Dear Jane, a warm hello from a cool Japan.  I have the great privilege to be your second reviewer and as I have to spend the next four days in hospital, I will have plenty of time to focus on your work. I have to say that I am so looking forward to reading it with the attention it deserves.

 

Speak again soon, love and respect, Jekan

Hiya! Greetings to you. I hope you’re well. It’s ludicrously cold here on the east coast, but I am dressed up to the hilt in thick cardigans and woollen trousers, so I will probably survive!

I am going to take points as they arise in the reading through of your submission. First I will make evaluative comments and then I will just go through a few technical details with you before giving my recommendations. I hope that is an appropriate response for you. If you need more from me about my comments, please just respond here at the site.

It is unique in my life to read the abstract of a paper and feel like shouting with pleasure! Yes, this is it! An abstract with questions too. That's not usual, but it is compelling. I was trying to ask myself why this combination should please me so much and then I realised it's because it's a living abstract, so much in the vein of what we are doing at EJOLTS. So I started with a real sense of optimism, pleasure, intrigue and delight.

I like the way you've started too, with a discussion - and it feels like that - of why creativity is important. This seems to be very much a talking-point at the moment in the UK, as of course I believe it should be anywhere. The quotation from Abbs is particularly telling. I do remember myself having reluctant pupils and after getting over the egotism of feeling negative about such pupils, I realised that I had to help the student see why enthusiasm about something was inevitable! I think this beginning helps me to understand your context as a living document.

After a lucid beginning you write this:

This paper will aim to make its own contribution to the debate, by exploring what being creative has meant for me in practice, which very clearly shows the differentiation you are making between theorised practice and praxis. I love it!

I wonder if you need to provide some kind of overview of the first video in case there are readers who don't have access to it and/or fare not on broadband etc.. In my own paper ( http://ejolts.net/drupal/node/76 ) I did this in footnotes. Also see the advice about the use of footnotes at: http://ejolts.net/drupal/files/Submission_Guidelines2.pdf which will give you an idea of how suitable additions might be in footnotes, or whether you need something more substantial.

When you write this on p.4: As an educator in further and higher education settings, my efforts to bring these opportunities into classrooms for my learners were marginalised or subversive to the expectations of my role I wonder whether it might be an idea to give us some evidence for this, or at least references that might enable us to validate this for ourselves if we wanted to. Making a claim without providing an evidential basis might weaken your argument.

You have such an appealing writing-style. As I read through the paper I come across such a lucidity of style. It's no wonder you're a writer as well as educator. The two really do need to go together sometimes, I feel, and here I can visualise, feel the narrative working its magic. I am so enjoying this experience, Jane.

You write (p. 4 again)

I am aware of being driven by core values which have been honed, tested and made explicit through engagement with its challenges I feel the need for more corroboration, as these standards of judgement, which essentially I think the following ideas comprise, are the ways in which you can test the validity of your work in education, and so on. I certainly don't disbelieve you, because the quality of your writing has a moral energy that resonates inside me as a reader and I have to believe you. I'm not talking about rhetoric and I want you and others who read this, to be clear. I think your writing does for me what Barack Obama's does (Obama, 2008). I read his The Audacity of Hope about a year ago and because of its power, its dynamic sense of the purposes of human existence, I knew I was in the presence of someone who believes what he writes and seeks to demonstrate these values in his own life. Rhetoric, to me, is something that spins me along for a little while perhaps, but it's not deep because there's no real substance there: it's just show. Your writing, I sense, as with Obama's, is the life-force you are describing as wishing to see in your life more fully. However, this synthesis requires, in an article for EJOLTS, also an analytical dimension which reviews itself. Your words are like Ben Okri's in The Famished Road. And I am NOT trying to limit that aspect. Oh, please don't think that: I've spent years trying to encourage it, in fact. But I sense that the paper would be strengthened by an appeal to rigour here. In other words, I want to know more about your professional life.

In relaying your requirements for educational validity, when you write: and to be inclusional again, I feel that this is not be problematised. 'Inclusional' is a concept that the Bath action research group and others that work with it, will be familiar with. However, as it's the first time in your paper I think you need to give a brief description of what this means in context.

