Group items tagged

onversations between pairs of practitioner-researchers in which we take some 4 minutes each to outline our contexts, what really matters to us, and what we would like to improve

motivating you to improve your practice it often helps in the development of realistic action pla

After the initial conversation on values and context in relation to your desire to improve practices that relate to helping students, yourself and/or colleagues to improve their learning, I believe that you may find the following action planning process most useful.

'How do I improve what I am doing?'

tions, ideas and actions that can distinguish an action reflection cycle: 1) What do I want to improve? What is my concern? Why am I concerned? 2) Imagining possibilities and choosing one of them to act on in an action plan 3) As I am acting what data will I collect to enable me to judge my educational influence in my professional context as I answer my question?  4) Evaluating the influence of the actions in terms of values and understandings. 5) Modifying concerns, ideas and actions in the light of evaluations.

Making public a validated explanation of educational influences

7) As I evaluate the educational influences of my actions in my own learning and the learning of other, who might be willing to help me to strengthen the validity of my explanation of my learning about my influence with responses to questions such as: i)               Is my explanation as comprehensible as it could be? ii)             Could I improve the evidential basis of my claims to know what I am doing? iii)            Does my explanation include an awareness of historical and cultural influences in what I am doing and draw on the most advanced social theories of the day? iv)            Am I showing that I am committed to the values that I claim to be living by?

nhancing professionalism with TASC (Thinking Actively in a Social Context)

.  In producing a valid explanation for our educational influences in the learning of others I believe it to be necessary for the other's explanation of their own learning to be included in our explanation. 

ecognises the creativity of the other in engaging with ideas

I believe that Sally's writings make an original contribution to educational knowledge whilst showing that she has found useful some of my own ideas  in making this contribution.

Educational Enquiry (EE), Research Methods in Education (RME), Understanding Learners and Learning (ULL) and Gifts and Talents in Education (G & T) you can access these at: http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/mastermod.shtml .

To see the criteria used in assessing these units click on this link for the MACriteria.

virtual learning space for this CPD project go to http://www.spanglefish.com/livingvaluesimprovingpracticecooperatively/ . You can also read Walton's (2011 a&b) ideas on developing a collaborative inquiry.

In an inclusional way of being and knowing an individual recognises that they exist in a relational dynamic of space and boundaries. Hence one of the tasks of the practitioner-researcher is to express and communicate this relational dynamic in explanations of educational influence.

An example here would be the use of Foucault's (1977) ideas on Power/Knowledge to understand the relationships between the Truth of Power and the Power of Truth in the workplace when seeking academic legitimation for new living standards of judgment.

WHEN TO PARAPHASE AND WHEN TO QUOTE.... When should you use a quote and how should you reference the work of others? You use a direct quote ONLY for one of these three reasons... ARTFUL WORDS The text is so wonderfully written that no matter how hard you try to put it in your own words something critical is lost. You cannot paraphrase it. Use the quote and be sure to include the author, publication date and page number.FROM THE EXPERT -The importance is not the words but the fact that a certain person said them. For example, a politician might make a statement that has meaning because of WHO said it. The words might be less then poetic but the reason for the quote is to ties the words to the author. Again you need to indicate the source and if it is cited in an article from another source the correct way to list it is. (Bush, 2004 cited in Steward, 2004, p35). CONCEPTS AS PROPERTY The quote contains a phase or concept that you want to tie to a person. For example "communities of practices" (Lave and Wenger, 1991) But beware of writing in the words of others because you are afraid to interpret a the text. This is a common mistake in graduate student writing. You have a right to make sense of the writing. And with a citation you can paraphrase the results of the study using some of the words that are in the study. Don't be afraid to put it in your own words. Now there are a number of ways to cite the person --Suppose you want to quote Riel for the phrase/idea --"Technology is shared minds made visible"...here are four different ways of doing this.