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This submission sets out a narrative of how a practitioner in the field of education identified and implemented the changes required, both in research methodology and in practice, in order to answer the question ‘how do I improve my practice?’ (Whitehead and McNiff, 2004) while remaining true to a personal value system by not teaching or researching in ‘a living contradiction’ (Ibid: 5) where a value system and a practice are not working in harmony. This submission chronicles a self-study journey to improve practice by identifying and reflecting on the changes required to improve that practice when ‘teaching’ ten-year-old pupils historical enquiry online. The narrative demonstrates how a practice can be reconceptualised and illustrates the outcomes of that re-conceptualisation. The particular practice in question was set within the context of technological advances in the Internet over the last half decade: in the early research the pupils used the Internet as an online encyclopaedia while in the later stages of the research they used the Internet as a means to access online authoring sites on the read-write resource Web 2.0. The journey of change follows the practitioner from teaching historical enquiry within a classroom setting to that of teaching historical enquiry within an online authoring site, called a wiki. To achieve those changes many key concepts (that had informed teaching practices at the beginning of the research journey) had to be deconstructed and subsequently restructured using an alternative design. The learning process was one of the key concepts teased apart and reconstructed using Wenger’s ‘communities of practice’ approach as a template for designing a small community of practices. It was the emerging small community of practices on the wiki that developed into a new perspective on how to promote the learning process most effectively in an online context. The submission also narrates the ontological dimension to the journey where the practitioner’s key personal values were used in the change process to create a living theory. This value driven methodology created living standards of judgement. The submission identifies, then critically reflects on, the two voices representing the significance of the developing perspectives of the writer as researcher and as practitioner. It then uses journal entries, articles and interviews to follow the practitioner journey from perspective point one to perspective point two. It reflects critically on the change process being experienced and the growing confidence that emerged as the practitioner and researcher voices began, in combination, to challenge accepted practice and develop a new single voice that impacts upon both the professional context and the field of educational theory. It leads to the acceptance of some of Wenger’s assertions that underpin his notion that meaning is negotiated in communities of practice and examines the changes in thinking that eventually led to this model being interpreted as a reference point only and to the suggestion of a new perspective on the learning process. The contribution to knowledge is, then, to be found in this new perspective of what is meant by a community of practices and the learning processes it generates with reference to teaching historical enquiry skills to ten-year-old pupils on an online authoring site called a wiki.

Teorinė mokslinės literatūros šaltinių analizė parodė, kad socialinis dalyvavimas traktuojamas kaip daugialypis konstruktas apimantis skirtingomis formomis grįstą, aktyvų asmens dalyvavimą visuomenės gyvenime. Egzistuoja NVO apibrėžties problema, tačiau dažniausiai NVO apibūdinama kaip, bet kuri pelno nesiekianti organizacija, telkianti ir vienijanti žmones bendrų tikslų siekimui. Mokslinėje literatūroje akcentuojamas pozityvus NVO vaidmuo skatinant neįgaliųjų socialinį dalyvavimą, sprendžiant įvairias jų socialines problemas. Remiantis teorine analize, gyvenamoji teorija yra asmens paaiškinimas apie ugdomąjį poveikį savo paties mokymuisi, mokymuisi iš kitų, ir mokymuisi iš socialinių aplinkų. Socialinė pedagogika ir gyvenamoji teorija gali būti sietinos pedagoginės kilmės, mokymosi visą gyvenimą trukmės, naratyvinių socialinės pedagogikos žinių plėtotės ir refleksijų aspektais. Kokybiniu, grupinės diskusijos, metodu buvo atliktas tyrimas, kurio tikslas – atskleisti subjektyvias neįgaliųjų dalyvavimo NVO veiklose patirtis. Empirinio tyrimo duomenys apibendrinti kokybinės turinio analizės metodu. / Theoretical analysis of scientific literature sources showed that social participation is construed as multiple construct covering different-form-based active participation of a person in social life. There exists a problem of the definition of NGO (non-governmental organization); however, NGO is most frequently defined as any non-profit organization uniting people in pursuit of common goals. Scientific literature focuses on the positive role of NGOs in encouragement of social participation of the disabled and in solving various social problems of this group of people. Based on the theoretical analysis, living theory is person’s explanation about the educational impact on the self-education, learning from others and learning from social environments. Social pedagogy and living theory may be of related educational origin, of life-long learning duration, development of knowledge of narrative social pedagogy and aspects of reflections.

