Coming to a Better Understanding of Educative Relations through Learning from Individuals' Representations of their Action Research Pam Lomax, Kingston University, UK Prepared for the Second International Conference on Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices, Herstmonceux Castle, UK, August 16-20, 1998

 

The specific purpose of writing this paper is to make an epistemological contribution within the 'self study of teacher education practices' perspective which I discuss at the end of the paper. I am a university professor and I am working with a group of individual researchers (some of whom are my research students) on presentations to be made at the Hertmonceaux Castle Conference, August 1998. Most members of the group (whom I will call my collaborators) work within an educational action research perspective that has a number of characteristics that, taken together, differentiate it within the broad brush of educational action research methodologies (McNiff, Lomax & Whitehead, 1996). The characteristics of this approach include an emphasis on self study and the centrality of the 'I'; the use of personal values as yardsticks for judging practice; the importance of collaboration through different forms of educative relation; the possibility of developing personal living educational theories; and the possibility of making individual contributions to an epistemology/ epistemologies of practice (Lomax, Whitehead & Evans 1996). These characteristics are contextualised within an imperative to improve practice. In this paper I highlight one of these characteristics - that of 'educative relation. [Footnote 1]

My purpose is to enhance my understanding of the nature of educative relation through exploring my personal response to the different forms of its representation presented in my collaborators' papers. I understand that these forms of representation are intentionally educational, as is consistent with the action research imperative described above. By 'form of representation' I mean a dynamic way of presenting the meaning of one's research that has two components: an inter-subjective dialectic and an intra-subjective dialectic. This paper is constructed so as to show both the 'intra' and 'inter' subjectivity of my own learning as I try to represent my developing personal meaning of educative relation that is stimulated by the ways in which others have represented theirs. I define the intra-subjective dialectic as the process through which one's understanding is transformed as one engages in the struggle to represent what one means. Jean McNiff describes and explains this process in relation to her 'writing' (McNiff, 1990). The parts of the paper that I have written in italics are authored by a more uncertain and vulnerable self than the one portrayed through the main text. They represent the struggle through which I make sense and learn from what others have written; they contain fragments of ideas and experiences that suggest themselves to me through a range of felt responses that defy easy definition. In this way I want to present myself as a 'learner' despite the certainty spun by my propositional text.

I define the inter-subjective dialectic as an engagement with the imagined or actual responses of others where the very act of representing is an invitation to others to engage. I use the word dialectic, because the implied 'openness' to learning is accompanied by purposeful self-knowledge that encourages argument rather than capitulation. The value of 'argument' is a theme that runs through this paper.

I think that my conceptualisations resonate with the work of Elliott Eisner. Eisner (1997) argues that new representational forms to convey to readers what has been learned, "are rooted in an expanding conception of the nature of knowledge and the relationship between what one knows and how it is represented" (p4). The purpose of both forms of dialectic could be described in Eisner's phrase: "to shape experience and to enlarge understanding" (p8), when the 'I' and the 'me' (intra-subjective) or the author and the audience (inter-subjective) act reciprocally to be proactive or reactive, to be teacher or learner.

I guess that the number of different forms of representation possible is constrained only by the human imagination, though Eisners's warning (op.cit. p9) about the peril of not recognising conservatism in others' receptiveness to them, needs heeding.[Footnote 2] Eisner lists five reasons why alternative forms of representaion offer 'promise' to educational researchers. The first is that the new forms of representation tend to encourage empathy. They recognise that 'human feeling' aids rather than pollutes understanding. Second, they provide a sense of particularity that suggests authenticity. (Eisner puts this against the 'peril' of the idiosyncratic). Third, they are evocative in that they encourage multiple interpretation. (Eisner puts this against the 'peril' of losing precision). Fourth, they encourage new ways of seeing things. Finally, they encourage the exploitation of individual aptitudes that have tended to be ignored as research skills.

I am interested in exploring how the 'promises' that Eisner identifies enhance my understanding of my collaborators' research. I must admit that I am predisposed to my collaborators' research because of our shared perspective of action research, although this does not mean that all of us place equal weight on the characteristics listed earlier or that they are used to discipline each enquiry in the same way. Neither do I mean that our formal relation with each other is the same. I relate to Zoe, Victoria, Kaye and Madeleine as the main supervisor of their research, but not to Jack, Ben or Nick in this way.[Footnote 3] Yet everyone in the group is either a school teacher or a teacher educator, and all aim to improve their own practice. The focus of the individual enquiries and the forms they take, follow their own 'purpose driven' paths. I believe that my collaborators - Jack, Zoe, Madeleine, Victoria, Kaye, Ben and Nick - are engaged in individual enquiries that are remarkable for showing educative relation through original and unique forms of representation. I recognise these forms of representation in Jack's explanation of his own living educational theory, in Zoe's autobiography of her learning, in Madeleine's cameo of her educational emotional awareness, in Victoria's moral dilemma, in Kaye's capacity to relate to others as one of many 'players', in Ben's awareness of his God and in Nick's stories of the science classroom.

