The educational power of networking

My interest in the power of networking goes back to 1976 with my participation in the Schools Council Mixed Ability Exercise in Science. In this project I worked with six teachers, over two years, to improve the learning of 11 to 14 year olds in mixed-ability science groups and to generate knowledge about the process.

‘The report begins with statements from teachers in mixed ability science lessons of their problems and possible solutions. These problems included the improvement of relations between teachers and pupils and the organisation of resources for enquiry learning. In response to these problems, the network of in-service support described in section 4 was created. This network involved a Resource Collection and Evaluation Service from Bath University and financial assistance from Wiltshire L.E.A. and The Schools Council’ (Whitehead, 1976, p.2, see http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/writings/ilmagall.pdf).

The resource collection has evolved over the years into the flow of communications from http://www.actionresearch.net. These include the accounts of learning of teacher-researchers as they work with their pupils to improve their learning. The accounts of teacher-researchers on masters units on understanding learners and learning, educational enquiry, research methods in education and gifts and talents in education can be accessed from http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/mastermod.shtml.

The doctoral degrees of practitioner-researchers who have received their PhDs for bringing their embodied knowledge as educators into the academy as public knowledge can be accessed from http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/living.shtml

On 7 June 2008, I was delighted to receive my accreditation as an honorary professor of Ningxia Teachers University in China. The work at Ningxia has included the forming and sustaining of channels of communication through the internet for sharing accounts of enquiries of the kind, ‘How do I improve what I am doing?’ in schools and universities. These include accounts produced in China’s Experimental Centre for Educational Action Research in Foreign Languages Teaching, which can be accessed from http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/moira.shtml

This contribution to International Networking for Educational Transformation (iNet) is a brief story of my learning about the educational power of networking in improving learning with teachers and pupils and in generating educational knowledge from my research programme into the generation and testing of living educational theories at the University of Bath between 1976 and 2008.

What I mean by a living educational theory is an individual’s explanation for their educational influence in their own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of the social formations in which they live and work.

I am focusing on the educational power of networking for sharing, through the internet and face-to-face conversations, living educational theories about improving practice and generating knowledge from local contexts, in a way that is influencing the practice and knowledge-creation of others in a global context.

My own influence at Ningxia Teacher’s University in China is due to the work of Dr Moira Laidlaw. whose initial research for her doctorate took place in Oldfield Girls School, in Bath. In 1996, Moira Laidlaw received her doctorate from the University of Bath for her enquiry, ‘How can I create my own living educational theory as I offer you an account of my educational development?’ Here is the abstract to the thesis:

‘I intend my thesis to be a contribution to both educational research methodology and educational knowledge. In this thesis I have tried to show what it means to me, a teacher-researcher, to bring, amongst others, an aesthetic standard of judgment to bear on my educative relationships with undergraduate, postgraduate, higher degree education students and classroom pupils in the action enquiry: 'How do I help my students and pupils to improve the quality of their learning?' By showing how my own fictional narratives can be used to express ontological understandings in a claim to educational knowledge, and by using insights from Coleridge's 'The Ancient Mariner' to illuminate my own educational values, I intend to make a contribution to action research methodology. By describing and explaining my own educational development in the creation of my own 'living educational theory', I intend to make a contribution to educational knowledge.

(You can access the whole thesis from http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/moira2.shtml.

In 2000, Moira Laidlaw began a six-year programme of Voluntary Service Overseas at Guyuan Teachers College and was accredited as a Professor for Life at Ningxia Teachers University in 2005, as the college became a university. Along with Dean Tian Fengjun, Moira Laidlaw was influential in establishing an Experimental Centre for Educational Action Research. She writes on the web about the centre:

Action Research in China's Experimental Centre for Educational Action Research in Foreign Languages Teaching at Ningxia Teachers University

Foreword to the website

‘China's Experimental Centre for Educational Action Research in Foreign Languages Teaching was opened in December 2003, and has now become an active organisation from within the department of the Foreign Languages and Literature Department at Ningxia Teachers University. It is the only centre of its kind in the world, and its purpose is to improve the learning experience for all children in China! We're starting with Ningxia Province! Such an ambitious project has made a promising beginning as this website demonstrates. China has a new curriculum and that has become the main focus for our action research work. In short, the New Curriculum advocates task-based approaches to teaching and learning and turns the traditional modes of didactic teaching on their head, thus requiring greater flexibility and creativity from teachers and students. This enormous challenge gives the impetus to our work. However, it is broader than that, too. We are also seeking to evolve a new form of action research, which we are calling 'Collaborative Living Educational Theory Action Research with Chinese Characteristics'. Our case studies and reflective writing bear witness to these early attempts in developing a new epistemology.

The work on this site is the result of four years of collaboration between colleagues of the English Department in Guyuan and at the Hui Zhong (Moslem Middle School) in Haiyuan. It is also the result of collaborative work between the leader of the Centre, Dean Tian Fengjun, his assistant Li Peidong, and the Centre's advisor, Professor Moira Laidlaw (formerly a VSO volunteer there, and soon to be employed by the university full time). The work also represents international collaboration with Professor Jean McNiff at St Mary's University College (Surrey University, UK) and Dr Jack Whitehead from the University of Bath.