The health needs of society extend beyond the treatment of the individual and the ill. These needs are at the core of public health which addresses health at a population-level. Regulations dictate that public health must be included in the South African medical curriculum, but healthy populations hold little interest for medical students. As a result public health remains over the conceptual horizon of medical students. At the University of Pretoria the responsibility for the inclusion of public health is the responsibility of the School of Health Systems and Public Health. Participation in the medical curriculum is a minor but important part of my educational practice. But two of my professional values – care and agency – have been denied in that practice. The central purpose of the research was to construct the meaning of my educational practice with the aim of progressive realisation of my values. The study explored how public health is conceptualised as a subject in the medical curriculum at the University of Pretoria, the intended educational achievements of public health in the curriculum and the optimal strategies for its inclusion. An action research living theory design made use of a concurrent embedded mixed-methods approach. Data was gathered primarily from external experts, the academic staff of the School of Medicine and the SHSPH, key academic documents and the medical students. A constructivist grounded theory approach was employed to construct meaning from the findings. The findings revealed the effect of the historical decision to split public health and medicine and the resulting increasing distance between the disciplines. Resting on this fractured foundation is the understanding of what public health is. The understanding of public health suggests a multiple concurrent understanding that is constructed by diverse and seemingly conflicting perspectives while the discipline remains identifiable as public health. The curricular intentions of including public health in the medical curriculum at the University of Pretoria are characterised by a varied topography that includes externally and internally imposed educational tensions, constraints and intractable contradictions. Curricular intentions revolve around ontological aspirations. The medical students’ perspectives of their educational experience in public health are surprisingly similar to those of students in other countries. The current and imagined strategies to include public health formed the basis for the scepticism of educational orthodoxy and suggested the exploration of the dual uncontested spaces – social media and the elective experience in the medical curriculum. The findings from my innovative practice in using the elective experience challenge the notion that public health is over the conceptual horizon of medical students. A theme that runs through the narrative suggests, instead, that other conceptual horizons obscure meaningful engagement with medical students around public health. This research is a rich account of my complex context and my connected practice and through action research I claim to live my values of care and agency. My living theory of practice as a form of meaning making could help others to look over their own conceptual horizons in search of wholeness. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Humanities Education / unrestricted

This dissertation presents an action research project carried out in a primary school to address the issue of ‘pupil voice’. Consulting with stakeholders has risen in prominence in the political context of schools. A number of government directives to encourage schools to engage have been put forward, including the expectation of the establishment of a School Council. The formation of the School Council is the first cycle of action presented in this dissertation, which then continues to develop through three further action cycles: listening to the voices of teachers, ‘children as philosophers’ and action research partnerships in the classrooms. Preliminary work prior to the introduction of School Council sets the context. The conceptual framework has been developed through consideration of the work of Shier (2001), Fielding (2001) and Hart(1994) which has contributed to the establishment of a taxonomy of ‘pupil voice’ development. The methodological approach emerged from the works of Elliott (1991), Zuber Skerritt and Perry (2002) and Whitehead and McNiff (2006) through the development of ‘circles of influence’ which rose and diminished in importance throughout the action cycles. Three circles of influence are identified as ‘self’ including reflexivity, ‘methods’ including ways of engaging and analysing the data, and ‘literature’ pertinent to the area of action as well as the methodology itself. The contribution the subsequent thesis offers to practice is threefold. Firstly, there is the ‘methodological messiness’ (Dadds & Hart 2005) which occurs when conducting action research which necessitates listening to the voices of the participants in order to determine the next cycle. Secondly, there is the development of the ‘pupil voice’ taxonomy which embeds the pupils within the process and is groundbreaking in ‘pupil voice’ research in primary schools. Finally, there are the action cycles themselves which offer the lived experience of engaging in ‘pupil voice’ action research partnerships.