It is not their texts that are the unique forms of representation but the 'meaning' conveyed through the formulations. The message and the medium together 'evocate' a holistic response. Each representation of meaning invites me into its originator's'being' and their'being able to learn' so that I feel an educative relation to it. This does not necessarily mean that I learn anything from it, but that I am motivated to use my own 'being' and capacity as a learner to come to a better understanding of it. Experiencing myself as a guest in their houses puts me under an obligation to respect the originality and independence of what is shared. I am forced into a moral relation. This makes me think of Victoria's dilemma, which is partly produced by what she feels as "a duty of care", but also by what she feels as a professional responsibility. Victoria flags up for me the moral dimension of educative relation, which she represents as a dilemma in her practice.

Victoria's paper [Footnote 4] is about her participation as an outsider consultant/facilitator in a school initiative aimed to reverse the low rates of attainment among boys which had been identified by Ofsted [Footnote 5]. The school was keen to change teachers' and pupils' perceptions regarding boys and their learning. Victoria's part was to ascertain teacher and pupil feelings, attitudes and responses to the issue of sex and gender through interviews with volunteer members of staff and randomly selected groups of boys and girls, and to feed the anonymised and generalised results back in a staff meeting.

Victoria presents two dilemmas. The first she describes as a dilemma of "the personal and the political", of having to ask questions which could potentially unmask prejudicial or stereotypical views that she thought could damage her professional relationship with the teachers. She felt, "a duty of care towards the participants" that was at odds with her wish to "move participants' thinking forward". In trying to overcome the first dilemma, by helping participants to articulate their own views and value positions in the interview situation, she created a second dilemma, which was that of appearing to collude with views she did not share.

The project was initially framed as an ethnographic study, conforming to the requirements of that methodology. Yet, it is from the committed position of an educational action researcher, that Victoria identifies the professional dilemmas of her practice as an outsider educational researcher and tries to compensate. Faced with the contradictory demands of 'confronting action' and 'supporting being' (Balshaw,1998), she is able to organise the feedback to the teachers so as to tell the story of the research in such a way as to be provocative but also empathetic. In doing this she demonstrates one of the characteristics of educational action research that I listed earlier: the critical use of personal values as yardsticks for judging practice. Her empathy with the teachers appears to trigger 'feelings' about right and wrong, and these moral judgements are presented from the emotional standpoints of 'caring' and 'duty'. Cognitive, moral and emotional dimensions of educative relation are represented through the 'dilemmas' of Victoria's action research.

Yet, I am also aware of a defensiveness in the paper, of too much justification, of a smothered fear that what is written is not 'pucka' action research. This makes me feel ashamed and angry because academics often arouse this fear in apprentice researchers. As Victoria's supervisor, this is not what I want, although I can understand how she might be led to feel this. My reaction is almost a replication of Victoria's own dilemma. How can I demonstrate my delight in another's research, but still accept their unspoken invitation to engage critically with it? This leads me to Madeleine's research, which includes a cameo of her relation to a context I provide for her supervision.

Madeleine's action research [Footnote 6] is about finding ways of helping her student teachers who are training to teach people with dyslexia to become aware of their own thinking so that they can transfer specific learning from one situation to another and help their own pupils to do the same. She calls this type of cognitive self-awareness, metacognition. One of the methods she uses to help her students develop metacognition, is to encourage them to recount and discuss significant moments in their teaching. She uses a cameo as a metaphor for these rich descriptions. The 'cameo' is a brief, affective sketch of a moment that captures a small but momentarily perfect image of realisation. Below is a powerful cameo taken from her own experience as a research student.

