You And Your Living Educational Theory

Through the narratives of practitioner-researchers, this practical guide shares the proven processes, phases and supports that are most effective for generating living-educational-theories with values of human flourishing. Filled with case studies and continuing professional development activities, this book supports readers to conduct a values-based inquiry to improve their lives, describing and explaining how they influence themselves, others and the places where they live and work. There are four parts to the book, guiding readers through the process of creating and sharing their own living-educational-theory: Part One is designed to meet the needs of the beginning researcher as they start a project to improve their practice. Part Two builds on Part One to address the deeper, more complex requirements of those interested in more academic projects potentially for accreditation at the Master’s level. Part Three is a description and explanation of the history and context of Living Educational Theory Research with a focus on doctoral degrees. Part Four focuses on applying this knowledge more widely to living our educational responsibilities as global citizens. This book will serve as a useful guide, as opposed to a fixed template, to support readers in living their values more fully. It is an essential resource for all practitioners interested in establishing a Culture of Inquiry to create their own living-educational-theories. These are explanations of values-based professional development within their school community and can be submitted for academic accreditation.

Action Research is an invaluable guide to both novice and experienced researchers from a diversity of disciplines, backgrounds, and levels of study for understanding how action research works in real-life contexts. The Fifth Edition builds on the experiences of the authors by acknowledging the dramatic changes taking place in our everyday lives, including developments of social and digital media that have become central to modern life. Author Ernest T. Stringer and new co-author Alfredo Ortiz Aragón aim to provide a meaningful methodology arising from their extensive field experience for both students and practitioners. Presenting research that produces practical, effective, and sustainable outcomes to real-world problems, Action Research helps students see the value of their research in a broader context, beyond academia, to effecting change on a larger scale. Additional resources can be found at the authors’ website

This book explores a value-based research methodology, Living Educational Theory Research (LETR), which aligns a values-based approach with key tenets of professional development to inform and inspire future educators’ practice. Written by world-leading scholars in the field of LETR, the chapters are global in reach and promote the evolving and dynamic nature of the methodology and its application with real-world professional training within higher education. Through discussion and dialogue on the evolution of Living Educational Theory Research, the chapters explore topics such as professional development and community-based contexts, supporting academics wishing to improve their practice by placing the theory within a scholarly paradigm to legitimise its use for scholarly learning. Demonstrating how insights from disciplines such as philosophy, sociology and psychology are integrated within the generation of living-educational-theories, this outwardly looking volume will appeal to postgraduate students, scholars and researchers involved with educational theory, action research and other forms of practitioner research, and education research methods more broadly.

This book gives practical guidance on doing an action research project as part of an award-bearing course. Each section is supported by case study evidence drawn from the work of the authors' colleagues and students.

Phenomenology and Educational Theory in Conversation challenges the abstract-technical understanding of education to orient the reader to the importance of relationality, intersubjectivity, and otherness to renew and reclaim the educational project. This book treats education as a matter of existence, relationality, and common human concerns. It offers readers an alternative language to reveal and challenge the humanistic encounters that often disappear in the shadows of neoliberalism. The phenomenologists, and educational theorists featured here, offer insights that connect fully and concretely with the everyday lives of educators and students. They offer another language by which to understand education that is counter to the objectifying, instrumentalist language prevalent in neoliberal discourse. This book will be of great interest for academics, researchers, and post-graduate students in the fields of pedagogy, phenomenology, educational theory, and progressive education.

At the time this book was first published the disciplines of philosophy of education, educational psychology, sociology of education and the history of education had developed rapidly. The papers in this volume outline the developments that took place. The first paper analyses the nature of a theory concerned with determining practice and the place of academic disciplines within that. What emerges is the crucial role of these disciplines, but also the need to develop much more adequately a domain of practical principles, assessed and critically reformulated in the light of those disciplines. The following papers are concerned with the contributions four of those disciplines are now making.

Living theory is a way of making use of personal accounts of experienced practice. As the Pac-Man perspective on organisational change helps the change agent articulate the personal values he is committed to and how these values may be resisted in practice, living theory is useful for developing knowledge that has a practical impact on self-improvement and social change, but it is also a type of theory that is difficult to publish in academic outlets. As a consequence of this, publishing Pac-Man living-theory research becomes a Pac-Man game in itself, with the journal editors as one of the four adversary gatekeepers, but it is a rewarding game for those who want to contribute both theoretically and practically on how to make the world a better place.

Addressing the debate around what makes a good citizen, this work proposes a new form of post-colonial citizenship education which can be applied in any cultural setting. International educational partnerships provide the opportunity for participants to live out values such as cultural empathy and thus demonstrate their right to citizenship.