On Liberation Not Just Love:

A Collective Self-Study of Three Teacher Educators Exploring the Meaning of Their Support For a Group of Special Needs Teachers

Pam Lomax, Moyra Evans and Zoe Parker,

Kingston University, Kingston Upon Thames, UK

(with help from Bernadette Igboaka, Mel Lever and Jack Whitehead)

 

Paper presented at the International Conference,

Self-Study in Teacher Education: Empowering our Future,

Herstmonceux Castle, East Sussex, England August 5-8, 1996  

On Liberation Not Just Love: A Collective Self-Study of Three Teacher Educators Exploring the Meaning of Their Support For a Group of Special Needs Teachers

This is the use of memory;

For liberation ...... not less of love but expanding

Of love beyond desire, and so liberation

From the future as well as the past

(T.S.Eliot, Little Gidding.)

 

We aim to help teachers to create theory about their own practice from their action research enquiries. We encourage them to use story as a means of representing their implicit theories about their practice and subsequently in a group we help them deconstruct their stories so that their theory becomes more explicit. We call this living educational theory as it embodies their commitment to live their educational values more fully in their practices (Whitehead 1993; Lomax, Evans & Whitehead, 1996). For our joint self study of our practice as teacher educators we have chosen to use this same method because we believe that we should model the learning that we expect in our students and that we should account for ourselves in the same way that they must account for themselves. Like our students, we too have written stories which we have shared.

 

Circle Time is a story written by Bernadette Igboaka. The story was read and discussed by the group (tutors and students) and subsequently deconstructed in a written form by Bernadette.

 

Circle time: Bernadette’s story

Have I escaped Aunt Njideka’s question this morning? Would she accept this for an answer? I was too preoccupied with the way it worked. I felt it worked like magic. I did not sleep off but I did not quite listen to the end. Poor Chike. I felt so sorry for him when he arrived. "Yesterday he scratched me. And me too. He kicked and punched me. There is no room here. We are squashed". Chike must have been used to hearing this and not the story he came for. Were Obi and Ada really squashed or had Chike squashed out the last drop of patience in them? These were the thoughts that pounded in my mind as I waited for Aunt Njideka to come in with the dreaded question. Dreaded only on days I had not listened or slept off in the moonlight. It was very important that one listens to the moral of the moonlight story as it is in it that one learns about right and wrong and rewards and punishments from the Chi. It was not the moral of Odoziaku’s story of last night that appealed most to me. It was her suggestion that we all got up and sat in a circle in order to accommodate Chike and the fact that it worked like magic. Two nights ago Chike had to leave because Okpalanna had said he did not want any trouble. It was not a matter of giving Chike another chance. He had a headache and was not prepared for Chike that night. Last week when Adamma tried to extend her patience it did not work. Chike spoilt it all and had to be sent home. Papa Chike must have punished him. Could either have helped it? Chike’s chances had been exhausted. In fact he was already living on borrowed chance.

 

Making values more explicit

Working as a behaviour support teacher in different classrooms in different schools to support teachers who have to deal with children who have educational and behavioural difficulties, Bernadette struggles to live her values in her teaching. In her deconstruction of the story she writes "I have seen myself living on borrowed chance, clinging to a last ray of hope, the one positive statement that can come as a result of my putting another Chike in the context of the school and asking specifically how he survived every, say, ten minutes of the school day". Circle time was written in the early stages of Bernadette’s action research. She writes: " My thoughts have gone back to that morning when I was planning the reply to give to Aunt Njideka and how I felt that I was holding on to something that appeared very important to me for Chike’s sake - Odoziaku’s magic circle". The modern day circle is a method of providing a safe and caring context for a particular child whereby the teacher can call on the group to help support the child. Bernadette sees the circle as working against the philosophy of exclusion that seems to be the increasing practice in primary schools. Sharing the story enabled us to empathise with her values and to understand her motivation. More than this, the story encapsulated Bernadette’s theories about her practice. In her deconstruction of the story she explores her own position on exclusion and clearly sets out the values that underpin her action research. "If Chike is possessed by Ajo-mmuo, then such a label for convenience gives the labeller the licence to justify wanting to exclude Chike. Okpalanna telling Chike that he did not have the disposition for him on a particular day meant that, much as all the others could join in the moonlight story every night, Chike joining would largely depend on the mood of the person telling the story. If Chike is not present at the moonlight story or sent home, then the storyteller’s work will be easier. There will be no interruptions to the story or headaches for the story-teller nor provocations, in the form of being scratched, kicked, punched, squashed, for Obi and Ada. But where is equal opportunities for Chike, the eight year old whose behaviour is not his making?".