'I was sure the paper I had prepared for a validation meeting would be OK: I had worked hard. I had checked my paper against the criteria given - though if I'm honest, when I reread the paper the day before the meeting I began to have some doubts but I just didn't have the energy to address them. My turn came and, although the research group tried not to be too negative, it was clear that the paper was not up to the standard required. I was transported back to my early years at school (although it was unrecognised at the time, I have a learning difficulty related to poor auditory and visual memory and reading comprehension), to the feelings of vulnerability and shame. Back to standing by the teacher, nearly the only one in the class who couldn't read, desperately trying to fathom what the code was that would allow me to do what the others did apparently so easily .. back to standing in the dining hall before lunch, mouthing the times tables while the rest of the school chanted the answers so confidently, praying that nobody would find me out .... The feelings threatened to overwhelm but I hung on, smiling and nodding - I still didn't want to be found out - until after the meeting when I could escape to my car....panic ... anger... hurt... a confusion of strong feelings all crowding in.'

The cameo metaphor represents the emotional impact of a moment in time, although it is presented in relief against a background of past/ present understandings that can be used subsequently as the focus for analysis similar to the use of fictional stories (Evans, 1998), memory work (Schratz & Schratz-Hadwich, 1995) or making situations into 'critical' incidents (Tripp, 1993). Madeleine says that the difference between cameos and critical incidents is that cameos begin with the affective impact of the recognition/ realisation and may then be subject to analysis, whereas a critical incident is first identified and analysed, with the insight/ realisation occurring as a result of the analysis. Fictional or fictionalised stories are interesting in this respect because they may be either a focus for critical incident analysis or like a cameo, constituted by the 'moment of realisation' and its emotional content.

Madeleine's 'cameo' relates me directly to the issues. It brings back uncomfortable memories of childhood shame and my confusion about learning in the Academy that I have written about elsewhere (Lomax, 1994). But the cameo is evocative. It demands multiple interpretation. It makes me take notice of the present context. I wonder if I have failed because of Madeleine's powerful emotional reaction against the context I had set up. [Footnote 7] I wonder if I have placed too much emphasis on 'confronting doing' and not enough on 'supporting being'? Is the 'haven' I have set up for my research students - a haven in which they are helped to explore their 'doing' critically without judgement of their 'being' - imaginary? Madeleine's cameo directs me to pay attention to the explanations that she is proposing. It forces me into an educative relation with her research.

Madeleine's concern is that her students become metacognitively aware of their emotional responses and through this develop strategies for dealing with them. This idea comes partly from her observation that people with dyslexia often have emotional 'hang ups' that prevent them dealing with the dyslexia. She sees the 'cameo' as a means of capturing a 'moment of realisation' and its use enables her to bring perspective to learning. Her own cameo models what she means as a moment of realisation. She would argue that, by capturing this moment in a cameo, she is subsequently able to deal with the negative emotions that could have got in the way of her learning. Not only that, the 'moment of realisation' is seenin itself as a powerful incentive to metacognition.

Madeleine's research suggests that negative emotions can be used positively to promote the educative relation. Yet, I am not happy when my critical responses to students' work causes them distress. As I struggle to improve my practice, I puzzle whether their possibly hostile response is a reaction against a good medicine with a bad taste or an ineffective prescription? Would their capitulation to my criticism be better than their resistance to it? But my own lack of 'guilt' at setting in motion the events that 'caused' Victoria's and Madeleine's 'feelings' does not suggest to me that we have a negative educative relation. A negative educative relation is one in which the relation promotes anti-educational responses. Beryl [Footnote 8] , in her action research about fostering educative relations in the school-gypsy traveller context, reports that prejudice can have this effect. This bring to mind Nick's paper, in which he represents some of the non-educative aspects of relation in the science classroom.

Nick [Footnote 9] presents two stories of the science classroom. The stories are about his own experience as a school practice supervisor working with student teachers. The events described express his values concerning science teaching, although he writes the stories as a 'fly on the wall' noting that his values concerning science education are often different to those prevalent in some educational situations in which he has been involved. He describes two science lessons that illustrate a range of value positions and his personal response to them. He finds cause for concern in the curriculum being offered, in its delivery and packaging, in the non-engagement of students, in the lack of differentiated learning, in tutors' 'legalistic' application of the national curriculum, and in the national curriculum itself.

Extract from lesson 1: "After preliminaries, the teacher's opening question was `In what way are all these alike?': `these' being cat, chimpanzee, crocodile, hare, rabbit, and flower. This rapidly led to confusion and stress, since most pupils could not see any clear meaning to the question. Some were alike because they had fur; some had long ears; most had four legs. But so what? In the end the teacher had to give them the answer, which was `They are all alive'. This was met with great lack of enthusiasm, since it was, once stated, so obvious that the class felt that they had been tricked".

The lesson continues without the student teacher engaging the attention of the class. After the lesson, there is a discussion with the school's professional tutor and the student.

