Creating a Profession of Master and Doctoral Educators with IPDA

Over the past 50 years my professional learning as a teacher and educator, in secondary schools and University Departments of Education in England, can be understood as a process of creative compliance in responding to my experience of being a living contradiction in pressures from a neoliberal policy framework and managerialism. In this response I have made public my embodied knowledge as a master and doctor educator, through generating and sharing my living-educational-theory (Whitehead, 1993; 1999; Whitehead & Huxtable, 2016). By a living-theory (for short) I mean an individual’s explanation for their educational influence in their own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of the social formations that influence practice and understanding. These explanations emerging from asking, researching and answering questions of the kind, ‘how do I improve what I am doing and live my values as fully as possible.’

As part of this process of creative compliance I am suggesting that IPDA contribute to the creation of a profession of master and doctor educators in a way that enhances the flow of values that carry hope for the flourishing of humanity, whilst recognizing and understanding the pressures to negate these values within a neoliberal policy framework and managerialism.

The pressures of this framework are part of my experience of myself as an educator, as a living contradiction. By this I mean that I hold values that distinguish what I do as educational, whilst at the same time I recognize that I negate these values in my practice. I use ideas of the effects of economic rationality, in neoliberalism in globalization, on de-valuation and de-moralisation.

De-valuation refers to diminishing or denying the relevance of all but one type of value to an issue; de-moralization denies the relevance of moral questions. The reduction of all values – intellectual, civic, health, among others – to a money value would be an example of de-valuation; the slogan ‘business’ is business’ is an example of de-moralization (Broudy, 1981: 99)    (McTaggart, 1992, p. 50).

Sources of living contradictions can be within oneself or within the sociohistorical and sociocultural influences in one’s practice and understanding.

Whilst experiencing such living contradictions, all my professional life in education, I have been helped by Barry MacDonald’s (1987) idea of creative compliance. This is the idea that you appear to be complying with external pressures and expectations, whilst acting in a way that transcends the pressures.  This idea has helped me to live within a system with pressures to negate my values, whilst at the same time, seeking to live my educational values as fully as possible.

In addressing issues of globalization in neoliberalism I accept Stigliz’s (2013) economic analysis of the dangers of inequalities in which he focuses on 7 reforms for overcoming the damaging influences of neoliberal organisations, especially the banking sector.

What I am suggesting is that IPDA should recognize the embodied knowledge of education that is make public in living-educational-theories as that of Master and Doctor Educators. I am suggesting that IPDA should urge Universities to accredit such knowledge as that of Master and Doctor Educators.  One way in which this can be done is to start with the recognition of Master Educators with four 30 credit masters units and a 60 credit dissertations such as the following:

• Understanding Learning and Learners – How do I improve my professional practice?
• Enquiring into Curriculum Studies and Assessment – How do I improve my professional practice?
• Enquiring into Student Diversity and Inclusion- How do I improve my professional practice?
• Conducting a research-based enquiry into improving professional practice – How do I improve my professional practice?
• The Dissertation on – How do I improve my professional practice?

In creating a profession of master and doctor educators, whose values and practices carry hope for the flourishing of humanity, it is important that their living-educational-theories include explanations of educational influences in the learning of social formations in a way that works at overcoming the inequalities identified by Stiglitz. This will involve transcending the living contradictions within neoliberal policy frameworks and manageralism, through living as fully as possible the values that distinguish our practices and knowledge as educational in our professional learning.

References on request

Further reading:

Whitehead, J. & Huxtable, M. (2016) Creating a profession of educators with the living-theories of master and doctor educators. Gifted Education International, 32(1) 6-25.

The January 2016 issue of Gifted Education International. Retrieved 6 February 2016 from http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/gei2015/geicontents2016.pdf

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