practice?'. Published in the Cambridge Journal of Education, 19(1); 41-52. Access freely from https://www.actionresearch.net/writings/writing.shtml
Whitehead ‘updates’ his 1989 paper with his current understandings of the tenets of Living Theory researchand shows how Living Theory research is now contributing knowledge to diverse fields of professional practice. He also shows the latest use of Living Theory research by those engaged in new fields of practice, not currently ‘recognised’ as professional practice, such as the practice of global citizenship, which are contributing to the development of the intellectual and scholarly discourse that form knowledgebases.
Whitehead, J. (2019) Creating a living-educational-theory from questions of the kind, ‘how do I improve my practice?’ 30 years on with Living Theory research. Educational Journal of Living Theories (EJOLTs), 12(2), 1-19. Access freely from https://ejolts.net/files/346.pdf
Whitehead, J. (1995). Advanced Bluffer’s Guide to Action Research. Access from https://actionresearch.net/writings/jack/95contents.pdf
Whitehead, J. (2011) Action Planning In Improving Practice And Generating Educational Knowledge In Creating Your Living Educational Theory. Access from https://www.actionresearch.net/writings/jack/arplanner.htm
Books
Whitehead, J. (2018). Living Theory research as a way of life. Bath UK; Brown Dog Books.
Videos
TEDx - Jack Whitehead on Living Educational Theory research at Bolton University on 24-10-2019
Podcasts
Programme 240, Jack Whitehead on Living Theory/Action Research, pt 1 (27-1-16) Jan 27th, 2016 by insideeducation. Presented and produced by Seán Delaney, "On this week's programme I speak to Professor Jack Whitehead, from the University of Cumbria, who developed the approach to research known as "Living (Educational) Theory." You can find many resources related to such research at the website http://actionresearch.net/. Jack Whitehead was in Ireland to address a meeting of Educational Action Research in Ireland (EARI)."
Programme 241, Jack Whitehead pt 2 & Young Scientists (3-2-16) Feb 3rd, 2016 by insideeducation Presented and produced by Seán Delaney. "This week I bring you the second part of my interview with Jack Whitehead on the topic of Living Educational Theory and Action Research."
Jack talks about his own educational development from his career as a school teacher to academic and educational researcher, which led to him developing Living Educational Theory research, which draws insights from Action Research as it goes beyond it. (Confusion is caused as Living Educational Theory research is not simply a form of Action Research but Action Research has become such a dominating methodology that unless it appears to be directly related to Action Research other forms of educational practitioner research does not get heard about.)
Resources
A free copy of the action-reflection cycles for Living Educational Theory research can be accessed from http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/jack/arlivingtheoryplanner.pdf
Ideas from others which have influenced Living Educational Theory research
Significant ideas from others have influenced Living Educational Theory research, for example those of Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Polanyi, Jurgen Habermas, Basil Bernstein, Barbara Thayer-Bacon, Alan Rayner and Gregory Bateson.
MacIntyre, A. (1988) Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Duckworth; London.
The rival claims to truth of contending traditions of enquiry depend for their vindication upon the adequacy and explanatory power of the histories which the resources of each of those traditions in conflict enable their adherents to write. (MacIntyre, 1988, p. 403)
Polanyi, M. (1958) Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. London; Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Chapter 10 Commitment
Fundamental Beliefs.
I believe that in spite of the hazards involved, I am called upon to search for the truth and state my findings. This sentence, summarizing my fiduciary programme, conveys an ultimate belief which I find myself holding. Its assertion must therefore prove consistent with its content by practising what it authorizes. This is indeed true. For in uttering this sentence I both say that I must commit myself by thought and speech, and do so at the same time. Any enquiry into our ultimate beliefs can be consistent only if it presupposes its own conclusions. It must be intentionally circular. (p.299)
Chapter 11 The Logic of Achievement
In the rest of this book I shall outline some views on the nature of living beings, including man, which clearly follow from the acceptance of my commitment to personal knowledge. Having decided that I must understand the world from my point of view, as a person claiming originality and exercising his personal judgement responsibly with universal intent, I must now develop a conceptual framework which both recognises the existence of the other such persons and envisages that fact that they have come into existence by evolution from primordial inanimate beginnings. (p. 327)
Chapter 13. The Rise of Man
I have arrived at the opening of this last chapter without having suggested any definite theory concerning the nature of things; and I shall finish this chapter without having presented any such theory. This book tries to serve a different and in a sense perhaps more ambitious purpose. Its aim is to re-equip men with the faculties which centuries of critical thought have taught them to distrust. The reader has been invited to use these faculties and contemplate thus a picture of things restored to their fairly obvious nature. This is all the book was meant to do. For once men have been made to realize the crippling mutilations imposed by an objectivist framework – once the veil of ambiguities covering up these mutilations has been definitely dissolved – many fresh minds will turn to the task of reinterpreting the world as it is, and as it then once more will be seen to be. (p. 381)
Habermas, J. (1976) Communication and the evolution of society. London; Heinemann.