Extract from lesson 1: "I mentioned that the pupils had been quite intrigued by the question of the status of wood, wool, etc., which had come from living things but could not be said to be `alive'. Perhaps a way forward lay in inviting them to explore, using their own understanding and vocabulary, some of the items which they found difficulty in categorizing. To my surprise, the Professional Tutor responded vigorously, and immediately condemned any suggestion of allowing the pupils to discuss ambiguous cases. He declared sternly: `I would say that we had failed in our duty if we allowed any pupils to leave Year 7 believing that Science had not got a clear definition of Living Systems, and was not sure whether or not something like a motor-cycle was alive".

As a 'fly on the wall' Nick relates to the events he describes cognitively, seeing them to represent values that are different from his own. He accepts that other professionals can and do hold different values concerning what goes on in classrooms. They have different ways of seeing classrooms depending on different priorities to his own. Within the stories, Nick uses emotive language to show that the values of the classrooms he observed were personally repugnant. Of the incidents described above, Nick admits, "I was so pessimistic at finding the school secure and confident in educational values which I detest".

I strongly empathise with Nick's expression of 'respect for persons'. I recognise this in his cognitive acceptance that other professionals might hold different views to his own and in his emotional awareness that the lives of students are at stake when teachers misconstrue the nature of their knowledge and pedagogy. The dilemma identified is similar to Victoria's dilemma in that 'respect for teachers' compromises other values to do with responsibility for children's learning. What resonates with me about the work of both Nick and Victoria is their 'thoughtfulness' in not wanting to make public the judgement which their own professional awareness signals - in Nick's case because of his sensibility (in story two) that "the school's position was not a deliberate one, but arising from insufficient attention to the needs of the class", and in Victoria's because she thought that to do so would damage her relation with the teachers to the extent that they would not listen to what she had to report. I appreciate their representation of the need to leave space for others to learn.

Zoe's paper [Footnote 10] is very different to Nick's in that he wrote his stories with a purpose in mind whereas Zoe takes a transcript of a tape recording of a 'significant moment' from the auto/biography of her learning as the focus for her enquiry. The moment she chooses was her first encounter with an already established action research group which she was about to join as a research assistant. She presents extracts from a transcript of the meeting, which was recorded by another member of the group.

P: ...so she's taken that out...

Z: ... and now we're asking her to put it back in and look at her philosophy?

P: ... no, she's written her story and she's done it, you just haven't had it in our original version

Z: Oh I'm sorry, I'm very sorry, I'm very confused by all this.

M: You mean you haven't seen it?

P: No, you didn't have the paper. (Addressed to Z)

M: Oh dear.

Z: I got quite lost, when you talked about.........

P: By the way, this is Z our new research assistant.

Z: .... .a totally surreal situation.

M: So to be a research assistant you've got to work out what's been said without reading it? (Tape extract 65-76)

Using the transcript of the session to stimulate recall some time after the event, Zoe shares her emotional reaction to the memories it evoked. After reading the transcript several times she wrote down highly emotive words. She says that some of the words were stimulated by the content of the transcript, others by the feelings it aroused in her. 'Hurts and wounds' were words stimulated by the title of M's story (upon which the group were focusing) which was called Harry's Wound; but they also resonated with the memories of her own discomfit as a newcomer as she struggled to make sense of the situation.

Zoe says that she uses 'auto/biography of learning' to represent an edited version of her life which focuses on the articulation and explanation of what it means for her to learn. She says that the moments she reveal show the struggle of her learning, with its frailties, doubts and difficulties, rather than a tidy, edited account. Certainly the 'fragment of autobiography' in its decontextualised form, suggests to me the fragmentation of learning in a post modern world. If that is the meaning, it is certainly conveyed in this form of representation, although elsewhere Zoe has used a snake chart [Footnote 11] to make tentative relationships between the fragments of autobiography and to show some direction.

The extracts from the taped conversations, together with Zoe's commentary from the present, open possible multiple interpretations. Looking inside the paper, the dimension of educative relation that arrests me first is that of struggle. Zoe's view that by exposing her own struggle through fragments of her autobiography she can help others deal with theirs, reflects Madeleine's view that cameos can help their authors (and possibly others) make sense of their own emotional responses and cope. Does this support Eisner's view (op. cit) that human feeling (negative and positive) can aid rather than pollute understanding?

