“The moon and sun are eternal travellers.
Even the years wander on.
A lifetime adrift in a boat,
or in old age leading a tired horse into the years,
every day is a journey,
and the journey itself is home.”
For me? More blogging inspiration, in the here and now.
Currently looking into the viability of teaching blogging to academic staff and students, at Sussex University initially. It’s certainly the way things are and need to be going. Heck, Universities created the internet for these reasons in the first place, but long-lead-time dead-tree journals seem to have taken over the publishing side of things and there is not a lot of deep content out there.
Specific (participant) outcomes expected:
- Your own free weblog site for individual or group publishing.
- Instantly and easily publish your own or a group’s academic /
creative work (in progress or completed) online, without having to wait
for it to be updated by webmasters.
- Share thoughts and work with an extended learning community for
feedback and discussion.
- Collect thoughts, notes, longer pieces / items and reflect on your
own learning with private or public posts.
- Support the development of student and staff voice and collegiality
- Develop greater confidence in expressing yourself
- Be heard!
- Enhance your public profile for media and public speaking.
So far the response has been great. Will see what doors starts to open…
Increasingly my teaching practice is focussing on blogging for a wide range of learners and contexts, including:
Here is a general, introductory message about the tailored courses available.
Come and join the global conversation. Blogging is a profound, effective new way to express yourself, connect, learn and be heard. It’s a process and an outcome, supporting personal, academic, business or organisational growth.
Many and diverse people, all around the world, are successfully blogging online about their:
- learning
- lives
- diverse interests and hobbies
- businesses
- electorates
- public roles, and
- creative pursuits.
Blogs (or web logs) can include words, images, sound and links as well as comments back from your new-found audience.
This is your chance to find out what blogging is all about and get your very own (or a group) blog working for you. Suitable for anyone that can use a basic word processing package that has used the internet before. You do NOT need to be an experienced writer, as you will be developing this skill in your own style. Within three sessions you can have your own free blog site up on the internet.
By the end of the course, you will have found your voice and be confidently blogging. Join in and watch yourself and/or your business grow. Plus, learn how to have people find your blog when you are ready.
……………………………………..
About your Teacher
Libby Davy has over 15 year’s experience working professionally and teaching communications – for individuals and organisations. She contributes to several blogs and was a pioneer blogger at www.barkingowl.com/learning and other spaces.
Currently studying a Masters in Person-Centred Education at the University of Sussex, Libby is interested in how blogs support life-long learning through their open, reflective and communal nature. Libby is a co-founder of one of the internet’s most exciting new online communities www.scouta.com, where she hosts groups on Education and Brighton.
After gaining a degree in communications and media Libby eventually went on to teach writing, editing and publishing at a university and community level. She is a published and awarded short-story writer, and has had her work broadcast on national radio. For many years, Libby worked in strategic communications, marketing, organizational development and business coaching.
Libby is a fun, friendly, Australian mother with a passion for education and human potential.
Contact 01273 540 023 or 07968 687 107 to book a place or arrange a tailored workshop series.
Are you a curious person? If so, does this help you learn more? Do you think it is a blessing or a burden? How can you harness it to educate yourself, in the fullest sense of the word. What is learning?
These questions and more are examined in the learning biography I’ve just submitted to Sussex University’s Institute of Innovation in Education towards an MA in Person-Centred Education.
The language is somewhat academic, but there are lots of poetic moments. That’s integration for you!
It was a transformative process of deep learning, and testimony to the benefits of person-centred education, despite the university’s inevitable challenges in embracing the whole person.
Here’s the first page and the full .pdf
Towards Integrated Learner Curiosity
We need to create a culture that leaves room for the constant “contamination” of a hundred subjective and objective experiences, in an atmosphere of reciprocal help and socialisation. Implicit in this thesis is a decisive response to a child’s need to feel whole.
Feeling whole is a biological and cultural necessity for the child (and also for the adult). It is a vital state of well-being (Malaguzzi in Reggio Children 1996, p 34).
Synopsis
This learning biography uses narrative to explore personal knowledge being formed about the cause, nature and function of curiosity and its relationship to learning, within a cycle of inquiry into spirituality.
Looking closely at pedagogues Paulo Freire and within the Reggio Children project, along with psychologists and philosophers such as Carl Rodgers and John Macmurray, it begins to articulate a vision of integrated learner curiosity and a personal expression of an ancient way of looking at knowledge.
It also critiques a university’s early beginnings in practicing emerging theories of person-centred education and challenges academia to embrace the potential of the Reggio “hundred languages” in understanding adult learning.
…………………..
Having lived a life rich with curiosity and learning, I am now curious about curiosity. From my earliest memories, I engaged deeply with the world around me. I have been highly motivated to learn through being curious. I have felt great joy and great sadness through this trait and state, and have come to embrace it – and consciously, carefully harness this Promethean flame.
More…
Learning Biography
Dear mum got me to check out the new film Freedom Writers. Powerful stuff. Check it out yourself (trailer). We all have a voice.
The production notes within “About the Film” tell me a hell of alot about authentic education, biography, community, student voice, about the noble calling to teach, to listen, to find a way in, to make it real.
