HOW DO I KNOW WHAT I KNOW? AND
DO I HAVE THE COURAGE TO PUT MY
KNOWING INTO PRACTICE?
A discourse with the mirror of self.
Reverend Je Kan Adler-Collins
Fukuoka Prefectural University
Japan
BERA 2007 Introduction
• In this paper I present, through narrative
clarifications of my relationally dynamic standards
of discernment and critical judgment through their
emergence over time
• these standards being those of inclusional
respect, originality, caution and tolerance.
BERA 2007 Introduction
• These have been acquired through my practice as
an inclusional educator and nurse practitionerresearcher in the design, implementation and
assessment of a new curriculum for the healing
nurse.
• This curriculum, the first of its kind in a Japanese
University, focused on safe and culturally
appropriate forms of touch therapies and
awareness of traditional and complementary
therapies to address the dominance of the modern
academic science based nursing, and evidence
based nursing.
BERA 2007 Introduction
• I identify my values as they have emerged and
solidified into standards of discernment. Each is
defined from its causal context, which provides
the reader insights into what I am using as a
value.
BERA 2007 The context of the research
• . The context of my research was a freshman
class of Japanese nursing students in a new
Prefectural university of 100 students ( 98
female, 4 male.)
• The research period covered 15 ninety minute
sessions for healing theory which was a
mandatory requirement and 15 sessions of
healing practice( Body massage) which was an
optional choice in the second semester.
BERA 2007 The context of the research
•
. My method also included analysing the data
produced from using different student-centred
teaching strategies in my classroom. These
included the introduction of new teaching
strategies to a Japanese university classroom
these being:
– portfolio evidence
– and reflective journals,
– linking testable learning outcomes to the
Internet as part of my means of confirming
cognitive learning.
– Web based student session evaluations
BERA 2007 The context of the research
•
My approach to narrating this paper is to focus on
my learning as a practitioner and educator in a
cultural context different from that of my birth. I do
this by establishing my engagement with the
method (Moustakas, 1990);
• next, I critique knowing and knowledge in
relationship to my experience of knowing (Wink,
2005);
• then I explore the nature of the question as a
heuristic;
• and finally I address the issue of how to bring my
knowing to knowledge and into praxis.
BERA 2007 The contribution to
knowledge
• made by this paper comes from emphasising the
difficulty of importing educational systems from
one context-bound environment into another.
• The issues around colonisation of knowledge
and ethics are highlighted, along with the need
for global educators to be aware of their own
biases of race, gender and culture.
• Perhaps most importantly bias is a two way
street and once the embedded educator realises
their own issues
• they then have to contend to those that are
already present in the cultural social context of
their working and living environment.
BERA 2007 The contribution to
knowledge
• This often frustrating process require courage to
admit that you are wrong and courage to face
others and the all powerful system when it or
they are wrong.
• It requires stamina, flexibility and a
determination not to participate in the furthering
of education paradigm wars or cultural mistrust.
• This is not a theoretical paper but an authentic
account of what happened in practice, the
problems faced and how my consciousness and
practices were remoulded and illuminated
BERA 2007 Method
• This research uses mixed methodology of both
quantitative and qualitative approaches as and when the
strengths of the particular methodological approach move
the research forward or help in its analysis. In order of
usage or application these were:
• Self Study Action Research (Loughran, Hamilton,
Laboskey, & Rissell, 2004),
• living action research with its six cyclic stages :
(Whitehead 1989);
• heuristics (Moustakas 1990);
• the educational scholarship of Boyer (1991).
• Its critique by Schön (1995) calling for a new epistemology
forms a basis of my approach to the disciplines of
education;
• and narrative, which I used to present the written word
(Marshall, 1999; Reasion & Brandbury, 2000; Winter,
2003).
BERA 2007 Method
• The meta-methodology that guides my research
is Action Research Self Study, succinctly
described in the following quotation from the
Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher
Education Practices, Part 1:
•
The term self study is used in relation to
teaching and researching practice in order to
better understand: oneself; teaching; learning;
and the development of knowledge about these
(Loughran et al., 2004, p. p.9).
Coming to know
• Another part of my thinking and knowing
appears to be a contradiction to my
Buddhist thinking because according to
Buddhist teachings: all things, exists and
arises from the causal plane of
consciousness. This causal plane is
impermanent mental energy and not real.
A question of certainty within the constructs
of knowing by doing
• If Heidegger’s where I am in the everyday
or being there is my world, arguably I
create a being in the world through my
senses, and then make sense of my
sensory world through enquiry into and
experience of that world. This gives rise
to some intriguing questions: How certain
is my certainty? How real is my world?
Situational learning
• Lave (1988) argues that learning normally occurs
as a function of the activity, context and culture in
which it occurs (i. e. , it is situated). This contrasts
with most classroom learning activities which
involve knowledge that is abstract and out of
context; as was the case with my curriculum of the
healing nurse. Social interaction is a critical
component of situated learning. (Vygotsky, 1978)
My values
• and standards of discernment, which have
arisen from the learning described in the
above section, have taught me inclusional
caution.
• By this I mean that I understand that the
very act of judgement is contrary to my
Buddhist teachings. I am ontologically
more comfortable with discernment.
A discourse on conflict and resolutions,
the courage to do.
• My living educational theory is being
practiced within the context of another set
of contradictions (Whitehead, 1989).
• Within educational circles this is known
as the paradigm wars, described by Gage
(1989, p.43) as: … a minefield of
conflicting polarities,
• and this same issue was described by
Schön (1995, p.32) as: … an
epistemological battle .
Conclusion.
• After Japan’s defeat in the Second World
War and her subsequent occupation, all
levels of Japanese society were affected
by the Western colonial views of the
occupying forces, particularly the United
States of America, especially in terms of
health care and education, and this is still
a living legacy today
• (Wolferen 1990; Petrini 2001; Furuta and
Petrini 2003).
• In the above sections I have explicated, in a
narrative format, my process of curriculum
development from its conception, which I wrote
out on a beer-mat in a pub in Glastonbury,
England, in 1995 (Adler-Collins, 1996), to the day
in 2005 when the first student nurses completed
an official healing session in a Japanese hospital,
a day on which history was made and the first
stage of the journey of the healing curriculum,
ten years in the making, was concluded.
Answering my question originally posed that it
appears I did have the courage to teach as my
heart thought and my head felt.