Educative relation can take a diversity of forms, including that based on power and that based on collegiality; that occurring between students and their teachers and that occurring between colleagues. I am reminded of Goffman's notion of 'deference' as a symbolic means by which 'appreciation' of a recipient is regularly conveyed to the recipient, and his view that to conceive this solely in terms of a relation between superior and subordinate is a limiting view. He argued that deference and demeanour are often complementary. 'Demeanour' is the ritualistic means of expressing desirable or undesirable qualities (Goffman, 1967). Goffman formulated these ideas as part of a discussion about interaction ritual. Does an educative relation include a ritualistic element? Was it deference that promoted the response that I imagined Victoria to make, when I read her as 'embarrassed' by being seen to use an ethnographic approach in a group that was committed to action research? Did the cameo of Madeleine holding her emotion in check until she got into her car, show the ritualistic response of 'demeanour'? Did Zoe fail to show 'demeanour' as a newcomer to the group, thus inviting M's ironic reprimand? Or is the postmodern condition of fragmentation one in which ritual has been abandoned in favour of direct relation? And is this a good thing?

I think an educative relation is a direct relation without ritual. An 'educative' relation includes the idea that there will be learning and improvement (change) that involves both the self and others independently and reciprocally. I don't see this as ritual. A relation is a progression rather than a 'fait accompli'. As the relation progresses, individuals become more consciously aware of themselves and how others see them. My ideas about this are influenced by the Meadian perspective of self (Morris, 1972). I think that reflexivity is an imperative to see oneself as others see one - ideally through many glasses and not selectively. As the relation progresses, each person becomes more consciously aware of others and how they are affected by one's actions and expectations, and this is a reflective stance, involving reflection on what is happening around one. Integral to the educative relation, is that both the reflexive and reflective stance must be reciprocal and shared.By areciprocalrelation, I mean a relation where each side is equally willing to teach and to learn, as opposed to a relation where one always teaches and the other always learns. By shared I mean where each side is willing to share their thoughts about themselves and others even when this means exposing their vulnerability. I think that an educative relation involves a striving towards reciprocity, where differences between individuals such as differences in perceived and actual authority and power, need to be overcome. The strength of Kaye's representation of herself as one of many players is that it comprises this meaning of educative relation.

Kaye [Footnote 12] represents the relationships that occur in her classroom through 'a play within a play'. She uses the metaphor of players to express her values of inclusion, the players being herself, her five welfare assistants and her 10 students who have severe, profound and multiple learning difficulties. The 'play within' contains short extracts of dialogue and action from drama lessons in which Kaye and colleagues seek to help their students "to develop self-awareness and awareness of others in order that the students can express their feelings, wants, needs, likes and dislikes as effectively as possible". For instance, Melissa is eye-pointing and touching objects to make choices. Kaye says, "We can ask Melissa to make decisions such as, 'Which hat do you think the character should wear?' by presenting her with two styles of hat. We can give Melissa the experience of choice, 'You touch this hat, the character wears it'."

The outer play provides a device for contextualising the play within a rigorous action research frame. It presents three cycles of action research as three acts of a play. Each Act is associated with a particular group of drama lessons and includes different scenes. Some scenes present authentic dialogue from transcripts of conversations; in other scenes 'monologues', 'soliloquies' or 'asides' are used to present a rationale for action; to share reflection or evaluation; or to comment on specific issues. The 'Chorus' is a device for incorporating the advice and criticism of a support group. The 'Critic' is a device for engaging interactively with literature.

Kaye's paper provides the most explicit account of the reflexivity of practical action and action research of any of the accounts in the symposium. In her work the practice (action) and the theory (research) mirror each other. The research method demands educative relations between participants that the practical aim of the research seeks to foster. For example the following extract from a 'soliloquy' shows the teacher's cognitive and emotional awareness of Stephen's progress, and a moral commitment to a particular form of education.

'In today's lesson, the students were given a choice of who they wanted in the scene. What was exciting was Steven's response. Steven always chooses a scarf or a soft object in these situations, possibly the tactile element determines it, but today he looked at the objects and grabbed across to the opposite hand and took the cap. I would like to think that he was making a real choice to see a scene between Ben and Rocky as opposed to a scene between Rocky and his Mum'.

The particular form through which Kaye represents her work, the play within the play, invited me into an aesthetic (or holistic) understanding of educative relation both in the context that she portrays and in her research method. The 'play within' provided the space in which the learning of particular players was accessible, while the 'play without' provided a way of accessing the whole. This view of educative relation is to abandon ritual in favour of direct relation, or what has been called a participatory mode of consciousness. Both Kaye and Ben represent educative relation to include the somatic, nonverbal quality of attention that is based on a recognition of kinship implicit in a participatory mode of consciousness (Heshusius, 1994). Kaye uses the metaphor of player to signal 'kinship' and a commitment to act, and the play within to show the nonverbal, somatic quality of attention shown by the teacher and her assistants to the needs of students with severe, multiple and profound learning difficulties. Ben's action denotes a more passive model of player, but his 'void of anxious waiting' in which he shares his experience of possible loss of a relation to John, suggests 'a somatic quality of attention' that is reminiscent of Christ's agony in the garden .