[Update: see new post here.]
In preparing to write my learning biography for the MA in Person-Centred Education, momentum is gaining to bring together key threads in the reflective process that’s been bubbling away over the last 6 months since I first discovered the course.
One of the key themes is books. I have learnt a great deal from books. I have spent hours and days and years of my life immersed in them. I have lain down in sunny fields, surrounded by daisies, reading until my stomach growled for attention. I have curled up in a waterproof, padded, canvas bag in torrential rain and hail stoms, reading to that last gripping chapter.
I have worn batteries and parents out with clandestine, late-night sessions under the doona.
In retrospect now, I think of the warmth of the womb as an incubation chamber towards human becoming, like cinema viewing (I like all the lights out). I see the desire to combine the natural world with the inner or intellectual world. The integration of a dual self.
I have had books handed down by my mother and my grandmother, recommended by friends. I initiated a chapter of the Puffin Club (Penguin Books) at my school, age 10 - with a letter from Muddlepup and the secret code book as treasured artifacts to prove it.
I wrote my first book, “The Mad Mad Mad Professor” at age 7 (is this still in Mum’s collection?) and have been writing ever since. Some examples of work published or broadcast are available here.
As a little woman growing up, I was in love with three books by Louisa May Alcott, (romantic that I am, problematic as they are).
Little Women grew in to Good Wives then on to Jo’s Boys.
The character I most identified with was Jo:
“The protagonist of the novel. Jo is a tomboy and the second-oldest sister. She is very outspoken and has a passion for writing. Her bold nature often gets her into trouble. She is especially close to her younger sister Beth (make that “Gra”), who helps her become a gentler person. Jo cuts off her long hair - “her one beauty,” as Amy calls it - and sells it to a wig shop to get money for her mother to visit their father, a wounded Civil War chaplain. She refuses the proposal of marriage from family friend Theodore Laurence (”Laurie”), despite many letters sent to Alcott to have them married, and later marries Professor Fritz Bhaer.” (From Wikipedia entry.)
I have highlighted the most resonant aspects.
One of the reasons we were so drawn to The Dharma School for Bea (6) was that her teacher Caroline Woods made a priority of outdoor experiences. A regular weekly visit to Ecoplay at Stanmer Park (part of Stanmer Organics) gave the children, teachers (and sometimes parents and grandparents!) a much needed chance to connect with nature. I have also seen lessons going on with chalk on pavement as soon as the sun came out (and just before it went back in again too). The size of the classroom becomes no barrier. Enormous dinosaurs can be drawn to scale and measured by child-lengths, arms stretched from finger-tip, to finger-tip.
For me, this is one of the most important things people can have. Spiritually, emotionally, physically, intellectually. The whole blooming person.
So I was delighted today when Gra sent me this item from Boing Boing.
No child left inside: reclaim outdoor play
“Richard Louv’s stirring article, “No Child Left Inside,” documents a burgeoning movement to reclaim the idea of outdoor play for kids, who are increasingly under house arrest…”
There is much food for thought and growth in this and linked items.
I feel a research project coming on… goes very deep.
Not just about connection with nature, but about space and freedom. About trust and connection with the local community. Our aspirations for the South Fremantle Early Learning Centre project was very much in line with these thoughts. Children being seen, and heard all around their neighbourhood. Being known and nourished, nurtured by the world. Not locked away in the prisons of school and loungeroom.
Would also like to refind the ex-Dharma Kindy teacher I met at The Ram’s Inn in Firle who runs a (primarily) outdoor nursery school. I believe the Annan Farm Froebel Kindergarten (literally: Children’s Garden) near Uckfield is similarly inspired.
Certainly the Steiner tradition has a great respect and connection with nature too, as does our own dear Dharma School. The grounds are full of mystery and adventure, with numerous places to play and hide.
But what of our home lives? What of the weather and our own dispositions.
As an Australian new to the UK, I have a few perspectives I will note.
Outdoor links to curriculum are still largely untapped in Australia, despite the better weather. So outside time is seem as time to let off steam generally, for free play (great! should be more of it!). But what of the potential to spend longer in nature, while continuing lessons. Would it be too distracting? What are the issues? With a burgeoning curriculum designed to cram students with ever more stuff, pressure to stay inside concentrating is great than ever before.
So perhaps part of the answer, in the school context at least, is to make curriculum links. It’s still a bit like changing the wheels on the broken bike while it is still in motion, rather than building a better bike (or helping it build itself to destroy the metaphor completely). But I guess you know what I mean.
Maybe it’s worth just working on the questions for now and not jumping to solutions.
So let’s consider this…
What fundamental (educational) needs can be met for a child (human) in having time outdoors, in nature?
How would be define ‘outdoors’ and ‘nature’?
What examples can we find to support this?
What can we do to support this happening - as Parents? As Educators?
What would a policy or statement of intent, a vision for outdoor education look like?
How likely is this to inspire parents and students in choices around education and home life?