I do like very much the way you ask questions, Jane. For example: Does creativity do something, or is it merely decorative and luxurious? I find myself asking myself where I stand in relation to what you're writing and then, as if I am listening to Bach, you make something cohere inside: To share this with the world is an artistic imperative… Absolutely! And it resonates like Bach for me in the sense that reading your words begins a series of associations in my mind and feelings and spiritual awareness. And then as you continue with your meanings, I find myself being aware of my brain becoming 'taut', crystalised, suddenly filled with light. As I say, Obama's writing and speaking always do this. Likewise Okri and reading Dr. Martin Luther King's speeches. I'm not overwhelming you with flattery AT ALL. I am attempting to reveal the effect of your writing on me as a reader. And I feel cleansed by the way you write. I can't think of more language to describe it. One more! What I have as inert insight is brought to the light of day and examined by what you write. In a sense I understand anew Collingwood's saying about we can take nothing from what we read but what we bring to it (Collingwood, 2002). I am actively engaged in the reading process. I understand something of the complex processes that lead to this, but to experience it at this level is a great privilege and pleasure. In relaying your demands of yourself up to page nine, I am moved and almost entirely compelled by your arguments.

p.10. Your diary notes are harrowing and give a stark insight into inspiration, which comes from such diverse sources, but perhaps most of all from paradox, conflict, dialectics.

As I read on, I find myself unable to respond analytically at all, and that's great! These passages are, to my mind, what Jack calls, 'beyond criticism'. How can one judge this kind of experience - I mean as an outsider? How much can I as a reader, as an editor of EJOLTS, grapple ethically with this writing? You've got me asking questions now.

Your diary entry on page 14 had me almost in tears and it's not just because what you write is moving, it's the way you write it. Like Okri you take metaphor and build it on metaphor until we are in this surreal realm that is, for those moments, more real than our own known universes. And writing like that turns me inside out and I feel myself rooted to the spot by your precision and scope. This isn't like any other academic paper I have ever read, and it is all the more moving and meaningful for me that it is. By this I mean that I believe you are stretching what it means for an academic journal to push the boundaries of our expectations and parameters. This is a groundbreaking article in my opinion. It's got to see the light of day.

On page 17 you write:

· What are the strategies and processes which have worked (or failed to work) for me as a writer, and are these generalisable or teachable? Another fascinating question. I wonder about this too. I wonder whether we can only set up a conducive environment for learning, rather than 'teach' much at all, but I will read on to see what you make of this.

And by the way I love the idea of a monogamous attachment to a violin: p. 19. I feel rather like that with the piano.

This process of showing us how these language-elicitations work is fascinating. And I just love the students’ responses. They are so rich and dynamic in their use of language. I was just about to suggest that some of this process might be left in an appendix and then realised that of course, it all needs to be part of the main text. And it’s followed so helpfully with the examples. This part of the text is also very powerful and rigorous. I like the integration of examples, students’ voices, pictures and so on. It helps me to gain a real insight into the creative process itself. Wonderful!

On p. 23 you write: In effect, as I have created this space for myself, I have been able to expand it so more and more are able to share it with me and this completely concurs with my own experience. I don’t mean that my experience is a necessary validation of your own, but I think you are saying something that many people could share (not generalisable in that traditional sense but in Bassey’s (1998) terms, â€relatable’ – and I think an allusion to this idea in the beginning about generalisability in a relatable sense might strengthen this concept, as it is one of the overarching ideas you are putting forward, to my mind).

p.25. You write: Knowledge transformation reveals itself when the â€knowledge’ or skill communicated between educator and learner, is actually transformed by the learner and becomes something new. I do like this. It seems absolutely an apposite conclusion to what you have written.

On page 25/26 I am intrigued by what you mean by a collective quantum of understanding. I know that the word quantum is added as an adjective to many different spheres these days – even in advertising washing up capsules! However, I would like to know what you mean by it precisely. Artistically, empathically, I believe through reading your paper that I sense what you mean. However, I am not sure that the meaning will be held in common and in a sense that’s what I would imagine you are aiming to do – if I have understood you properly – and PLEASE feel free to write and discuss this or any other point with me. I may be the first reviewer, so-called, of your paper, but I am also biased and restricted in my understanding of anyone else’s world and happily acknowledge it in the hope that you will expand my understanding.