 

Bernadette’s story was written for the second session of an eight session course spread over one year. The course involves what we call a staged dissertation, whereby teachers carry out an action enquiry and write it up as they progress. One teaching strategy we use is to encourage teachers to write their concerns into a story at an early stage as we think the act of writing helps them to order their thoughts and the act of offering it to others for discussion enables the author to have a different perspective on the issue. Following on from this we ask the teachers to provide a written explanation of their story and its link with their developing enquiry. Bernadette’s account provides evidence to support our claim that our teaching strategy enables teachers to begin to explore their own implicit theories about their practices. She claims to have made a difference to the inclusion of children with behavioural difficulties within the classrooms where she supports. Before this paper is delivered she will have presented evidence for this claim at a public validation before a group that includes professionals from the school in which she carried out her research.

 

We have chosen Bernadette’s story as the flagship of our paper because it mirrors our own values. We too believe in our own magic circle and its power to create the self confidence for personal liberation. As a student who is part of that circle, Bernadette is well placed to say how important it was for her to have worked within the methodology that we provided. Although we are confident about the testimonial she would provide in answer to such a question, we have chosen instead to answer it through collective self study. We are at a formative stage of that study as we evaluate how effectively we are helping a group of twelve teachers who work with children who have special educational needs to improve their practice. We must wait until Autumn 1996, when the teachers’ work is formally assessed, to examine the evidence of improved practice presented in their dissertations. In this paper we explore some aspects of the process of our teaching by jointly reflecting on data we have collected. The data relates to our work with the students until about the mid point of their programme. It includes tape recordings of our classes, our written reflections on the sessions, the students’ interim reports, a story and a poem written by Moyra and Pam as a stimulus for memory work, and the taped memory work.

 

This is the use of memory

Memory work is the name of a technique which involves us using memories of specific events that we have experienced as a basis for group discussion with the intention of deconstructing and reconstructing their meaning. Haug (1987) and Crawford (1992) conceived memory work as active and interventionist leading to the social reconstruction of meaning rather than to merely personal enlightenment, suggesting that it can contribute to new knowledge. Memory work is a method for a collective investigation of experience, where each person can draw upon her own experience in order to help another understand theirs better. It is a method that rejects the assumption that early experience is a prison of the self in favour of the view that anything a person remembers constitutes a trace in his or her construction of the self (Schratz & Schratz-Hadwich, 1995:41). We believe that memory work enables us to change that construction of the self so that we can reframe our worlds and become better teachers. The method of memory work often includes the use of story. Individuals write stories about some aspect of their lives and present these to a group to discuss. By drawing upon the others’ experiences of similar events the author can clarify her own active part in the events she has described and place it in a broader social and political setting. It is not just the words of the story, but the gaps and spaces in the account, the things written between the lines, that are explored.

 

Building on collective self-expression

We wrote two pieces specifically to use as a basis for exploring our work with our students. One is Moyra’s fictionalised story, in which she presents her remembered feelings about her first meeting with the students. The other is Pam’s poem, intended to express her feelings and her values about working with teachers. Both pieces were written intentionally to focus a memory work session. All the discussion was taped. Subsequently we listened to the tapes and wrote our further reflections, integrating into these transcriptions from the tapes and other data.