One thing clear to me as a parent, the more time I spend outside, the more time my (single) child does. I lead by example in this way. And yet on an average day in England, the weather can be so intimidating and snuggly inside pursuits so compelling as to make the choice of activity inevitable. And yet children seem so immune to the elements when they are running around playing together.
And as the old saying goes “there is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothing.”
See the Pott Row School’s way of handling this. “School Gives Children Rain Suits.”
Right now I am thinking of a few different environments, across three countries and a wide age-group.
Beaconsfield Primary (Western Australia) - Ange Drum’s pre-school class. A great example of a government school making the most of the great outdoors.
Reggio Emilia (near Bologna, Northern Italy) - the infant-toddler centres & preschools - making the most of some fairly average weather to look at ‘education’ in a very whole way.
The Dharma School (Brighton, England) - a primary school developing captivating gardens for children 3-11 to explore, within a Buddhist context of respect and connection with all living things.
Varndean College (Brighton, England) - a secondary school adjoining my garden, I have limited knowledge of, but would be interested to talk to re: current and potential experiences around these questions.
Lewes New School (Lewes, England) - a small, independent primary school near Brighton. They are located in a Victorian school house but have far more modern ideas about education. There is currently much talk at the school as parents and children discuss what to do with the outside spaces.
Lance Holt School (Fremantle, Western Australia) - a Summerhill-inspired school I attended in the 1970s. The inside space was extremely limited in this inner-urban school. Ironically in many respects, this meant we had a much richer experience of life outside the classroom than many other children. Our mini-bus took us on daily excursions (whoever wanted to go, from whatever age group). Local parks gave us great space to roam. Today, the students are custodians of Bathers Beach, just a short walk away.
So an additional question could be… How can students, teachers and parents share their aspirations for outdoor experiences /education - and work together towards making any changes they might wish to?
In addition to having a strong research interest in the schools question, it is clear to me that school’s are only part of the question when it comes to human education, human becoming.
What of the home situation?
What are people’s thoughts and experiences in this regard?
We are about to invest in a campervan - and head for the hills! I also need to find things I like doing outside, even when it is cold. Building fires is a great love. Bring it on!
Never let me hear myself saying again “You can’t go out there, you’ll freeze to death.”
I just love this photo. Had to use it again in this context. Reminds me about outdoor playing needing to be free, and not managed by adults too much. “Now take your silly photo and let us get back to it!”
And this one again too. Bubba Bea in Margaret River.
After having my daughter Bea, I finally sat down to write. Memories, stories, fantasies came forth. It was great. Better out than in.
I had written extensively and professionally before, but to a brief. For an audience, not for myself.
I had fantasies about going the whole way, but other, less isolating pursuits spoke louder. But I have kept writing, and will never stop. No idea where it’s all going, but I laugh as I recall a Leunig cartoon… something about a man going to see a Physician.. “Doctor, doctor… I’ve got this thing inside me. It’s hurting me. Please, please. Take it out.” Doctor asks “what is it?” of course. “A book Doctor, a book. I think it’s a book.”
Have you ever had this feeling? I sure have. Blogging certainly releases the pressure, and there are other pieces of life-saving surgery pending (41,000 words for the MA over the next two years… phew. Hope there’s not too much blood loss. Must plan to allow some post-operative recovery time.)
Some further quotes found just now that help relate these thoughts.
“I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn’t, I would die.” - Isaac Asimov
“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” - Cyril Connolly
“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart … Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” - Carl Jung
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” - Martin Luther King Jr.
Until I work out how to update my old fashioned writing website, I will just add some other stories that never got collected, via this blog. They are several years old now, from what feels like a distance land, with all that has taken place and transformed in this short/long life so far.
First of all, there are several stories up on the original “Here” writing website, which (if anyone is actually out there? But thanks Cyril, I’m with you) is the best place to start.
Then, there was…
The Surrealist’s Ball - just for fun.
Food & Art - deeper ruminations
First Day of School - sweet, vivid memories (with an edge)
Italian Hotel - power, breastfeeding & gender - a short story
My New Friend & Bees - free child voice (inspired by the questioning nature of children and their fascination with guts)
The Oracle - a short but zapping mystery revealed
Days of Milk - fantasies of being a kindergarten teacher
Lick Hum Dresser - sensuous, Australian, languid short story
Has been good to look back, reread, remember what I have been doing with my words over those years. All part of the learning journey. While some have been published or broadcast, most are yet to be read. Not sure what to do with them really… two many interests for one lifetime…
Reading back over the Quantum entries, my passion for dear old John Macmurray, and interest in The Gifford Lectures, became blindingly obvious.
The prestigious Gifford Lecture series, held annually at the ancient Scottish universities since 1888, have carried the words of great thinkers on the broad topic of natural religion. Some of the speakers have, through other strands of synchronous enquiry, already been referenced in this blog (eg. Heisenberg, Bohr, Macmurray).
“Although the will expressed the hope that the presentations would spread sound views “among the whole population of Scotland” the stature of the presenters and the quality of the addresses and books that came from them have reached far beyond Scotland.