I do feel it’s important to use a â€terminology’ that others easily share. That doesn’t mean people should not work at reading and understand your paper and the work and actions and practices of others, but those meanings should not to my mind obscure what you are saying. I recognise the deep and poetic resonance in your words, but…

There’s a whole world in your comment: This is no therapeutic, comfortable space. I remember so many times in my doctoral years with Jack, when I felt the process he was facilitating as therapeutic – and not very comfortable at times – thanks Jack! – but he would say, I believe I’m right in saying this, that his aim was not therapeutic at all, but educational and that meant I could find therapy in it if I so chose or felt or recognised, but I could not impute those motives to Jack. I was taking from the process what I needed at the time. It was Jack’s ability to hold open a space – a particular genius that all great educators, to my mind, have. And it is what you are talking about here, I believe. This space is educational, it is creative. The processes of education and creativity can indeed be therapeutic – to which diverse groups of individuals could attest (Sacks, 2007). However, the motives, if I’ve understood you correctly, are educational and creative and that these processes intertwined become something almost numinous. I’m extrapolating my own insights from your writing, which help me to understand where I stand. To have such clear motives, to understand such motives fully are the stuff and responsibility of educators, to my mind, and your paper leads me through your beautiful creative spirit and shows me something of how it influences others in the world. There is an authenticity (Kincheloe, 1991) to this living theory that I find beautiful because of its aesthetic purity. In my own thesis (Laidlaw, 1996) I tried to get close to my own sense of what it meant to elucidate the aesthetic aspects of my own educational development. As I read your paper I see someone very comfortable with her own creativity and ways of facilitating it in others. It isn’t simply a living theory, this is a celebration and I feel like joining in!

For me there is something a little abrupt about the ending to your paper. It seems to stop. And I cannot access the url. It seems incomplete. The process of your doctoral study needs more contextualisation, I believe, certainly if this is a point at which you have chosen to â€interrupt’ your living theory for the time being. Would it be possible for you to give the reader a little more access to this conclusion? It has, I can already see, a poetic truth, but perhaps it also needs a more concrete one in places!

Technical Details. After such a beautiful paper it could be seen as crass to interrupt the flow with some nitty-gritty points. I understand that compared with the artistic and creative and educational significance of your paper, the following details may seem nit-picking. However, I believe that there are points at which the technical issues intrude into the flow of the reading and therefore, I think they need attention. I’ll go through them as I find them in the paper, but I would be grateful if you could give the document alluded to earlier a read through at: http://ejolts.net/drupal/files/Submission_Guidelines2.pdf as this will help us to standardise our published papers. Standardisation, as Jean McNiff and Branko Bognar have helped me to see, raises the communicability and the professionality of our journal and that’s really worth doing. In addition to the earlier point, please have a look at our first issue papers. These have been standardised in terms of the technical aspects as fully as (humanly!) possible.

Could you take a look at the following points for your resubmission?

• Keywords after the Abstract should be capitalised.
• Indent quotations more than 40 words only once, and not half-way across the page. They should throughout the paper, when more than 40 words be a slightly smaller size than the main text.
• I am not sure what teacher: learner or writer: teacher (I’m questioning the colon and the spacing) is meant to mean. It is an unusual use of punctuation. If there is a rationale for it, I think it needs to be explained. Would teacher/learner be more usual?
• Quotations fewer than forty words should be contained within single quotation marks.
• There should be one space between a full-stop and a new sentence rather than two.

Page 3, you write (in black): Indeed, creativity (here, introduce the quotation with a comma and don’t indent it because it’s only 36 words!)

is essential, not only for science, but for the whole of life.

If you get stuck in a mechanical repetitious order, then you will

degenerate. That is one of the problems that has grounded every

civilisation. (Bohm, 1998, p.16) (The full-stop will come after the bracket and the single quotation mark come before the bracket.)