 

Meanings: Moyra’s story

She was sitting on the steps at the station. A dejected heap, her pale face staring defiantly from the drabness of her clothes and hair. I picked my way round her, pretending not to notice. She reminded me of my childhood - picking my way through the dirty London streets to school. I was all right when I was there, but the journey worried me, then, as now. I remembered that I had skirted around people quickly, got past, walked quicker to avoid them. A different environment. Would I understand them? How would their beliefs and values differ from mine? Could I guess by looking at them? How did their lives touch mine? They taught in inner London. They had stuck it longer than I had. So it was pretentious that I could advise them. They must struggle with problems I had no idea how to resolve. But my job was not to advise. It was to open out our thinking, to explore meanings, to give them support and confidence to take themselves forward. They started talking, introducing themselves. They didn’t mention insurmountable problems. They spoke warmly of the children, of building their self esteem, of the frustrations of never having enough time, of managing the unmanageable, but they liked each other and extended their warmth to us. We were happy. We could work with these teachers. They told us about the books they had read. We challenged them to criticise what they had read rather than accepting it. They defended themselves. They felt like I often felt. Someone’s saying I am wrong. But I need to stand my ground. Keep arguing. Keep saying it is not like that. You have got it wrong. Stop, stop. It is all wrong.

 

Vulnerability or liberation?

P. Your story....focuses very much on you and your fear of the unknown, and that’s quite useful. I think it quite useful because it shows us as being vulnerable as teachers, and the teachers’ stories are about their fear of the unknown.

M. What about your vulnerable stories?

P. Well I haven’t got one. l’m not as vulnerable as you are.

M. Why is that?

P. I don’t know.

M. Well let’s explore it.

P. I think it’s because I’m quite removed from it.

M. Aren’t you vulnerable at all?

P. Yes, but I don’t consider my work part of my basic me. I don’t consider it that way. I’m incredibly vulnerable about some things, but doing a job of work as best I can, I don’t have myself in it in that way.

 

Does exposing our vulnerabilities to others increase the possibility of empathy between people? Moyra’s immediate thought was that her story exposed her own vulnerability. But why should she feel vulnerable? She had been teaching for long enough to feel confident in what she was doing. Were her fears of the unknown or were they fears of people? Might teachers hold views of teaching which she might find difficult to connect with? If so, how would they build the relationships necessary between teacher and learner?

 

M. Just explore vulnerability. Why don’t you think it’s a bad thing? What do you mean by that?

P. If you can afford to be vulnerable, you can also be strong, I think. If you can afford to let other people see the weakness or the tenderness about things you value strongly, then I think you’re being strong. You’re more or less saying I’m showing you this because I’m so strong myself that whatever you do I’ll only change if you really persuade me and not because you bully me or do anything else.

M: I like this idea but I need to develop the courage if it is to be an idea to which I can wholly subscribe. Perhaps the answer hinges on whether one can afford to let the other people see the weakness. Just because you reveal it, does that mean you can afford it? Or might you give it up without affording it, and without realising it? Why can one person afford it and another cannot? Could Ardra Cole afford it? Is the whole situation fraught with political implications? Is that why people cannot afford it? Might they lose credibility in their job if they expose their vulnerability? Can we engage in self study if we are not willing to expose vulnerability?

 

Inviting them into the house

Pam told the students how much she was learning about special needs from them. She thought this would strengthen their confidence in their own knowledge. She described a poster advertising beer, which depicted an unattractive woman in thick lensed glasses alongside a handsome young man with a smile on his face carrying a can of beer. The slogan said: Her Dad owns the Brewery! Once, she explained, she would have seen the appalling sexism of this poster but would not have recognised the offence it could cause people wearing glasses. She would not have related this poster to disability before working with the group, particularly P and N, who are trying to raise awareness of this issue.

 

Later, in discussion about the day, Zoe reported that N was surprised at our lack of awareness about disability. This seemed to suggest a criticism of Pam. Is the prospect of such criticism a reason why people do not expose their vulnerability? Are they afraid that exposing their failures might result in them being criticised for their ignorance rather than being applauded for sharing their learning?