“The prestige of the Gifford series derives in part from the world-renowned lecturers and from the diversity of intellectual disciplines they represent. As would be expected in a series on natural religion, numerous lecturers have been theologians and ethicists, such as Jurgen Moltmann and Reinhold Niebuhr, and philosophers, including, Etienne Gilson and Henri Bergson.
“What might not be expected in the series are historians (Arnold Toynbee, Herbert Butterfield), scientists (Werner Karl Heisenberg, Niels Bohr), writers (Iris Murdoch, Hannah Arendt), and even one British Prime Minister (Arthur Balfour). Former speakers such as Karl Barth and Carl Sagan bring very different perspectives on the nature of nature and the meaning and value of natural theology.
“In recent years the Gifford lectures at Edinburgh have been delivered by Mohammed Arkoun, Professor Emeritus of Islamic Thought at the Sorbonne (”Inaugurating a Critique of Islamic Reason”) and Michael Ignatieff, Director of the Carr Center of Human Rights Policy at Harvard University (”The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in a Time of Terror”).
“These names represent but a small sample of the disciplines, topics and people to be found in the Gifford series.”
There is a new book out called:
The Measure of God: Our Century-Long Struggle to Reconcile Science &
Religion
As one reviewer says…
“…a stimulating volume that would be a welcome gift to anyone interested in the development of modern thought.”
“Although his coverage is necessarily selective, Witham includes an impressive range of material for a single volume: lecture summaries, biographical sketches of selected presenters, observations of Scottish history and local color, and a wealth of background information on intellectual movements that have shaped the lectures over the decades.
Witham follows disciplines and ideologies rather than strict chronology, allowing the story to flow more naturally. The text is deeply researched and factually rich, even dense at times. But fans of the Gifford Lectures will appreciate Witham’s thoroughness, as well as his interest in the personalities of the presenters beyond the lectures themselves. For all their intellectual accomplishment, these thinkers were also
human beings whose “efforts to conceive, produce, and finally deliver the lectures reveal a remarkable drama of mortal hopes, fears, victories, defeats, vanities and frailties.”
Always good to get the human element!
Reading the very lovely Michael Newman from that profound source infed this morning. He makes a strong case for a renewed emphasis on critical theory.
Michael is primarily directing his words to a group of Adult Education academics in this context, just last year. Through these ‘meta-meta-professionals’ he is in turn addressing a much wider audience.
By looking back on the work of people like Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (I will be following up on Dialectic of Enlightenment), Michael is nostalgic for:
“a state of mind and a stance of constant and continual critique. Nothing was to be taken for granted. No utterance was to remain unexamined. It promoted the kind of positive scepticism which could enable us to withstand the doomsayers, the mean-spirited, the manipulators, the malign and the propagandists who might otherwise force us to think in the way they wanted us to. Critical theory helped us combat a Gramscian kind of hegemony. It helped us resist being hoodwinked. It helped us see through the people, ourselves included. It enabled us to make up our own minds.”
These words are more important now than ever before. Individuals, communities and ecosystems face a perilous future, while governments and corporations continue to manipulate the agenda in support of their own short-term vision of greed.
The last decade of my life, primarily as an activist, was spent working as an antidote to their propaganda. The reasons why I thought I could and should attempt this go way back, and other entries touch on themes of an emerging social and environmental consciousness, and emancipation, planted in the womb and nurtured in the family, schooling (eg. Lance Holt) and the wider context.
Having a critical faculty, a ‘positive scepticism’ (I like that) was encouraged from a young age.
Looking specifically at Critical Theory in a formal context, I was 17 when I embarked on a course called Structure, Thought & Reality at Murdoch University.
Searching for information on this foundational course at a university cut from similar cloth to Sussex, I am not surprised to find the course description”
“In this unit you will be asked to think differently about reality. Rather than taking reality to be natural or objective, we will treat it as social or subjective. When we think of reality in this way, we start to understand “truth” and “knowledge” in a very different light.
After considering reasons to treat reality as social or subjective, we apply this view of reality to topics including: human sexuality, childhood, death, virtual reality, God and the war on terror.”
It was a grand and often frustrating adventure for such a young, freedom loving person. While my mind was finding ways, in the longer term, to be free, it was hard to still be institutionalised after so many years of formal education.
At 19, I was looking for a less abstract path and a financial way to freedom (read: employment) and began studies in Media and Communication theory and practice. This then led to a highly engaging strategic framework that would make use of practical communications (writing, journalism, stakeholder relations, film making etc) along the way, if not a cohesive philosophical one, called Public Relations. Not ‘PR’, sweety. Not by a long shot.
The development of my early career in strategic stakeholder relations as I prefer to refer to is, will need to be elaborated on. But let’s move on to a vital juncture.
I remember a key moment during the beginning of my course in Critical Film Analysis, where we were asked to stop just consuming the tasty film we were viewing, to STOP ‘willingly suspending our disbelief’ in the darkened womb of the cinema - and to start engaging critically.
My world was shattered. I could not see a way to continue my deep love of immersion into the screen, the ‘text’, any text, the moment, while also fulfilling a critical function. I could not yet conceive of both processes running in parallel, indeed in conversation within me.