In Ben's paper [Footnote 13], an educative relationship provides a clue to spiritual awareness. For Ben, spiritual awareness involves a search to find himself and his God. The 'search' is conducted through his educative relations with others, where he endeavours to help them. The paper is about a relationship involving John, his student. Ben explains: "...to find myself in God I have to experience the void within me ..... an unfullfilled longing which nothing in the world will satisfy. It is only searching for God and myself in God that will fill this void within me." Ben describes how this void appeared when he "challenged John to the possible point of rupture of relationship". He describes how he had built up a relation of trust with John and on the basis of this judged that the time was ripe to question aspects of John's teaching without destroying his confidence. The opportunity was provided when Ben and John viewed two videos that John had made of two of his lessons. Ben shows that he is cognitively aware of his dilemma in wanting to challenge John and at the same time offer compassionate understanding of John's fears. Ben makes the challenge and waits to see how John will respond. Ben says: "I experienced a void when I was unconnected with John ..... I met him (God) that day in the space between John and me, in the void of anxious waiting".

Ben offers a spiritual solution to the 'confronting action/supporting being' dilemma, that suggests the importance of a spiritual dimension in educative relation. This spiritual dimension is expressed by Ben as his willingness to 'sacrifice' his relations with John for John's own good. At this point he is swayed towards thinking that he is offering an effective prescription - though he probably fears it is good medicine that tastes bad. Ben says, "... in the concrete moment of challenge with John I not only met a new John, a metamorphosed John, but also a metamorphosed God. I met a God who is involved in the world as I am and who delights in it". This is where I experience Ben's somatic quality of attention, reminiscent of Christ's agony in the garden .

Do I experience this because I know that Ben is religious? Or is it conveyed through his representation of his meaning in the story of John? A link between a participatory mode of consciousness and the idea of 'connectedness' is suggested to me when Ben says: "I experienced a void when I was unconnected with John". It strikes me that Ben's relation with John and his willingness to sacrifice for him, is completely opposite to a relation that threatens to appropriate, colonise or alienate [Footnote 14] . Yet, fear of 'being colonised', for me, is the other side of the coin to 'being connected'. I am uncomfortable with the idea of 'connection'. Ben leads me to question this view. He found that his fear of being unconnected was not realised when it happened, because he found a spiritual strength in acting out his values - a connection with his God. My disquiet with the idea of 'connectedness' is not simply that (like Kaye) I do not want 'to impose my thoughts or direction' on my students or my colleagues. I do not I want them to define me. I am reminded of a conversation with John Elliott in which he said that he saw me as an academic 'nomad', moving between different groups, staying for a while and then moving on. If this is true, maybe Ben's 'void' is not a sacrifice but a haven? A place where I can know myself? I do not share Ben's religious interpretation of spirituality, but I can associate with a need for ones own space, ones own void, uncluttered with responsibility or the expectations or definitions of others.

Jack's paper [Footnote 15] is about making distinctive and original contributions to educational knowledge through asking and answering a certain kind of research question. In asking the question, "how do I know that I have influenced your learning for good?, he says he is addressing himself, and to do this he focuses on those educative relationships which he experiences as a supervisor. The paper is directed at the students he supervises. He says "I see my educative relationship in terms of helping "you" to live life well as I work with you in an enquiry which is grounded in living your values more fully in your practice".

Jack has three ideas that are fundamental to his relation with his students:
1. that in questions of the kind, "How do I improve my practice?", "I" exists as a living contradiction in holding values and experiencing their denial at the same time in asking the question;
2. that "I" as a living contradiction is motivated to improve what he or she is doing in action reflection cycles;
3. that the descriptions and explanations for their own learning which individuals create, constitute their own living educational theories which explain a present practice in terms of an evaluation of past practices and understandings and in terms of an intention to create something better which is not yet in existence.
A fourth idea he uses is drawn from Martin Buber's 'I-You' relation. Buber writes about the special humility of the educator (Buber 1947) which enables the educator to subordinate his or her hierarchical view of the world, to the educational needs of the student.

