Guest guest Posted June 8, 2004 Report Share Posted June 8, 2004 Robyn Thank you for all that information I enjoyed reading it immensely, I will have to go away and inwardly digest it a bit, before I come back with properly ordered thoughts. Do you think words like epistomology, (nature of knowledge) paradigm ( a framework in which theory can be devloped in a scientific way) will give me indigestion or might I be able to cope with your help? Just reflecting on the broad church that reads Senate and interpreting a little - forgive me for that. More seriously thank you for taking the time to throw out some ideas for people to go away and think about. I would love for some of the 'silent members' to respond - even if it was to say I haven't a clue?help! ( how many 'members' are there now?) Anyway hugely interesting Robyn I will comment soon from Robyn: , Thank you for your engagement with these ideas. You raise important issues. Some of them have arisen as part of my own discovery process about what I am doing. Your response also made ask if there is similarity between disenchanted practitioners, ‘whose commitment is entirely to their pay at the end of the month’, and discouraged (socially excluded even) clients. My attempts to explain my thinking might help me get to the heart of what I mean by alongsideness as a way of being in practice and as enquiry in practice. I would like to have a go at thinking it through here. Practitioners concerned about ‘their status or moving up in the hierarchy’, is also interesting but may need consideration elsewhere as it is different (although perhaps not hugely). I also hear your points about the use of other theories for informing practice, that practitioners should read, the amount of time this process takes and fears practitioners have about exposing themselves in self study. Great questions and I will try to think about them here. I also take your point about the need for the thesis to be available in manageable chunks and am wondering about how I might do that. In the meantime, the ‘short tutorial’ you request might be in the form of list discussion with anyone who wants to join in. We can talk about possibilities, emerging contradictions and solutions such as those you raise here, rather than attempting a definitive statement of what living theory action research is. I write in the belief that this discussion space is where I can try out ideas as they come into my head in my process of finding new understanding about what I mean by alongsideness. I do it knowing that my ideas are open to critique by readers who are also thinking about what they know. I welcome responses. This introduces the first point I suppose, that practice knowledge is emergent through experience and through dialogue with others. It is open to (actually searches for) contradictions that arise in new situations. In this way meanings grow and are transformed. [For those interested in this: The knowledge generated is therefore dialectical in that it is capable of embracing contradictions rather than being negated by them. It is also capable of keeping all the parts of the matter being researched and the whole in view at the same time. Here are major differences from usual research paradigms used in health care where the focus is specific and a contradiction negates a theory being tested.] I appreciate that you have already worked at gaining a great deal of understanding about this approach . You are right about the increased confidence it builds and the tentative nature of theories firmly held but always open to question and possible change. The developmental process of knowledge generation leads me to echo McNiff in saying that I am not claiming to have all the answers or to be a model of good practice. I am claiming to be working at improving and explaining my practice and the relevance of alongside epistemology to health visiting, because I believe it has important social benefits. This is where the link struck me between discouraged clients and disenchanted health visitors. During the research process I became aware that people are more likely to work at improving their lives (with me as HV) when they are working on an agenda that is important to them. I learnt that I could trust people’s agendas to be worth pursuing. I also realised that people thrive and can become open to the emotional needs of others when they experience their own needs being met. I came to see these emotional needs as the need to feel a sense of belonging with others, a belief in one’s own competence, sense of worth and courage to handle whatever turns up. It dawned on me that people who are struggling, perhaps not behaving very well (or not bothering much) do not need respect, acceptance and self-determination less. In fact they need to experience it more so they begin to feel better about themselves and in turn feel able to offer the same for others while. This means that effective relationships with people who are discouraged require my power to be minimised and me to work at creating mutually respectful relationships in a spirit of enquiring together. I realised that families may need support to enhance their self-worth before they can begin formulating their own questions about family relationships and improving their lives. This is a summary of thinking over several years I hope it makes sense. The concerns discussed by Senate about disengaged HVs whose practice was seen as lacking and needing tough action in order to bring them into line sounded familar. I saw a parallel between the problem managers perceived and the concerns of professionals who feel blame towards discouraged families for being who they are - flawed (judged by professional standards) and in need of top down action to get them moving. Actually, what they really need is to experience respect for the value of their humanness (that they are worth our respectful effort) and encouragement to value what they already know and do well so they feel able to look out beyond themselves, decide what their own priorities are and grow. In other words I have found people respond well to being trusted to move in a positive cooperative direction when the climate is encouraging rather being alienated and excluded from the pack (where do you draw the line for exclusion?). I don’t know if all this makes sense. My current experiences with colleagues in co-enquiry groups across our PCT lead me to believe this holds true for practitioners as much as clients because it is about hat people need. It is quite hard summarising things I have rehearsed many times in practice in a couple of paragraphs. If it is unclear I am willing to have another go. To get my colleagues to join the co-enquiry groups I reassured them a literature search was not necessary to begin. You are right many do not want to read. I wanted them to look at what they already do well themselves and then to ask how they can do it in other places. This is where the contradictions in practice can become a focus for increased understanding and practice development but the contradiction has to be owned by the practitioners. It is not that I do not value research theories from other paradigms. I referenced 200 of them in my thesis. It is just that I wanted them to begin to value their own knowledge and avoid the treadmill conditioned response of looking for answers from other people in the first instance. Fear of exposure from all that airy fairy naval gazing stuff. I understand this fear, it may be universal? I had it myself; recording in my journal something like ‘I am not going to look at myself but just at what I need to know and how I can improve what I am doing.’ Some living theorists manage to enquire with less self absorption than I got in to but it is hard to see how relationship centred practice such as health visiting can be explained from the point of view of only half the relationship. Researchers take responsibility for what they study and what depths they are willing to explore and explain publicly. Not all research is for a PhD. In education faculties students do enquiries in 12 week modules. It is possible apparently. If you have been, thanks for reading. 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