Yet within days, this turning point in learning just happened. From then on, the immersion, the deep engagement with ephemera could happen at the same time as the internal (eternal?) conversation. I was no longer one of the other. They were voices, in a way, I could turn up or down.
….
So I had a very good idea of how to ‘manipulate’ the masses and indeed individuals from a young age. I worked and saw deep inside the ‘belly of the beast’, and indeed my own beast. And I did not like what I saw.
At 26 I decided to have an early ‘mid-life crisis’, out of which a more integrated and authentic self emerged.
A future entry will reference the importance of Thomas Moore, Matthew Fox and Michael Leunig.
L
…
Among The Bohemian’s - Experiments in Living 1900-1939 has been by my bedside since Christmas, thanks to Leah.
It has strong links to my learning biography, written by Virginia Nicholson, the grand daughter of the artist Vanessa Bell (sister of Virginia Woolf).
It is a direct link between:
Among many other threads (creativity, food, friends, livelihood, travel), it looks at the education of “bohemian” children during these years and at Bertrand Russell’s and AS Neill’s small school communities, among others. AS Neill founded the Summerhill School, which inspired the Lance Holt School (primary) and The Community School (secondary) my brothers and I attended for various lengths of time.
It references personal, unpublished papers from the lives of progressive artists and thinkers Virginia is intimate with.
I visited Charleston with devotion just after moving to Sussex - home of Vanessa, her children, lover, husband and communal friends. It’s just down the road.
I wanted to go my own, and felt a very strong connection. Infact we are planning a spring/summer house party in celebration of its creative, communal call. This was decided before I would allow myself to visit. I could not abide the possibility of mere voyeurism. The call of its inhabitants - and life itself - seems so much more.
My own upbringing was different to this, yet similar in many ways. There was a spaciousness for new ideas and ways of being. I was born in 1968 - ‘the summer of love‘. We marched with my Grand Mother against Vietnam, I had an “I love Gough (Whitlam)” badge.
There was, in my own childhood, a bold sense of life being for the living. That conformity was not necessarily the way to nirvana. That ideas could be challenged, and new ones emerge, that experimentation was essential.
Naturally, this changed as the years went on, and my mother (an educator) in particular, became (thankfully, perhaps) relatively more conservative - but still very open-minded and able to converse freely with people of all ages.
My father’s love of olive and red wine won him the dubious nickname “Donny the Dago”, an affectionate reference to post-war Italian immigrant culture in Australia, prior to which garlic was completely unknown and ‘cuisine’ unheard of. The most well worn cookbooks in our collection where Elizabeth David and Robert Carrier. Similar to The Bohemian’s, I grew up with Mediterranean food and culture being held in high esteem.
A darker side was, I guess, his insistence on growing and smoking pot, which had repercussions throughout our lives. Alcohol was certainly overused too, but what conversations we had! Even at a young age, we were invited to share in the passionate pronouncements of what really mattered to a large, extended family and friends over many a fine meal.
When I was very young but still cognisant, my grandmother Pamela held court. I am searching for a tape recording of her voice during one session where communal living was the issue.
This was at the same time I imagine she had returned to university to study philosophy and was reading John Macmurray.
She was quite clearly in favour of it, and advocated my family and another, the Gare’s (themselves from a partly-Quaker tradition) set up life together on 100 acres of bushland we had near cousins in the South West of Australia - which became one of the country’s greatest wine producing regions! So many good times camping and exploring. So much learnt about what really matters, things that can only be learnt in nature.
Another snapshot I share to help illustrate my childhood was the amount of cheese and biscuits we ate. The exhibition openings, gigs and album launches of all the painters, sculptors and musicians in our close circle gave ample opportunity for dinner and freedom.
I thought everyone lived that way, until I ended up at a conservative ladies college and realised this was patently NOT the case.
My grandmother dying was the first big change in our social lives, then much later, my father dying. Now we find ourselves starting our own family and looking to create anew. Looking back, they seem like halcyon days. Perhaps childhood always does. So much has changed, personally, politically. Smaller families, fragmentation, neo-conservatism and more movement being part of that.
Finding this book has felt a little like coming home. It will continue to bring up the light and the dark of an ‘alternative’ childhood and is just wonderful food for thought. Thank you dear Leah, soul sister, framily.
Excerpts from Among The Bohemian’s
Review (The Guardian, November 2002)
“Woolf represented a generation which sought to let light, colour and garlic into their lives. They rejected monogamous relationships and mahogany furniture. They preferred absinthe to abstinence. They blazed with creative inspiration and burned candles at both ends. In short, they became the inhabitants of the mythical and ill-defined realm of Bohemia.”
I note now that Arthur Ransome was included in this eclectic cohort. Just now we are reading Swallow’s & Amazons with Bea. My heart yearns to play the games on land and sea (or river) we did as children, inspired by these ravishing tales of children free to roam, explore, imagine and become.
Rousseau’s Emile comes to mind again.
