Accepting Educational Responsibility: Building Living Theory Cultures of Educational Inquiry in a Canadian/Global Context

• In Event: Accepting Educational Responsibility: Building Living Theory Cultures of Educational Inquiry in Global Contexts

Abstract

1. Objectives

The objectives include addressing the question ‘How can we unite with practitioners, with scholars across other academic fields and disciplines, and with other citizens beyond academia to strategically address complex social and educational problems?’ They include, self-study, evidence-based explanations of the educational influences of practitioner-researchers. These show how environments of impoverishment and inequity can be transformed through offering safe, democratic and cultures of inquiry.
2. Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
The main perspective in this presentation is provided by the theme of “Accepting Educational Responsibility” in which educational researchers are activist scholars and global citizens in the places in which scholarship is produced, disseminated, and implemented.
At the heart of the living theory culture of inquiry is Delong’s (2002) perspective that the development of a culture of inquiry rests upon supporting the knowledge-creating capacity in each individual in the system.
3. Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry

The living truths of self-study educational researchers draw on the perspectives outlined by Tidwell, Heston and Fitzgerald (2009) in their work on research methods. Digital visual technology is used to ‘bridge divides of economic capital through digitally‐mediated education that connects rural and urban students to rich educational resources outside the classroom walls’. (Tierney & Renn, 2012, p.2). A method of ‘empathetic resonance’ using digital technology is introduced to clarify the meanings of the expression of embodied values and energy that contribute to the explanatory principles of educational influences in learning.
4. Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
Data sources include the self-study narratives of researchers who have accepted an educational responsibility for building Living Theory Cultures of Educational Inquiry in global contexts. These can be accessed from https://www.actionresearch.net/living/living.shtml and include Briganti’s (2020) ‘My living-theory of International Development’. Evidence is also drawn from publications in Kitchen et al. (2020), Educational Action Research (2020), The Action Learning, Action Research Journal (2020) and the Educational Journal of Living Theories (2020).
5. Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
These demonstrate that the author has encouraged and supported the generation of educational knowledge in the form of self-studies that are addressing racial and other inequities in education. The dialogic nature of the self-study shows how loving educational conversations, grounded in values that carry hope for the flourishing of humanity, can contribute to overcoming the demoralisation and devaluation of economic rationalism in hopeful and loving processes of social transformation.
6.Significance

The scholarly significance is in offering self-study, evidence-based explanations of the educational influences of practitioner-researchers to show how environments of impoverishment and inequity can be transformed.
The scientific significance is in its use of digital technology to ‘bridge divides of economic capital through digitally‐mediated education that connects rural and urban students to rich educational resources outside the classroom walls’. (Tierney & Renn, 2012, p.2)
 

Author

• Jacqueline D. Delong, International Mentor