 

M. The point was the one that you brought up Pam, about learning from the students.

P. Right.

M. Which related back to my story and me feeling worried that these people might be different.

P. Yes.

M. But there is a possible problem in that revealing our sudden learning might surprise other people. It might surprise other people that we haven’t become aware of this before.

Z. N had a strong reaction to what you said this morning. He thought about it all morning Then he said he was shocked that you hadn’t thought about disability .... in that way ... and he was just shocked at the revelation really and surprised.

P. That’s all right, isn’t it? Maybe that will allow him to question his assumptions about how people think about things? Because we always assume that people know everything and think everything and they don’t because sometimes it’s never occurred to them, has it?

Z. No. But it’s quite painful for him that it doesn’t occur to people. That’s what a huge part of his life is about.

P. But that’s unfortunate for him.

Z. Yes.

P. But it’s true.

 

There is a dilemma here that relates back to Moyra’s concerns. How much can a teacher afford to show herself as a learner without the imputed ignorance damaging her relationship with her students or colleagues? Pam’s response to Z and M in the taped extract suggests that she finds no need to pretend to know something of which she is ignorant. This perhaps shows Pam’s confidence in her position as an authority which the others do not feel about themselves. Her abruptness comes from her annoyance that her colleagues seem to lack confidence in their own knowledge when her intention has been to share her own ignorance with her students in order to empower them.

 

Colonizing students’ minds?

Z. This is to do with how we see things differently and why ... what the reasons might be. To do with our experience .... how we’ve been differently socialised.

P. What you’ve just said I think makes a really important central point doesn’t it? That the difference of people in a group is as important as their similarity? ... power relations are key because we do, as teachers, take over the minds of our students and they think our thoughts. How do you get away from that and still help them over hurdles because you know the answers? It’s a terrible dilemma.

Z. I think that’s one of the things that we might find a clue to.. through understanding that we’ve got different ways of doing things but they are OK in their different ways. And through understanding that our students might have a different way of doing things and it might get them to a better place than we had imagined them getting by the route we had suggested?

P. I am delighted today because my three students are doing completely different things. I said to P today, look, if you haven’t got much about action research, why don’t you just forget it and get on with what you are doing. And I thought, well, that’s an amazing thing for me to say really. I was quite surprised about myself, but then I was also quite surprised that the other two, V and B, are just leaping forward in their own directions. Somehow I haven’t held them back...

 

There is a dilemma between wanting the students to do well within the academy by giving technical guidance and wanting them to develop an independence of `mind’ that is likely to be empowering but more risky. Mel Lever commenting on the last paragraph, suggested that we can get carried away by the debate about the meaning of the term action research, and fail to follow the creed. Surely, she says, if we are all questioning and fostering our own development, by whatever means, this has a claim to be accorded the title. This lesson has emerged strongly through our self study, but we have also become aware as we have experimented with different ways of representing our research (Lomax & Evans, 1995; Lomax & Parker, 1995; Lomax & Parker, 1996) that our intentions are not always visible to our audience.

 

For liberation ..... Not less of love

So beautiful.

The sun sharpening the prismatic glory

Of its hard, brittle surfaces, rusted with a patina like antique bronze.

And despite the prickly pride,

And the beginnings of decomposition on the surface

Which had formed a colourful, rainbow-like iridescence,

Standing for itself.

 

Its brilliance may have been dulled.

Left uncomprehending.

Blind.

Shattered.

 

Perhaps mistaken for something inferior

And thrown back from where it had pushed so hesitantly, into the sunlight.

Or worse.

Maliciously defaced

By unscrupulous others

Who would not want its self evident worth to detract from their own superiority.

 

Look carefully

Beneath the surface of our prejudice and power.

So beautiful.

And standing for itself without any help.