Thank goodness for our annual Buddhafield’s retreat when this all seems more possible. Life in the playground at The Dharma School and Stanmer Organic’s Ecoplay has echoes. I hear there is an outdoor nursery school in Firle and Annan Farm Small School offers a richness of natural connection. (”there is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothing!”).
But oh for the endless stretch of holidays we had, roaming wild. Canoes, dinghies, hidden lakes to discover. Dropbears to run from. Not facilitated play but FREE, truly free. Some of these experiences have inspired stories I have written, which can be found here.
Perhaps the lake district will call this summer. Perhaps this whole move to England > Europe is actually a pilgrimage to the source of so much inspiration.
How ironic to have come from the stereotype of outdoorsy Australia, land of the great white barbeque. And yet we feel very close to nature here in the Sussex countryside, with the pleasures of Brighton nearby too.
Perhaps it will weave it’s magic, do it’s work then send us ‘home’ (?), back to Australia. Perhaps it will take root and hold us here like others before. Most likely, we will find ways to live between the two hemispheres - North & South. Perhaps their is unity and cohesion in such a way of living… give or take a lack of jet fuel or carbon neutralisation.
Martin Boyd’s (another distant relative) writing about Anglo-Australian displacement came over with us, along with mum’s entire Patrick White collection.
Perhaps we will go communal in France and educate free-style, as tele-commuting, globally-warmed, brave new worlders…
Perhaps we will spend our summer’s touring provocative exhibitions about the future of education, as Bea run’s wild with friend’s at festivals…
We shall see… one thing’s for sure, when it come’s to Education in it’s fullest sense, it’s about a lot more than just your choice of school.
……
The book was given by a friend who I think sees me and my family in this vein. This same friend was married last year at Pelham House, and is a central part of my learning community - Leah Landau.
Then there was my experience of seeing the artwork at Pelham House in Lewes, a wonderful heritage building and grounds brought to life by members of the Subud community. Julian Bell (grandson of Vanessa?) being one of the them I believe.
I was deeply moved. I have never seen a collection of work so akin to my own aesthetic and desire to experience art as a connecting, transcendent, symbolic language. Who is the curator I wonder?
One of the sculptors is Stephanie Davies-Arai, who is also facilitating the course in Parent Effectiveness Training I have recently embarked upon, based at Lewes New School (a Subud community school). The course connects with Carl Rodgers work and was developed by Thomas Gordon.
Everything about finding the MA, the Foundation, John Macmurray, Michael Fielding, the other wonderful people I have met, has made this move to Sussex seem destined in some way. There is a songline running throughout it all.
My questions are not yet clear, but I shall be looking for them. There are a great many threads to bring together. One seems to be around:
What is the importance of lifestyle choices (over and above formal schooling) in the education of the whole child / person ?
Auto-didacticism is also a major theme this week, with my perhaps forebear Sir Humphry Davy (another Davy of Devon) and the soul-brother Zen teacher Alan Watts being typical of this experience.
Excuse me while I think allowed. Unless something is deeply personal, I am tending to use this blog now as a place to gather my thoughts for the learning biography - Part One of the MA in Person-Centred Education.
5,000 words due on 19 April. Can I just submit this blog’s URL?
Making sense of a learning life, setting a course for new oceans of purpose and meaning. Hopefully moving through ‘navel gazing’ further into an authentic contribution in education.
….
The images are: Top ‘Libby (left) with Sadie & Kate Purser, Western Australia, 1971 (?)’, Bottom ‘Bea (Libby’s daughter) at home, Margaret River, SW Australia. Her placenta is planted under the avocado sapling behind her.’
And now I reeeally SHOULD be in bed. But just found these very inspiring people linking to this blog and wanted to return the link.
Younger World (in with Sound Out, CommonWorld and The Free Child Project) are doing great research on Student Voice and, not surprisingly, referencing Jean Ruddick and Michael Fielding.
Loving the feeling of connection and global community regular blogging brings me back to.
It’s one big, dynamic conversation! Here’s cheers to the social construction of meaning.
And here’s a cool contest they are running. No direct link available so will quote in full… Will follow up soon and let you know what happened.
Contest!
There are many issues that youth voice can address. While my analysis has been widely casted, covering everything from social justice to youth rights to education reform, it is important for me to be informed by the broadest ideas out there.
The possibilities for engaging young people throughout society are endless, both in terms of what can be addressed and what can actually happen. In an interesting blog from the UK an author considers what it would take to use “An Inconvenient Truth” to teach students; another blog from the US discovers that young people have important considerations for the future of schools. Its an interesting thing, coming across these reflections from folks with different perspectives. In my regular research into the broad perspectives of Americans towards youth, I find a wide range of ideas about what young people can and cannot do. As I’ve grown a little more familiar with this landscape, I have found its important to acknowledge that each of these ideas is important. While some are more genuine or authentic than others, they each allow adults an important connection point to understand the possibilities of youth engagement.
The Contest
You have to find two examples of engaging young people that have never been acknowledged before. Share them with me, and then my challenge is to find examples of where they have been.
If I can’t find an example within a month, then I will give you a prize - A first edition copy of the brand new Washington Youth Voice Handbook, along with a copy of Hip Deep, a new collection of writing from youth connected to What Kids Can Do.