If you scroll down the site, you will see work over the last four years by English teachers of varying experience in the profession, helping students majoring in English and in other subjects, to improve their learning. Some colleagues have written two case-studies, and a few of them have been published in international books. There are also a few entries by grade three students from Professor Laidlaw's Teaching Methodology classes as well as they make their action plans and reflect on the efficacy of their new teaching methodologies. You will also find two Teaching Methodology Handbooks, copyright belonging to the Centre, but which you are welcome to use if you want. There is also a short guide to action research by Tian Fengjun and Moira Laidlaw. There are also some details about the opening of the Centre and Professor McNiff's and Dr Whitehead's visits here over the last three years’. Professor Moira Laidlaw, July 2006

You can access the accounts of the Chinese teacher researchers who have been generating their own living theories from http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/moira.shtml. These show the power of networking in enhancing the influences of ideas generating from a local context in Bath in classroom research in China, to improve practice and generate knowledge.

Closer to home, the power of networking in enhancing educational influences in learning can be seen in the sharing of accounts of teacher-researchers on their masters programmes through the web at: http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/mastermod.shtml.

See ‘Appendix II’ of Joy Mounter's ‘Understanding Learning and Learners’ assignment, ‘Can children carry out action research about learning, creating their own learning theory?’ at: http://www.jackwhitehead.com/tuesdayma/joymounterull.htm.

You can access video clips of six year olds pupils explaining how a two-dimensional action reflection cycle needs to be in three dimensions and dynamic in order to explain their own learning. Seeing the quality of reflection of these six year old pupils has stimulated other teachers to focus on eliciting their pupils’ responses to their own learning and to co-creating their stories of learning together. See, for example, Ros Hurford's third educational enquiry, ‘Working within the framework of 'Personalised Learning': how can I ensure there is a real learning space for my pupils, where they feel involved in what they learn and how they learn it?’ at: http://www.jackwhitehead.com/tuesdayma/roshurfordee3.htm.

Some of the most impressive work on the power of networking can be seen in teacher-researchers who first came together at Westwood St Thomas School in Salisbury (Now Salisbury High School). For example, Mark Potts was influenced by what he saw in South African schools, with Black youngsters, to form links between Salisbury High School and schools in South Africa. I think you will be influenced to share his concerns and help him to strengthen the networks to support pupils working with disadvantages in their social contexts, through reading his enquiry: ‘How can I use my own values and my experience of schools in South Africa to influence my own education and the education of others?’ (see: http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/module/mpsa.pdf.

Simon Riding has extended the networking described in his masters dissertation 'Living myself through others. How can I account for my claims and understanding of a teacher-research group at Westwood St Thomas School?' (see: http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/module/srmadis.pdf
and http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/module/srmadis.pdf) into his present work as first deputy at The Stonehenge School, in Wiltshire.

I am concluding this brief account by focusing attention on the doctoral enquiry of Madeline Church, whose title and abstract focus on the importance of networks for transformation ‘Creating An Uncompromised Place To Belong: Why Do I Find Myself In Networks?’:

‘My inquiry sits within the reflective paradigm. I start from an understanding that knowing myself better will enhance my capacity for good action in the world. Through questioning myself and writing myself on to the page, I trace how I resist community formations, while simultaneously wanting to be in community with others. This paradox has its roots in my multiple experiences of being bullied, and finds transformation in my stubborn refusal to retreat into disconnection. (I notice the way bullying is part of my fabric. I trace my resistance to these experiences in my embodied experience of connecting to others, through a form of shape-changing. I see how question-forming is both an expression of my own bullying tendencies, and an intention to overcome them. Through my connection to others and my curiosity, I form a networked community in which I can work in the world as a network coordinator, action-researcher, activist and evaluator. (I show how my approach to this work is rooted in the values of compassion, love, and fairness, and inspired by art. I hold myself to account in relation to these values, as living standards by which I judge myself and my action in the world. This finds expression in research that helps us to design more appropriate criteria for the evaluation of international social change networks. Through this process I inquire with others into the nature of networks, and their potential for supporting us in lightly-held communities which liberate us to be dynamic, diverse and creative individuals working together for common purpose. I tentatively conclude that networks have the potential to increase my and our capacity for love. (Through this research I am developing new ways of knowing about what we are doing as reflective practitioners, and by what standards we can invite others to judge our work. I am, through my practice, making space for us to flourish, as individuals and communities. In this way I use the energy released by my response to bullying in the service of transformation’. See http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/church.shtml.

Madeline Church focuses here on the importance of the energy released through the power of networking in the service of transformation. In relation to the educational power of networking, I believe that one of its most significant educational influences is in the recognition of the significance of the life-affirming energy released through the power of networking in educational relationships. I am thinking of power as a capacity to do something. We cannot do anything without the expression of energy from this capacity. Representations of educational relationships and influences have traditionally been communicated through words on pages on text, in ways that have been too limited to communicate the meanings of flows of energy. The e-communications through the internet are now enabling multimedia forms of representation to communicate the educational influences of flows of life-affirming energy in teachers’ and pupils’ learning. See a recent multimedia presentation to the International Conference of Teacher Research, in New York, at http://www.jackwhitehead.com/aerictr08/jwictr08key.htm and
‘Combining Voices in Living Educational Theories that are Freely Given in Teacher Research’ at (http://www.jackwhitehead.com/aerictr08/jwictr08key.htm.

I provide the evidence of the educational power of networking in improving educational practices and generating educational knowledge. The video of the keynote communicates my embodied expression of life-affirming energy and passion for education in a very different way to the communication of words on pages of text. This can be accessed from the ‘what’s new?’ page at: www.actionresearch.net. It is my contention that the educational power of networking contains the possibility of generating new living, values-laden and energy flowing standards of judgment for improving educational practices and generating educational knowledge.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr Jack Whitehead, Department of Education, University of Bath, England, United Kingdom, is also Honorary Professor at Ningxia Teachers University, in China.

 

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