• P. 4 You write: 2. What values and beliefs underpin my view of creativit y ? Why the space between the sentence-ending and the question-mark? There are a few instances in the paper where you leave spaces between words and their punctuation. Can you check that please? You will find help with that with the marks in green that Word documents automatically highlight.
• Interim and main titles as well as headings need also to be indented as in the indentation for paragraphing (Empathy and Connection and so on).
• P. 9 You write: indeed, are they in fact one intextricably intertwined process ? Spelling and spacing before the ?
• Your diary-entries (see p. 10 for example) need to be indented in the same position as a paragraph-indentation. The way they are located at the moment is difficult for me as a reader to grapple with. It’s distracting. There are many instances of indenting too much in the paper. It’s indentation-overload!!
• Could you also look at the positioning of your phrase (Spiro, 1995, diary notes) in terms of where it is in relation to the diary entries themselves: and the punctuation/spacing of it too?
• P. 11 needs looking at in terms of lay-out. It seems quite chaotic. It won’t take much to re-convene it, so to speak.
• P. 12 You write: (Denzin, 1997, p.225). Could you check through the paper and correct page references where you place no space between the p dot and then the page-number. I think there are quite a few of these. It should read: Denzin, 1997, p. 225). And yes, I realise that these points may seem piffling, but as an academic journal we will be judged on the professional lay-out of our journal and I want to give no one the excuse for criticising what we are trying to do here.
• Same page you write: a what if? Question. Not sure this is a helpful use of punctuation here. A â€what if’ question is what I think is usually used, but I may be wrong on that. Anyone else any ideas on that? Branko, I don’t think we’ve discussed this sort of occurrence at all, have we? I can see why manuals about house-style can become so long!
• P. 13-17 There are some indentation irregularities. Could you sort them out? And also the attribution needs looking at, in terms of spacing and positioning. This would help readability as well.
• P. 18. You write: Whether or not learners have met this as a term, much can be unpacked from the two words: praise – something we love, value, admire, describe in words, an admiration made known, â€flung to the heavens’: song – something chanted out loud, perhaps with musical instruments such as drums … I am concerned here about your use of space, colons and so on. Might it be better to have them as bullet-points instead? This would highlight them and relieve the current problem of seeming a little mixed up. At least to this reader.
• P. 18 You write: But praise songs could be about anything we admire: Pablo Neruda, for example, writes in praise of ironing: … I am not sure we can have multiple uses of a colon. Would it not be better to have them as separate sentences, or sentences split by a semi-colon?
• Are the quotations from people’s own creations poetry? I think they are. If so they should be centralised on the page, as in the beginning Farren’s paper (Farren, 2008) in the first issue of EJOLTS.
• On that page, you are not consistent within your own parameters for new-line spacing either. Could you make sure that all the paragraphs, quotations and so on, are consistent with the lay-out suggested in the notes alluded to before?
• Top of page 19 should be indented.
• P. 20 poems should be centralised.
• And on p.21 and so on…
• P. 22. You write: ” (Conrad, 1920, p.6:). I have highlighted the gremlins as I see them.
• P. 24 has a wider page-width than the rest of the paper, narrower margins are needed in other words.
• P. 25 I would like to see semi-colons on the ends of the listing here.
• P. 26 ..\Phdjan08\StoryEpilogue.doc seems to be half a url.
• P. 27 the Bibliography should begin a new page.
• Please put full-stops at the end of each reference-entry.

Bibliography

Allende, I. (2007). In Giving I Connect. In J.Allison [MJ1] and D. Gediman, This I Believe [MJ2] (pp. 13 – 15). New York: Holt.

In fact this spacing between the work and so on, seems fairly consistently incorrect throughout. Could you go through and ensure that the bibliographical punctuation is consistent with the first issue’s paper and the guidelines? Thanks. As I look through the bibliography there are many places without any punctuation at all. Look at: paper_template.dot for clarification. It has a really helpful set of examples.

Boden, M.A. (2001). Creativity and k [MJ3] nowledge in A.Craft [MJ4] , B.Jeffrey and M.Leibling (eds.) [MJ5] Creativity in Education London [MJ6] and New York: Continuum : 95 - 102

If in the revising of your paper you would like to me to do an interim checking through of the technical details again I am happy to do this.

O.K., enough! If I go on much longer it will detract from the real force and passion and beauty in your paper. ALL these comments are intended to be constructive and not destructive in any way. I would welcome feedback from you not only on the content of this review but also on the inner messages that you are receiving from this that might not have been my conscious intention. I wish to improve the quality of my reviewing abilities such as they are. In other words, do you feel this to be a supportive and constructive review? How might I have fulfilled my reviewing capacities more fully? I don’t ask this either to exploit the situation for my own educational development (although that’s certainly an aim), but I believe this might lead us both to a better understanding of your paper and its capacities.