I I can find an example, then I get to use what you found on our websites, if applicable, and attribute you fairly.
Good luck! Send entries by clicking here.
Imagine all the regular fancy language about contests inserted here. If there are any special considerations, let me know. Contest entries must be recieved by 12/1/06. Etcetera.
I could talk passionately about all the reasons why this new post-grad degree at Sussex University lured me, finally, back into ‘formal’ learning. Reasons both internal and external.
Suffice to say it sang out loud and clear. Right place, right time.
Speaking of which, it’s time for bed, so will just post a short excerpt and leave a .pdf for the course outline for those that like to look further into such things.
What is Person-Centred Education?
Person Centred Education puts people at the centre of the educative process.
Our current systems of schooling have drifted too far away from this belief about the centrality of broad and deep notions of educating the whole person and this programme seeks to recentre and rearticulate a more holistic approach within a 21st century context.
Through ways of working in a learning community as well as through research and academic study this Masters Degree will both draw on and extend our knowledge and practice of person centred education in a range of organisational settings.
Will be writing lots more about it and within it over the next 2 or so years as the learning journey continues.
MA Person-Centred Education - Course Outline MA course outline
About Michael Fielding (Prof.) - who was a major catalyst and founder of the course, and still a beautiful and active member of our extended “Learning Community”.
About The Guerrand-Hermes Foundation for Peace - co-sponsors of the course through their Secretary/Research Fellow Dr Scherto Gill.
About Sussex University, Centre for Innovation in Education.
… as you can see, evolving steadily from this point. I guess the categories created for the posts will be one obvious way to access updates on this.
Scanning back over the two (sporadic) years of blogging here, I can see the learning biography theme has been in place from the very beginning. From the Reggio experience and beyond. No wonder I was so attracted to this MA in Education and the very special approach it is taking.
I just have to wonder, could the University establishment be able to accept the blog as my learning biography down the track? …after closer links with relevant texts has been made more distinct. I guess the futurelab folk might like to help us reflect on this.
Hmmm.
We shall see…
Well it’s been a week since we were inducted to the MA in Person-Centred Education at Sussex University.
In addition to the welcoming and procedural stuff, we had a great session lead by my new postgrad supervisor called Dr Carol Robinson. Carol has worked with that dear Michael Fielding (Prof.) chap on Student Voice and other erudite, emancipatory matters.
Carol got us thinking in new ways about the benefits of keeping a learning journal, in preparation for our first 5,000 words - a Learning Biography. (All of which links into the MA so I will update a previous post with more on what that entails. Wonderful.)
So when to right in the private learning journal, when to write on the Learning blog, and how to start linking with critical theory and practice in putting together the assessment piece (Learning Biography)? All links with the Reggio project’s strong focus on documentation and social construction on learning/meaning making.
Private v public. Who are we writing for and why? How do personal and communal utterances of ’self’ create identity. Is it all just irrelevant navel gazing? These seem to be recurrent themes as a writer, communicator, activist type… now budding academic? The blogosphere offers a rich site for these questions.
Scroll to the end of About this site re: this too.
I’ve had an abstract accepted for a conference in Denmark this March too. European Society for Research on the Education of Adults - Network on Life History & Biography - “Concepts of Learning?”.
For better or for worse, this will NOT be the Australian Denmark where Lee Loo’s wine making love now resides, but far colder climes.
So that is a whole other dimension on who to write about the self, about one’s thinking and journey for a whole different audience. But not so much writing as conceptualising.
I guess I’m having a bit of a quantum leap in human becoming when it comes to the formalisation of my learning and thinking.
I guess it is important to head for whatever outlet, audience, medium feels the most compelling write now (intended).
I guess I will continue to learn and become in communal connection with you all around me - friends, family, colleagues, learning partners.
One of the key aspects of the session at Concepts in Learning will be to look at this notion of how we learn in community. And I will be inviting everyone that attends the session, and others, to call a Danish number I have booked on Skype, or come to this blog, and enter the conversation. The abstract is here for those that are interested. ESREA 2007 paper
I guess I will hoping this blog has been given a little better attention before 3 March then. But the biggest question… do I go back and edit out the bits that are not part of the identity I wish to portrait to these new colleagues (eg. Dorking, England oh England) or offer up the whole lot.
I guess the answer is here.
Suffice to say, it’s a tricky line to walk. I come back here sometimes and think… “Hmmm, maybe life would be easier if I was willing to sign up to a unified, codified discipline of identity,” eg. never reveal a thing until it has been fully researched, processed, articulated, edited, peer-reviewed and put into dead tree for posterity.
Looking back over the journey, I guess that’s not to be.
Phew.
Watching with interest the increase in teachers going part-time. Recent article in TES (reference to follow). My dear Mum always drummed into me the importance of finding part-time work, as a mother, as a human being. There is a lot to be said for it, certainly when it comes to raising children.
Everyone’s looking for the life/work balance. And rightly so. So many people under-employed, so many people over-employed. Can’t we share it around?
