learning

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:

• Adult education
• Young adult learning enrichment
• Academics
• Early years (group blogs to display a range of creative outcomes).

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.]

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!

I’ve been trying to read the Dalai Lama’s most excellent book The Universe in a Single Atom - The Convergence of Science and Spirituality for two years now. It keeps slipping through my fingers.

Before it last disappeared, I managed to at least get a sense of his handling of a topic very dear to my heart. The unification, if you like, of head and heart. The rational and the spiritual.

It always delighted me, when I finally got to watch What The Bleep Do We Know, that you could not tell the difference between the quantum physicists and the mystics. When the interview subjects names and titles were revealed at the end, I laughed and laughed.

This seems to parallel the experience of Fritjof Capra, well known author of The Tao of Physics, who brings the two sides together within his own practice - as both physicist and mystic. See the wikipedia entry on Capra and Nobel Laureate physicist Werner Heisenberg’s conversations in 1972 for another glimpse down the rabbit hole.

So, back to the Dalai Lama’s universe. In a word, emptiness.

Once I find it again, I might reflect some more.

Perhaps I’m reading it right now in a parallel universe!

Another book with, not by, the Dalai Lama I shall have to get my hands on is The New Physics & Cosmology - Dialogues with the Dalai Lama.

“What happens when the Dalai Lama meets with leading physicists and a historian? This book is the carefully edited record of the fascinating discussions at a Mind and Life conference in which five leading physicists and a historian (David Finkelstein, George Greenstein, Piet Hut, Arthur Zajonc, Anton Zeilinger, and Tu Weiming) discussed with the Dalai Lama current thought in theoretical quantum physics, in the context of Buddhist philosophy.

“A contribution to the science-religion interface, and a useful explanation of our basic understanding of quantum reality, couched at a level that intelligent readers without a deep involvement in science can grasp.”

…

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:

• My life experience
• Moving to Sussex
• Studying the MA in Person-Centred Education.

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.

YoungerWorld.org

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.

MA Curriculum Vitae

Academic Interests (2006)

… 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.

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:

• Learners/students
• Parents
• Teachers

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.

School’s Forum