Final Comments: I feel passionately about this paper, Jane. It speaks to me with a sense of numinosity, of truth which I do not know how to analyse or explain. I simply know that your paper is important. It appeals most significantly to my sense of aesthetics, which I also see as having ways of enhancing our responsibilities towards the world in which we live and towards ourselves as sentient beings. I wonder whether the idea at the beginning of the paper about the nature of inclusion in what you are doing, could also, perhaps, if this seems appropriate to you, be linked to Rayner’s idea of inclusionality (see below for reference). There seems to me to be something about the way in which you write, and see and feel and touch and think and evaluate and experience and synthesise and delight in your world that strikes me as redolent of the insights Rayner is exploring with the Bath group and also his own writing at http://people.bath.ac.uk/bssadmr/inclusionality/ I assure you that I do not wish to foist on you such insights and dimensions that may not be fitting. I have far too much respect for your writing. However, I think it might be worth you having a look to see whether the organic and fluid nature of his insights about community, groups, individuals, might resonate with you. If they don’t, fine. It’s absolutely not a condition in my review for publication. I think it might enhance, that’s all.

My thanks for such an inspiring submission and one that enhances my own understanding of education and creativity and the links between them. And I simply LOVE the way you write!

Recommendation:

Definitely publish with some revisions and a technical tidy-up.

Bibilography:

Bassey, M. (1998). Enhancing teaching through research. Professional Development Today, 1(2), 39-46. (A shortened version was published in Research Intelligence, July 1997.)

Collingwood, R.G. (2002). An Essay on Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Farren, M. (2008). Creating an educational space. EJOLTS, 1(1), 50-68.

Kincheloe, J. (1991). Teachers as Researchers: Qualitative Inquiry as a Path to Empowerment. New York: Falmer Press.

Laidlaw, M. (1996). How can I create my own living educational theory as I account to you for my own educational development?’ (Doctoral dissertation, Bath, 1996.) Last retrieved November 28, 2008, from http://www.actionresearch.net/moira2.shtml

Laidlaw, M. (2008). In Pursuit of Counterpoint: an Educational Journey. EJOLTS, 1(1), 69-102.

Obama, B. (2008). The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. New York: Canongate Books.

Okri, B. (1993). The Famished Road. New York: Anchor Books.

Rayner, A. (n.d.). Essays and Talks on Inclusionality. [Web Page]. Retrieved December 2, 2008 from http://people.bath.ac.uk/bssadmr/inclusionality/

Sacks, O. (2007). Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. London: Vintage Books.

[MJ1] spacing

[MJ2] Punctuation?

[MJ3] capital

[MJ4] spacing

[MJ5] need another dot there

[MJ6] Punctation.

Dear Jane, I read your paper when I was in hospital.  I have to say that I enjoyed the narrative sections. There are some points that I feel we should look at together in order for me to check your meaning. How would you like me to proceed? I usually edit-review a paper in word and use the reviewing elements of word 2007 to add comments. Would that work for you?  I had some issues with formatting but they have been removed now as text no longer needs to conform to APA 5. Only the references have to do that.  I would suggest that you take a look at the text lay out suggested by the journal and adjust the text style accordingly.

As I read the paper I was drawn into the account but felt a sense of conflict with the narrative and the academic style. My main concern is that you are writing for an international journal and need to write for your audience. In place the paper reads like an assignment or thesis extract. This detracts from the flow of your narrative which is like an unfolding poem wearing its magic in the webs of time and space. I found the concept so exciting and my mind moved off to the teachings of the Bushmen of South Africa, where they believe that every ancestor is in the DNA and can be contacted and the experiences and lives of those whom live before can be brought into the present.

On a point of style, may I respectfully suggest that you do not need 4-5 references for a short piece of text? References in articles writing should only be used to give support to a point or issue. Reviewers are looking for page numbers and relevance of references to the flow of the text and argument. As a student such practices are often carried out to get as many references in the text as possible, commonly known as sand bagging..smile. Your scholarship and penmanship need no such devices.

Do let me know how you want to proceed

Love and respect,

Je Kan