Teacher’s stress levels seem a good enough reason to look for an increase in a part-time workforce. When we have time away to refresh and reflect, we come back richer for it.
One thing I am noticing at The Dharma School is the number of part-time teachers. It gives them the chance to co-teach, to share their experiences of the classroom. There are also a wonderful group of assistants and specialists moving through the small (75 child) school, enabling a healthy range of relationships.
Today, the biggest issue seems to be the co-teaching one. When we think about learning in community, we think about dialogue and shared reflection.
This was really strong in the school’s in Reggio Emilia I’ve been researching. Every class involved two teachers working together seen as equals, albeit at different stages of development. Then of course there was the local and regional involvement of the Pedagogista who would automatically be able to offer a conduit for the transfer of good practice and a meta perspective.
I want to keep looking at this, personally and in terms of further research.
Wonder what others think?
School’s Forum Learning Communities
Project idea that’s been brewing for awhile now… A new, democratic approach to creating dialogue within and between school communities.
Social software that brings together:
to learn how to listen to each other’s ideas and opinions on any thread created by any participant.
Would definitely want to talk with futurelab about this. A bit big to take on for the MA (Person Centred) Education but something to keep brewing on the back burner for now.
Read about the proposal in (very first draft) detail here.
I find great benefit in considering pedagogy in a social constructivist way, as inspired for me and so many others in early learning by the preschools and infant toddler centres of Reggio Emilia, Italy and increasingly, as translated and transformed into progressive early learning environments (including child care) throughout the world.
To me, this thinking goes to the very heart of how we envision childcare and what image we have of the child. In particular, the child constructing meaning or “learning” in relation to others.
The Reggio experiences have profound implications for thinking, wisdom, knowledge and, indeed, the evolution of human consciousness.
It really is no wonder, then, that when asked to host the 12th International Conference on Thinking, Australia invited Reggio pedagogista Carlina Rinadi to present alongside futurists, philosophers and educators like Peter Senge, David Perkins, Richard Slaughter, Edward de Bono, Art Costa, Guy Claxton, Susan Greenfield and others.
The conference is seen to break through the normal academic barriers to thought.
Melbourne in July anyone?
There is also a smaller 2-day event being co-ordinated by the Reggio Emilia Australia Information Exchange with Carlina and Eujlalia Bosch, among others. Both their biogs are on the conference website.
Conference convenors Karin Morrison and Jane Stewart both come from senior roles in education, so that will be a key theme/sector.
9th and 10th July
Hilton on the Park, Melbourne
Carlina Rinaldi and Eujlalia Bosch will speak on both days.We also have three other confirmed speakers
1. A Doctor of Chinese medicine who will speak about
“Listening to Ourselves: mind and body
2. Boori Pryor an Aboriginal performer and speaker - Listening to the Past and the future can we hear peace.
3. The impact of listening to stories in understanding ourselves and others.These titles are only the gist and still to be worked out.
We have also invited Li Cunxin (Mao’s Last Dancer” Listening to the movementt of the body. this has still not been confirmed.
$440.00 including GST
These are both unique and powerful opportunities.
It would be great to see debate about the advancement of these notions in a childcare context as Dr Pat Patrie did at the National Child Care conference held in Perth earlier this year.
We need to start removing the artificial barriers between care and education.
As far as ongoing WA opportunities go, the conversations being facilitated by Anna Alderson and Marie Martin are open to all.
Jan Phillips (ex-Penrhos ELC) is the WA convener for the Reggio Emilia Australia Information Exchange and has been generous enough to share her thoughts and resources over the last couple of years. She is now working fulltime on her PhD in Early Learning (with a Reggio emphasis). Really quite an amazing woman.
My undergraduate studies were in communications and cultural theory, looking at Berger, Sartre, Barthe, de Bouviour, Said etc and whilst I do find much of this material dense, I choose to have an image of child care teachers/workers/educators as capable of engaging with the heart of these ideas if presented in the right way.
I can imagine an enrichment programme (including study scholarships for conferences, study tours etc) to be a very achievable outcome.
I can imagine a vision of childcare that embraces the idea of children learning in relationship with each other, with their parents, with their teachers, with their environment, with their local community.
It’s about the journey.
There is much being discussed and thought about the profound implications of the work being done in the infant toddler centres and preschools of Reggio Emilia, Italy.
For an introduction to this educational project, which is an essential point of reference for anyone looking at early learning, start by going direct to the source.
If you ever have the chance when travelling near or far to experience The One Hundred Languages of Childhood exhibition, do. It can change your life and ideas about what children are capable of.
“This exhibit
opposes any prophetic pedagogy
which knows everything before it happens,
which teaches children
that every day is the same,
that there are no surprises,
and teaches adults
that all they have to do is repeat
that which they were not able to learn.”
Loris Malaguzzi
“Children have a hundred languages, and they want to use them all. They learn very soon how difficult it is for this right to be recognized and above all respected. This is why children ask us to be their allies in resisting hostile pressures and defending spaces for creative freedom which, in the end, are also spaces of joy, trust, and solidarity.” (from Reggio Children website).