In the thesis I develop a living theory of responsibility, movement, engagement, withdrawal, and self care with a living standard of judgement of response-ability toward the other. I use a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to develop a dynamic, relational understanding, where social constructions are discussed and refined using cycles of loose and strict thinking, an inter-play of emotion and intellect, and a combination of intuitive and analytic reasoning. This is underpinned by an extended epistemology embracing experiential learning, documentary and textual analysis, presentational knowing, dialogue, narrative and photographic inquiry. I address the essence of inquiry with people who have difficult stories to tell and for us to comprehend: narratives which emerge from episodes of chaos and suffering, interspersed with occasional glimpses of the inter-human. Within this context I explore responsibility [response-ability] to ‘the Other’ as subject, and the ethical obligations implied in that relationship. My and others’ narratives, through space and over time, are researched using an extended epistemology and inquiry cycles across two interwoven strands. I look back over a long career and ‘epiphanous’ moments as a social worker and academic in the field of child protection and children and families work; and as the child of a war veteran, I reflect on World War II narratives of suffering, changing identity, and the inter-human. This first and second person inquiry extends outwards through cycles of dialogue with ex European prisoners of war and relation with landscape across Europe and Russia. In these reflections I clarify my meanings of chaos, suffering and responsibility [response-ability]. The learning from this extended inquiry and the contribution to knowledge are reflected on within my current practice as a participative researcher who is expressing response-ability toward the other. Finally, I consider implications for improving practice and organizational climate in children and families work.

This qualitative study sets out to explore the experiences of secondary school students while they are learning mathematics in school. By using student stories of learning mathematics as my main data collection method I began to understand the view of mathematics that my students were constructing as they negotiated the complicated terrain that I know as the mathematics classroom. This method of student stories to communicate student voice was selected by me to allow the students the freedom to express themselves in a variety of comfortable, differentiated formats. My methodological approach evolved as the action research phases progressed, allowing for methodological inventiveness (Dadds and Hart 2001). This was a deliberate decision by me so that my research progress could be best served by a suitable methodological approach. The end result was a qualitative study that embraced a living theory model of action research (McNiff 2013), where practitioners can develop their own personal theories of practice (Whitehead 1999). Within this action research structure I used a narrative approach, considering narratives both as a data collection method and as a transformative phenomenon. Using the ideas of narrative research for data collection, I facilitated storytelling workshops with my students, collecting stories to inform the research interest. In this research, using narratives was also considered as a phenomenon because of their influence in allowing authors to model and re-model their experiences through their stories. I found that considering narrative as phenomenon complemented and supported a portraiture methodological stance (Lawrence-Lightfoot 2005). Narrative as a phenomenon also became apparent by the influence the student stories had on my 9 ability to understand my classroom and my subsequent teaching practice. To analyse the story data I utilised the ideas of Anderson (2011) who developed a transpersonal research method that incorporates the researcher's intuition, emotional and personal capacities into the research process. By using a multi-method approach of thematic analysis, symbolic interactionist perspective, input from colleagues and my reflexive intuition, I formed an analysis of the data that could be used to look at similarities and trends in the student stories. In addition, working with the student stories encouraged levels of empathy between the reader and the student author that transformed classroom practice and understandings. There are several ways that this thesis can contribute to practice. Firstly this research develops a pedagogical tool that encourages student voice, celebrates individuality and helps create an approachable interface between mathematics teacher and student. Secondly, it models how this way of working could be used to inform the practice of the classroom teacher by developing a deeper understanding of their students. Thirdly, the identification of particular themes is invaluable to subject department development and planning, and these themes can feed into a department and whole school ethos. Finally, it models a form of action research that encourages critical reflexive practice and utilises the knowledge, experience and intuition of the researcher with the sole purpose of improving the experiences of their students.

This dissertation explores the experiences of a psychotherapist in training. Psychotherapeutic training can be described as taxing, because personal change often results from the process, and change can be difficult. This study is an action research enquiry that focused on a living theory methodology. A living theory enquiry strives to find answers to the question of how to improve the practice (in this dissertation, the practice of sychotherapy). In order to find answers to this question, the researcher embarks on a journey of reflective awareness, which highlights whether he or she is able to practise in accordance with his or her personal values. An explicit awareness of both personal and professional values is essential in a living theory enquiry. A living contradiction occurs when a person is unable to consolidate his or her personal and professional values. A living contradiction has a negative impact on a practitioner’s well-being, which may in turn influence how that person practises psychotherapy. This dissertation explores such a living contradiction which the researcher experienced during her training as a psychotherapist. A subtext of the dissertation can be described as the Narrative of a psychotherapist (in training) dealing with personal trauma. Copyright / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Psychology / unrestricted