Ben's paper strongly suggests 'the special humility of the educator'; that having done the responsible thing, whatever the consequences, one may find peace with oneself and that this is a spiritual awareness. This is very different from Jack's notion of living educational theories, created by professionals through their own research into their own practice, providing a kind of independence that could be a safeguard against alienation, but also a responsibility to resolve the living contradiction of their lives. I find Jack's notion of 'living educational theory' empowering and liberating as it appeals to my respect for research as the proper underpinning for education and to my optimism about the possibility of creating a better world through education. I find his view about 'living contradiction' at odds with my understanding, because I experience the world in its different ways without either the desire or the guilt to want to synthesise it into a single explanation. I have learned from Ben that ' having done the responsible thing...' Perhaps in this respect I empathise with Zoe's struggle, although I am perhaps more confident and therefore less guilty in accommodating fragmentation than she.

Discussion

The questions I ask myself are: Do I get on the inside of their work? Can I access the intra-subjectivity of their learning as well as connect from the outside? I have said that I think educative relations involve improvement/change. I think this happens through intentional, committed, responsible action that enriches awareness for all parties in the relationship. I think that an educative relation is one in which all parties to the relation seek to enhance the awareness and connectedness of each other. Awareness and connectedness may have different and inter-related dimensions such as spiritual, cognitive, emotional, political, moral and aesthetic dimensions. Cognitive awareness is often favoured and used to provide a 'translation' of the other dimensions of awareness, thus people often record a cognitive awareness of other dimensions. What kind of awareness does this imply? Empathy? Awe? Love? Appreciation? A willingness to appreciate the whole rather than to dissect and diagnose? How does this sit alongside the rational, moral, spiritual, political, aesthetic, emotional, affective dimensions of our ability and desire to connect? Or our capacity for disconnection and negative relation?

Eisner maintains that 'new' forms of representation encourage new ways of seeing things. This paper suggests that if 'forms of representation' are seen to comprise both the intra-subjective and inter-subjective dialectics that I have described, they hold great promise for exploring and developing educative relation. The forms of representation used by the authors of the papers in this collection have enabled me to empathise with the educative relations that have been represented. It is clear from these examples that 'human feeling' (both mine and those presented) has aided rather than polluted these representations. For example, Victoria's representation highlights the moral and cognitive dimensions of an educative relation. Victoria shares her sympathetic understanding of what it means to be a teacher. She, a teacher herself, empathises with the other teachers involved in her research and as a result she represents it as action research, as a dilemma of relation, despite its certainty when framed as an ethnographic study. Victoria's work is particularly interesting because the questions raised about educative relation apply both within the action and within the action research. This is also true of Kaye's work, where the form of her representation is the metaphor of the 'player and the play' and through this she highlights the holistic and participatory dimension of educative relation. This recognition of direct relation is applied both to her work as a teacher and to her action research to improve that work. Kaye's form of representation is particularly illustrative of the way in which new approaches encourage the exploitation of individual aptitudes that have tended to be ignored as research skills.

The forms of representation used by the authors of the papers in this collection have invited me into the particularity of the educative relations that have been represented, inviting me to share their authenticity. The form of Jack's representation is 'living educational theory' and through this he highlights the dialectical and personal dimensions of educative relation that are liberating and empowering for indiviouals. The form of Zoe's representation is a 'fragment from an autobiography of learning' and through this she highlights human fallibility and misunderstanding as a dimension of an educative relation. Her paper suggests the issue of how we go about understanding 'educative relation' within a post modern context of fragmentation. Ben's representation of his meeting with God in the space created as he waits the outcome of his brave action to help another, also emphasises the particular. Something about these two texts convinces me of their authenticity but I also find them idiosyncratic. And why not? Is authenticity and idiosyncrasy necessarily oppositional?

The forms of representation used by the authors of the papers in this collection have been evocative in encouraging me to consider multiple interpretation of educative relation, and in doing this I have gained some insight into my own position as an educator. For example, the form through which Nick represents his meaning, his stories of the science classroom, highlight non-educative classroom relations that may be seen as 'immoral' and 'illogical'. These stories encourage both cognitive and moral understanding of educative relation by foregrounding the dialectic. The form of Madeleine's representation is a 'cameo' and through this she highlights the affective and cognitive dimensions of an educative relation. She shows that educative relation can be emotionally negative as well as emotionally positive. Where it is emotionally negative, she has argued that it can be cognitively challenging. This suggests that the different dimensions of an educative relationship are not always congruant; not always pointing in the same direction. Like Ben's sense of loss of other that is compensated by his spiritual repleteness? Is this the essence of my disquiet with Jack's notion of the living contradiction?