I shall develop the thesis that anyone acting communicatively must, in performing any speech action, raise universal validity claims and suppose that they can be vindicated (or redeemed). Insofar as he wants to participate in a process of reaching understanding, he cannot avoid raising the following – and indeed precisely the following – validity claims. He claims to be:
a) Uttering something understandably;
b) Giving (the hearer) something to understand;
c) Making himself thereby understandable. And
d) Coming to an understanding with another person.
The speaker must choose a comprehensible expression so that speaker and hearer can understand one another. The speaker must have the intention of communicating a true proposition (or a propositional content, the existential presuppositions of which are satisfied) so that the hearer can share the knowledge of the speaker. The speaker must want to express his intentions truthfully so that the hearer can believe (p.2) the utterance of the speaker (can trust him). Finally, the speaker must choose an utterance that is right so that the hearer can accept the utterance and speaker and hearer can agree with on another in the utterance with respect to a recognized normative background. Moreover, communicative action can continue undisturbed only as long as participants suppose that the validity claims they reciprocally raise are justified. (p.3) (Habermas, 1976, pp.2-3)
Habermas, J. (1987) The Theory of Communicative Action Volume Two: The Critique of Functionalist Reason. Oxford; Polity.
“….. I have attempted to free historical materialism from its philosophical ballast. Two abstractions are required for this: I) abstracting the development of the cognitive structures from the historical dynamic of events, and ii) abstracting the evolution of society from the historical concretion of forms of life. Both help in getting beyond the confusion of basic categories to which the philosophy of history owes its existence.
A theory developed in this way can no longer start by examining concrete ideals immanent in traditional forms of life. It must orient itself to the range of learning processes that is opened up at a given time by a historically attained level of learning. It must refrain from critically evaluating and normatively ordering totalities, forms of life and cultures, and life-contexts and epochs as a whole. And yet it can take up some of the intentions for which the interdisciplinary research program of earlier critical theory remains instructive.
Coming at the end of a complicated study of the main features of a theory of communicative action, this suggestion cannot count even as a “promissory note.” It is less a promise than a conjecture.” (Habermas, 1987, p. 383)
Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique, Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford; Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
“First of all, there are the conditions for an effective democracy. I am not going to derive these from high-order principles, I am just going to announce them. They first condition is that people must feel that they have a stake in society. Stake may be a bad metaphor, because by stake I mean that not only are people concerned to receive something but that they are also concerned to give something. This notion of stake has two aspects to it, the receiving and the giving. People must feel that they have a stake in both senses of the term.
Second, people must have confidence that the political arrangements they create will realise this stake, or give grounds if they do not. In a sense it does not matter too much if this stake is not realised, or only partly realised, providing there are good grounds for it not being realised or only partly realised.” (Bernstein, 2000, p. xx)
Pedagogy is a sustained process whereby somebody(s) acquires new forms or develops existing forms of conduct, knowledge, practice and criteria from somebody(s) or something deemed to be an appropriate provider and evaluator - appropriate either from the point of view of the acquirer or by some other body(s) or both (p.78).
When I talk about pedagogy, I am referring to pedagogic relations that shape pedagogic communications and their relevant contexts. Three basic forms of pedagogic relation may be distinguished, explicit, implicit and tacit. Explicit and implicit refer to a progressive in time pedagogic relation where there is a purposeful intention to initiative, modify, develop or change knowledge, conduct or practice by someone or something which already possesses, or has access to, the necessary resources and the means of evaluating the acquisition. The acquirer may or may not define the relation as legitimate, or accept as otherwise, what is to be acquired. Explicit or implicit refers to the visibility of the transmitter's intention as to what is to be acquired from the point of view of the acquirer. In the case of explicit pedagogy the intention is highly visible, whereas in the case of implicit pedagogy the intention from the point of view of the acquirer is invisible. The tacit is a pegadogic relation where initiation, modification, development of change of knowledge, conduct or practice occurs, where neither of the members may be aware of it. Here the meanings are non-linguistic, condensed and context dependent; a pure restricted code relay. An example would be modelling, perhaps the basic pedagogic mode; primary in the sense of time and primary in the sense of durability. The primary modelling where both transmitter and acquirer are unaware of a pedagogic relation must be distinguished from secondary modelling which is a deliberate and purpose relation only for the acquirer. (p.200)
Thayer-Bacon, B. (2003) Relational (e)pistemologies. Oxford; Peter Lang
My project is one of analysis and critique, as well as redescription. What I offer is one pragmatist social feminist view, a relational perspective of knowing, embedded within a discussion of many other relational views. In Relational “(e)pistemologies,” I seek to offer a feminist (e)pistemological theory that insists that knowers/subjects are fallible, that our criteria are corrigible (capable of being corrected), and that our standards are social constructed, and thus continually in need of critique and reconstruction. I offer a self-conscious and reflective (e)pistemological theory, one that attempts to be adjustable and adaptable as people gain further in understanding. This (e)pistemology must be inclusive and open to others, because of its assumption of fallible knowers. And this (e)pistemology must be capable of being corrected because of its assumption that our criteria and standards are of this world, ones we, as fallible knowers, socially construct. (Thayer-Bacon, 2003, p.7).