 

Pam’s poem, which was an experiment in using an aesthetic form of communication, expresses this dialectic in another way: the analogy with the beautiful brittle glass which has survived despite the hazards. Perhaps the poem also suggests a tentative answer: that it should stand (or fall) for itself without any help? Perhaps this answer is also suggested by Pam’s delight in her students, B and V, whose uniqueness is suggested by the different directions they are taking and her joy in being able to learn from N and P and the others. She says that the poem represented her faith, hope, optimism and belief in human beings as capable of constructing the worlds they choose to live in.

 

Jack Whitehead has taken us to task for not making the word "love" explicit in our text, although it is found in the quotation that introduces our paper. His remark has led us to agree that for us the main work is liberation and not love. Zoe speaks for the three of us when she says "I prefer the notion of liberation to empowerment because there seems more scope for me to liberate myself whereas I might have to wait for someone else to empower me". Jack says that he is particularly concerned to explore the productive tension which he knows he can create when he seeks to share his language of ‘I’ existing as a living contradiction in questions of the kind, "How can I best help you learn to teach?" (Russell & Korthagan, 1995). He has suggested we might help him explore the following incident which happened at a seminar he presented with Moyra and Pam in May 1996 when a female member of the audience gave him the following feedback from a presentation at the British Educational Management and Administration Society (Lomax & Selley, 1996)..

 

‘Jack, you were talking about love and trust, and I had the distinct impression that if I didn’t agree with your ideas you would take me down a dark alley and kick the living shit out of me’.

 

Moyra: There are things we talk about in school which are acceptable and there are things which we do, ways in which we act towards each other which are good and satisfying, but which we don’t go talking about. Things like respecting people’s rights and being concerned for their welfare, looking out for each other, caring for each other. Is this love? I can cope with trust but love has so many different connotations to it, that once you start talking about it you really need to define how you’re using it. Talking about loving sets you apart and embarrasses people.

 

Of Pam’s self study Mel writes: "I often find it uncomfortable to read such personal expressions. Indeed on first reading I was uncomfortable as the form of expression got in the way of the thoughts; I was making value judgements on the writer and how or why she had chosen to write in this way. However, on re-reading the poem I find that it has expressed succinctly the essential dichotomy we all face: we take pride in our work and experience the joy of discovery, at the same time we are surrounded by those who do not wish us to ripple the surface of their ponds and disturb their carefully nurtured lifestyles".

 

And so liberation from the future as well as the past

The form in which we have presented our self studies is not intended to be comfortable but to demonstrate a dialectic between different orders of meaning that are signified by different types of text. We have interspersed personal voices and living theory with more formal or traditional propositional theory. The text moves across the dialectic from one type of text to another in a way which shows a dialogue between these two ways of understanding educational practice. We have punctured our original narrative with insights that we have come to through discussing our texts with different groups of teachers and academics and this has been a source of enrichment to which the length restriction on the paper does not allow us to do full justice. We particularly thank Bernadette Igboaka and our other students whose work has so influenced our thinking. We also thank Mel Lever and Jack Whitehead, who took the trouble to write a detailed response to a draft of our paper.

 

We hope that you will take time in judging our work and put up with the discomfort of what we see as a more direct and human approach than has been supported by academic writing in the past. Although the form of representation is different we are also applying different criteria to the task of selecting meanings we find significant. We have searched our souls and our hearts as well as using our technical expertise to interrogate our data and subject its interpretation to the dialectical critique advocated by Richard Winter (1989). We think we have some uniqueness in terms of starting an enquiry for which we genuinely did not know the answers. Jack Whitehead has challenged us to be clearer about what motivates us in relation to the meanings we might share. He points to Pam’s belief in faith, hope and optimism, to Moyra’s courage in transcending the anxiety associated with feelings that one is exposing one’s vulnerability and to Zoe’s meaning when she speaks of a way which integrated our friendship with our joint enquiry into professional issues. Our response is that our paper has communicated to him three of the most important criteria that we use to judge our effectiveness as teachers. We have not explicated these in a propositional form but they have peeped out between the lines of our paper and been hinted at when we have been explicit about our fundamental values. Surely allowing for such forms of representation is what we are about?

 

What have we learned? That we know so little? That we have excluded so much in the past because it did not fit neatly into the dominant paradigm? That we have paid too little attention to individual difference?