Popular management literature routinely presents management discourses that offer managers with strategies or 'recipes' for organisational improvement. Practitioners often uncritically accept and implement strategies prescribed within these discourses. Management discourses are constantly evolving to seemingly provide newer and better solutions to organisations' problems. The evolutionary pressures are evidenced through the limited life spans of many of the strategies proffered in the various management discourses. So short have been the life spans of some of these management strategies that the question of faddism has been raised (Birnbaum, 2001). Over recent years knowledge management has filtered from the broader management discourse into the discourse of educational administration. Knowledge management practices are said to enable individuals within an educational organisation to add value to the information and knowledge that an organisation possesses. This research used self-study to examine the effectiveness of a school administrator attempting to model explicit knowledge management principles within his professional practice. A focus of the research was the critical investigation of knowledge management as a management fad or a framework for sustainable management behaviour. Employing the living theory approach to action research allowed me to ask questions about 'how' to improve my practice and to provide evidence to support my answers. It allowed me to examine my professional practice as an educational administrator who valued knowledge, its creation and use critically. My research learnings been have presented as propositions related to the 'how' of my professional practice and its influence on the creation and management of knowledge. The propositions are as follows. * Proposition 1: As an administrator my practices when working with knowledge are a reflection of my ontology and epistemology. To consciously vary my professional practices to facilitate knowledge creation and management it is essential for me to make my ontology and epistemology explicit. * Proposition 2: My professional practices related to information sharing and knowledge creation are directly influenced by psycho-social filters. Three primary psycho-social filters are context, need and relationships. * Proposition 3: The influence of the relationship filter on my knowledge creation activities is directly linked to the relationships that exist between me and those involved in the knowledge activities. The ongoing capacity for my professional practices to influence knowledge creation is linked through relationships by my personal resilience. * Proposition 4: My knowledge influencing practices are those practices that support the provision of opportunities for information sharing and the creation of knowledge with the specific intent of applying that knowledge in an organisational context. A primary application of the created knowledge is decision making. * Proposition 5: Knowledge creation is an ongoing process and knowledge is only relevant at a point in time and applicable in a particular context. * Proposition 6: My professional practices that influence information sharing, knowledge creation and decision making are explicit iterations of my power as an administrator. * Proposition 7: Involvement in the decision making process is one of my key roles as an administrator. Decision making is a major example of the creation and use of knowledge within a school. * Proposition 8: I acknowledge that stories are a valuable way for individuals to share information and they can act as a catalyst for the creation of knowledge. * Proposition 9: Using the knowledge management discourse as a framework to support the critique of my professional practice challenges its branding as a management fad. The propositions have been developed and tested through reconnaissance and two cycles of action research. These propositions have been integrated into a model representing my capacity as an administrator to influence the creation of knowledge.

This thesis traces the inception and evolution of a combined collaborative action research project and living theory action research project. Six academic staff members attempted to improve our practice of generating locally relevant research in a university psychology clinic. This process impacted not only on the lives of the participants, but facilitated the enactment of the three tasks of universities and so influenced the lives of the student and residential communities to whom we had a responsibility. This thesis explores two research questions that formed the first part of the study, namely: “How can we improve the functioning of Itsoseng Psychology Clinic?” and “How can we increase our research output?” The second part of the study was a self-study action research project in which I examined my attempts to improve my academic practice by inquiring into my practice of facilitating the collaborative action research project as a peer support initiative. In the form of my living theory, this thesis therefore also explored my answers to the questions: “How can I facilitate a peer support research initiative?” and “How can I improve my academic practice through facilitating such an initiative?” I take a macro-level view of the relationship between a university and surrounding communities and discuss within the South African context three discernable mandates or tasks that universities fulfil: teaching, research and community engagement. I discuss the relevance of this study to psychology and specifically university psychology clinics as potential interface between the university and the surrounding community when enacting community engagement as the third academic task. I also discuss the implications of this study to action research methodology and the concept of transformation in emancipatory research. The main argument of my living theory of my academic practice is that the formation and nurturing of a regular, supportive and critical audience in the form of peer support research meetings contributed to the transformation of resources into assets when we worked towards improving the service delivery and local relevance of a university psychology clinic. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Psychology / unrestricted