Fromm, E. (1960) The Fear of Freedom, London. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Erich Fromm’s (1960) point from his Fear of Freedom where he says that if a person can face the truth without panic they will realise that there is no purpose to life other than that which they create for themselves through their loving relationships and productive work (p.18).
Rayner, A. (2004) INCLUSIONALITY: The Science, Art and Spirituality of Place, Space and Evolution. Retrieved 3 September 2006 from http://people.bath.ac.uk/bssadmr/inclusionality/placespaceevolution.html
Prelude ‘Inclusionality’ expresses the idea that space, far from passively surrounding and isolating discrete massy objects, is a vital, dynamic inclusion within, around and permeating natural form across all scales of organization, allowing diverse possibilities for movement and communication. This way of understanding natural form radically affects not only the way we interpret all kinds of irreversible dynamic processes, but also the fundamental meaning of ‘self’ as a complex identity comprising inner, outer and intermediary domains, rather than an independent, single-centred entity. Correspondingly, boundaries that from an orthodox perspective are regarded as discrete, fixed limits (smooth, space-excluding, Euclidean lines or surfaces) of isolated objects or systems, are seen inclusionally as pivotal, relational places. Here, complex, dynamic arrays of voids and relief both emerge from and pattern the co-creative togetherness of inner and outer domains, as in the banks of a river that simultaneously express and mould both flowing stream and receptive landscape.
Shifting the Logical Premise - From Orthodox Imposition to Heterodox Inclusion
At the heart of inclusionality, then, is a simple shift in the way we frame reality, from absolutely fixed to relationally dynamic. This shift arises from perceiving space and boundaries as connective, reflective and co-creative, rather than severing, in their vital role of producing heterogeneous form and local identity within a featured rather than featureless, dynamic rather than static, Universe. We hence move from perceiving space as ‘an absence of presence’ – an emptiness that we exclude from our focus on material things – to appreciating space as a ‘presence of absence’, an inductive ‘attractor’ whose ever-transforming shape provides the coherence and creative potential for evolutionary processes of all kinds to occur. Correspondingly, we extend beyond orthodox impositional logic based on the notion of discrete objects transacting within pre-set limits of Cartesian space, to the heterodox inclusional logic of distinct, ever-transforming relational places with reciprocally coupled insides and outsides communicating through intermediary domains. In other words, we move from the ‘logic of the excluded middle’ to the ‘logic of the included middle’. To make this shift does not depend on new scientific knowledge or conjecture about supernatural forces, extraterrestrial life or whatever. All it requires is awareness and assimilation into understanding of the spatial possibility that permeates within, around and through natural features from sub-atomic to Universal in scale.
Bateson, G. (1987) Steps to an ecology of mind. London; Jason Aronson Inc.
You and I are so deeply acculturated to the idea of ‘self’ and organization and species that it is hard to believe that man might view his relations with the environment in any other way than the way which I have rather unfairly blamed upon the nineteenth-century evolutionists…. (p. 492)
But when you separate mind from the structure in which it is immanent, such as human relationship, the human society, or the ecosystem, you thereby embark, I believe, on a fundamental error, which in the end will surely hurt you…. When you have an effective enough technology so that you can really act upon your epistemological errors and can create havoc in the world in which you live, then the error is lethal. Epistemological error is all right, it’s fine, up to the point at which you create around yourself a universe in which that error becomes immanent in monstrous changes of the universe that you have created and now try to live in. (p. 493).
Bateson, G. (1988) Mind and Nature: A necessary unity. New York; Bantam.
Whether Russell and [A.N.] Whitehead had any idea when they were working on Principia that the matter of their interest was vital to the life of human beings and other organisms, I do not know. Whitehead certainly knew that human beings could be amused and humor generated by kidding around with the types. But I doubt whether he ever made the step from enjoying this game to seeing that the game was nontrivial and would cast light on the whole of biology. The more general insight was – perhaps unconsciously – avoided rather than contemplate the nature of the human dilemmas that the insight would propose.
The mere fact of humor in human relations indicates that at least at this biological level, multiple typing is essential to human communication. In the absence of the distortions of logical typing humor would be unnecessary and perhaps could not exist. (p. 124)
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On the web, freely available, is a copy of the Advanced Bluffers Guide to Action Research. Whitehead used this in 1995 with a group of doctoral researchers. You can access this from the frontpage of http://www.actionresearch.net or directly at
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/jack/95contents.htm
The third cycle on relevance, rigour and validity might be helpful in your own research. Peggy Kok applied Winter’s six criteria for enhancing rigour in action research and Martin Forrest demonstrated how a validation group helped to enhance the validity of his narrative.
The fourth cycle on creating educational theory and a good social order could be helpful in your own enquiries. Narrative inquiry is used in Living Educational Theory research, to explain your own learning as you seeking to live your values as fully as you can and to enhance your skills and understandings as your living educational theory.
You can access a free copy of:
Whitehead, J. (2018) Living Theory research as a way of life. Bath, Brown Dog Books. Access from https://www.actionresearch.net/writings/jack/jwbook2018LTR.pdf.