 

Zoe: A turning point in my learning happened during the collective memory work because it felt to me as if we had reached a new way of working together, a way which integrated our friendship with our joint enquiry into professional issues. This went together in my mind with the moment where Pam endorsed an idea I had about working together. This idea was that we all bring different styles to our teaching and we could learn from our differences. I understand now that this turning point was a liberating moment. My own research is about part-time research students’ experiences of their work, and my current practice as a teacher educator involves me in facilitating part-time students as an action researcher. I believe that one should not facilitate the actions of others if one has no experience oneself of trying to carry out similar actions. Therefore, my understanding of my own development as an action researcher is a key element that informs my practice. Being able to explain the process of my own learning can also help others who are carrying out action research. In exposing my process of learning, which includes my points of vulnerability, doubt and difficulty, I believe I can be a better teacher and my students can learn better. I have been developing the idea of an autobiography of learning to help explain this process.This autobiography is an edited version of a life, focusing on the specific concerns that have been chosen to describe and explain the values that underpin a particular practice. The autobiography of my learning is constructed to illuminate specific data about my practice. There are certain special moments which I see as turning points which change my understanding of my learning. The incidents we have individually chosen from our joint discussions are probably such turning points and as such may reflect our uniqueness as teachers.

 

Moyra: But how can I decide which part of the autobiography of my learning I should share with others? How do I come to understand my own autobiography? Why should I inflict it on other people? Do they want to know or do they need to know in order that they can get on with some learning about improving their teaching? Do they have time to listen?

 

Pam: These are questions you and I are more able to answer than Zoe because we have already had the temerity to inflict our autobiographies on others (Lomax, 1994; Evans, 1996). The feedback about my own account has suggested that many people have been able to empathise with the conclusions I have drawn because they can see where I am coming from.

 

Mel: I feel that it is important that we do not separate aspects of our learning life and that any part of our work or our development must have a bearing on our research. If we constructively and openly criticise our own life this must be part of the knowledge of ourselves and our development. Again, one is reminded that not only do others like to keep their worlds uncontaminated, but so do we. We often protect ourselves from debating aspects of our lives that complicate the journey. Yet, surely that is where a rich pattern of cycles of learning comes from.

 

References

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Evans, M. 1996, An action research enquiry into reflection in action as part of my role as a deputy headteacher, Ph.D. Thesis, Kingston: Kingston University.

Haug, F. et al. 1987, Female Sexualisation: a Collective Work on Memory, London: Verso.

Lomax, P.1994, The Narrative of an Educational Journey or Crossing the Tracks, inaugural address, Kingston University, 1-24.

Lomax, P. & Evans, M. 1995, Working in partnership to implement teacher research, paper presented at AERA, San Francisco 1995.

Lomax, P. & Parker, Z. 1995, Accounting for ourselves: the problematic of representing action research, Cambridge Journal of Education, Volume 25 (3) 301-314.

Lomax, P. & Parker, Z. 1996, Representing a dialectical form of knowledge within a new epistemology for teaching and teacher education, paper presented at AERA, New York, 1996.

Lomax, P. & Selley, N. 1996, Supporting Critical Communities Through an Educational Action Research Network, Kingston University & BEMAS.

Lomax, P. Whitehead, J. & Evans, M. 1996, Contributing to an epistemology of quality educational management practice, in Lomax, P. Bringing Quality Management to Education: Sustaining the Vision through Action Research, London & New York, Routledge.

Russell, T & Korthagan, F. 1995, Teachers Who Teach Teachers, London:Falmer Press.

Schratz, M. & Schratz-Hadwich, B. 1995, Collective memory work: the self as a re/source for re/search, in M.Schratz & R.Walker (Eds.), Research as Social Change, London: Routledge.

Whitehead, J. 1993, The Growth of Educational Knowledge: creating your own living educational theories, Bournemouth: Hyde Publications.

Winter, R. 1989, Learning from Experience, London: Falmer Press.