This brings me to the question of what is a self study of teacher education practices perspective, and is it a good thing? On the basis of the first Hertmonceaux Conference, Hamilton and Pinnegar identified openness, collaboration and reframing as the main features of self-study (Hamilton, 1998, p2-3). I have suggest that multiple forms of representation should be another feature. The ways in which the idea of 'forms of representation' have been used in this paper suggest that they are predicated on two kinds of openness that are congruent with the features of self study identified above. - opening it up by inviting an audience to engage (inter-subjective dialectic) and opening it up to ourselves (intra-subjective dialectic). The first of these demands collaboration, the second demands reframing.

There are personal and political implications in using new forms of representation. Eisner pinpoints the political when he argues that one of the promises of new forms of representation is that they encourage the reframing of public knowledge through encouraging new ways of seeing things, allowing us to exploit individual aptitudes that have tended to be ignored as research skills, and encouraging multiple interpretation. In relation to the latter point, I find myself in disagreement with Barnes who found himself disorientated by the first Hertmonceaux Conference because he had not internalised the ground rules of self study. He says of the essential ground rules of education "most schooling is concerned with a what if? world that has no more than a symbolic relationship to the world of action" px. I think this is true but sad. What I have experienced in trying to empathise with my colleagues work is that many of their forms of representation have enabled me to make a direct connection rather than engage in a symbolic relationship. As I have argued, I think this is because we have moved away from the modernist pre-disposition to utilise ritual - as a practice and as an explanation - towards a more post modernist position of 'direct relation'. Distancing between individuals and their actions now tends to be identified as a simulacrum - a copy of the original - rather than a ritualised or symbolic form of behaviour. I would suggest that it is the action research framework employed by the researchers cited in this paper, that makes direct relation an imperative both of the action and the research method.

Eisner also pinpoints the personal, in that the 'promise' of new forms of representation is that they encourage us to recognise our 'human feeling' as an aid to understanding, they provide a sense of particularity that encourages authenticity, and they encourage empathy. He also warns of others who are not willing to accommodate this. In explaining our relation to recalcitrance we need to note Barnes warning about setting up alien frames that others find difficult to accommodate, such as "trying to impose ones own way of thinking upon students , without helping them to relate what they know already to the new forms of thought" (op.cit. pxiii). It might be that the relation of recalcitrance is a non-reciprocal relation, lacking the participatory consciousness that effective collaboration demands. Barnes remarks that self study is essentially a humane approach to education. I prefer to see education as essentially a humane activity and therefore an educative relation as a humane relation. I think that this paper provides evidence that such relations exist both as the subject and the method of our action research.

In conclusion, I have attempted to show through my own representation of the inner and outer dialectics of my practice as I try to learn from the work of others, how we can apply new standards of judgement which can help to resolve the crisis of legitimation that Guba and Lincoln identified (Ref). The 'new way' is focused explicitly on 'method', but I suggest that it also makes a fundamental contribution to epistemology, both in the expression of the new standards of judgement, and to methodology in how the standards can be understood.

FOOTNOTES

 

1. I use the term educative 'relation' rather than 'relationship' so as to keep it distinct from 'interpersonal relationship' and the connotations of that.

 

 

2. See G.J. Cizek, Grunchy granola and the hegemony of the narrative, in Educational Researcher 24(2) 1995.

 

 

3. Is it significant that I have identified a gender division here?

 

 

4. Victoria Perselli (1998 ) The Political is Personal: an action researcher investigates issues of sex and gender in a junior school .

 

 

5. Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) responsible for the inspection of schools/universities etc.

 

 

6. Madeleine Mohammed (1998) Using cameos to mediate educational emotional awareness.

 

 

7. Madeleine is describing a regular session in which students present their research to each other and to me and get feedback.

 

 

8. Beryl Hawdon is not presenting at Hertmonceaux.

 

 

9. Nick Selley (1998) Two critical incidents in school science.

 

 

10. Zoe Parker (1998) Becoming an action researcher: An exploration of one significant moment in the auto/biography of my learning.

 

 

11. Lomax & Parker, 1995

 

 

12. Kaye Johnson (1998) How can I use drama for action research with students with severe, profound and multiple learning difficulties?

 

 

13. Ben Cunningham (1998) What do I mean by my authentic engagement with my God and with John?

 

 

14. I use the term in the Marxian sense of ones 'intellectual' work being appropriated by others.

 

 

15. Jack Whitehead (1998) How do I know that I have influenced your learning for good? A question of representing my educative relationships with research students.

 

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