Dear Sabine, Lynda, Norma, Martin, Diane, Judith, Laurie, Sebastien, Denise, and Kristen.

I am delighted to be a reviewer of your paper. I have never read anything like it. That is a wholly good thing, by the way, but I realised part-way through reading it that I started off merely analytically as you will see from my margin-comments. Then I realised I had to read it differently from my usual style. And the text simply grew in power and beauty and stature as I gave myself up to it. I ended up entirely convinced by the way you chose to narrate your individual stories so that there is equal prominence for both the one and the many! You have done something I haven’t seen effected so clearly before in an article: you weave your stories together in the way you clearly weaves your insights together when you are in the group. There was, for me, a real symmetry between form and content, and that only ever seems to happen when there is harmony, accord, development and, dare I say it, love. In my language, I would say that you have written counterpoint in which each voice is heard, respected, listened to, and yet the whole is clearly and unobscured and develops into something harmonically beautiful.

There are a few minor details of presentation I’ve alluded to in the annotations on the text – see attachment to this posting - that need looking at. If those small details are dealt with, then I recommend this paper for publication without reservation. It makes a distinctive and valuable contribution to Living Theory.

Best wishes to you all,

Moira

Dear Judy and fellow learners,

I wrote this review before reading Moira’s feedback, and it seems I might have taken a more ‘cut and dried’ approach.  Nevertheless I do hope you find my remarks helpful....they are sent with love and the hope that your paper will inspire others to find ways of learning together as you have done.

Eleanor Lohr

Dear Judy, Sabine, Lynda, Norma, Martin, Kristen, Laurie, Diane, Sebastien, Denise, 

I wrote these pieces before noticing Moira and Eleanor's comments.

I love your paper for its novel and extremely useful methodology that solves the dilemma of writing together democratically, by giving equal weight to all knowledge contributions, and creating a rich united account that keeps individuals in view.  I found it believable and familiar, for the values involved, strength, passion, creativity, commitment, disappointments and frustrations. Brilliant.  

“Individually 

We do not have the strength needed to create the braid  

To produce the sash 

But, strong ropes are braided from individual, weaker threads.”  love it. 

The videos are perfect for making it clear what you did and for following each individual in your contributions to the whole. The added bonus is in being able to see you all in action with the qualities of interaction implied by the methodology, and the naturally observable emotions. I am definitely going to see if the Skype and face to face research groups I belong to find braiding in this way a possible solution to our writing conundrum.

I also like how you included literature in the braids, melding in different influences in the creation of your method for your research purposes. I see the range of literature used more as exemplars for the emergence of the methodology than being critically reviewed. I shall try to explain why I see this as problematic in the case of Living Theory methodology and EJOLTS.  I am using the EJOLTS rubric for reviewing Values and Voices for the journal.   Your paper is primarily a Narrative Inquiry but the text also refers to action research and to Living Theory research.

I see each author is clear about the values you hold and most of you say that you have held these values all of your careers. Some of you refer to recognising yourselves trying to realise your values in practice while also recognising times when it is not possible. This is the problem to be solved. Values not possible/denied in real-life reality don’t appear to be used to explore the problem further in this paper.  Similarly I don’t see them used for evaluation or explanation of why things happen or as focus for the next round of research. I think this arises because the values do not appear to be actively seen in this research, as standards of judgement for accounting for your actions and checking that you actually do as you claim. Living contradictions (values denied in practice) is a central tenet of Living Theory methodology but appears to be missing here.  When values are central to research-in-practice they inevitably change in the course of the exploration about why contradictions occur (Moira Laidlaw,1996). Change is a central feature of action research and it is hard to identify it in this paper.

It may be that you didn’t intend using living theory in this way. Your intention was to map individual and shared experiences and influence others’ practice including those interested in teacher development in the highest positions.  I love the mapping and writing and find the themes, passions and struggles all very familiar and valid. But I don’t see much action in the research or much evidence of how the actions from the research has changed anything in classrooms or other places.  This is where I see a lost opportunity but not a problem for publishing this paper. I will try to explain how you could name it as a future research intention.

I was emotionally moved by the end of the paper when the team seemed so down-hearted by colleagues absent from the conference, people in power not seeing value in what you are doing and a feeling of hopelessness about it.   (I’ve been there)   It seems to me that if you all set about collecting evidence of how you use your values in your practice, you could show you that you make a difference and have a way to explain of why your values are important to effective educational practice. You could go further by using your values as standards for evaluating/ checking/validating/ demonstrating that you actually do as you claim. This could be the next phase of your research to restore hope and help find tangible persuasive evidence of your efficacy in presenting your knowledge beyond the group.  This is the evidence relevant to EJOLTS that is missing in the paper at present I believe.   I hope this makes sense. I am happy to hear your thoughts.

Robyn Pound

Dear Sabine, Lynda, Norma, Martin, Diane, Judith, Laurie, Sebastien, Denise, and Kristen,

Thank you for sharing your paper. Jack Whitehead has been telling me about it for weeks and waiting for it to be put up publicly, so it is a great excitement to read it. I have also been writing a joint paper which I have put up for review and had been struggling as to how to ensure our voices are both unique and joined together and of equal value. I find it interesting that in some ways we used a similar process but in some ways it was different. With so many authors yours is a braid whereas with two authors ours is more able to be jointly written as agreeing with two voices is a little easier than 10. I found myself imagining the text in different colours to make the words into the braid on the page. I am not suggesting you do this as it would make it difficult to read but I would be fascinated to know if it is possible to have an alternative version to show how each voice is braided in. 

I personally would also like a little more detail on the process - do you all write and then share your writings and then choose lines from all of your writings or are you all looking at your individual writing and choosing lines to braid in?

Thank you for sharing and for offering another way of writing together.

Sonia

Dear Judy, Norma and fellow inquirers,

I so appreciate your commitment to each other, and to the loving processes that bind you together.  I believe that it creates many possibilities for both personal and professional development, and that it would be wonderful if others could benefit in this way by being part of such an Inquiry Group.

Norma described the group's almost ineffable relational experience by saying, 'we remain linked by our writing' indicating that the written narrative affirms the experience. However the writing does not yet explain how the experience becomes the educational practice. 

If you asked the questions, 'Why do we want to share this experience outside this group?' and 'What makes us think that joining a Narrative Inquiry group like ours would be a valuable methodology for other teachers?' this might help to provide explanations that would make a successful case for grant funding.  It might also begin the conversation about how this methodology could be described as 'living educational research'.

wishing you well, Eleanor

Dear Judy and Co-inquirers

I found the introduction to your paper so inspiring, it gave me goose pimples!  The reason for this is, I think, was because the nature of the writing signals an open invitation to the reader to take part in a brilliant and intimate weaving of place, relationship and ‘other’.  You have then evidenced this by showing the connections that arise through ordinary everyday conversation as well as those arising from Denise’s powerful presentation (Video1).  The paper gives the reader a taste of the range and nature of very varied connections that are respected and honoured but not ‘pointed to’ but which nevertheless bind the inquiry and are the building blocks of your learning community.

The achievement of this delicate but strong balance of inclusiveness, shows me that you are inclusive but does not tacitly address what the ‘challenges of the undertaking’ referred to in the abstract actually were (or are), and which would be wonderful to learn more about in your next submission!  After all, the difficult challenges and failures that inevitably occur within the Narrative Inquiry Group will be echoed in the school and the classroom and therefore is also likely to contribute to much learning.

On my first reading of your revised paper I became utterly engrossed in the giving and caring nature of the process, and excited by the prospect of finding out (1) how you represented the group learning (2) how the group went from problem to solution to problem (3) how as a group you met the challenge of improving what you are doing (3) how you evidenced, evaluated and validated your findings. 

Now, I am a very careless reader and know that I do not always ‘catch’ meanings first time around.  The explanation of how you represent group learning in metissage was great – I couldn’t miss that – it made such great sense. And going through the rest of my list (as set out above) I did find that you had addressed all of the other issues, and so whilst I have no hesitation in recommending this paper for publication I do think it might help the reader if you referred back with clear signposting to those earlier assertions, just to reaffirm that you have achieved what you set out to do.

Braiding and metissage is a wonderful metaphor for weaving together strands of different colour.  However as a spinner and knitter, I know that to ply the thread successfully, the strands need to be of equal weight and thickness.   The inherent beauty of your braid appears to me to be in the capacity of the group to find common purpose and connection.  Without that no learning would have been possible.

With love Eleanor