EJOLTs virtual space of cooperation

Hi Michelle. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read your paper. I must say first how much I enjoyed it. I could identify with so much of what you wrote about the processes and learning with your students. There were quite a few points where I just said 'YES!' aloud during the reading. I felt a genuine connection with your ideas, struggles and clarity. I think what you're writing about really matters and is highly educational. And I love the videos. They are clearly relating to the values you're writing about.

I've gone through the paper twice. First reading for the overall scope and meanings, and then more painstakingly - and some might say in a more pernickety manner!

To summarise, before I am happy to recommend it for publication, there are a few things I'd like to suggest in terms of strengthening the paper as your living-theory. In no particular order:

1) I felt the paper needed to start with a greater sense of contextualisation for the reader. I felt a little lost in the opening pages, because you only offered me later details that would have helped at the beginning. I think there is a bit of a juble of paragraphs at the beginning. The way you've started the paper is more like a prologue than the first part of the main text. It's important, what you're writing at the beginning, but I'm not sure it's as powerful for the reader as it could be.

2) You make a few claims without evidence. See script for details. This links with the lack at times of engagement with the ideas of others and the brevity of the References list at the end. I've made several suggestions. Of course, you can take my particular suggestions with a pinch of salt, but I think the point stands about the need for a greater contextualisation through the ideas of others.

3) The abstract is very short indeed, and not, to my mind, sufficient for the reader to extract the main ideas from. Its brevity isn't simply a matter of word-count either, it's borne out by the fact that you don't go into any detail about some issues, for example, power - something that ties to 1) above. Power, as far as I understand it from your paper, emerges as a significant dimension of your discussions around the issues you are presenting. I also think Power needs to be a keyword after the abstract.

4) There are some issues of formal presentation that need addressing. I've noted them in the Comments on the attached.

I hope you find these comments constructive, Michelle. Don't hesitate to ask any questions (on this thread) about anything I haven't been clear about. I am attaching a paper I am recommending with these comments and the annotated paper as well, but in a connected thread as it won't allow me to upload two files to one posting.

All the best,

Moira

Hi Michelle, Thank you for submitting your paper which I enjoyed. I too would emphasise a bit more work on your context; and I have things to say below on your rather sketchy literature base.

This is an interesting piece about a personal journey from teacher as instructor to teacher as co-learner. It drawers on a teaching career which has promoted deep learning by discussion, dialogue and relationship. For this I commend it. There is an interesting line “experience the sense of wholeness and peace that comes with aligning your practice to your living-educational theory”. Cognitive dissonance is anything but wholeness and peace, being a living contradiction, someone who acts out values they do not hold.

 A word often used is ‘authentic’. It seems to me that this needs unpacking. Its use is intended to be wholesome, but an unwholesome character can live out their unpleasant values authentically to them. It seems to me that wholesome attitudes  and values promote justice, fairness, respect and dialogue, and this ought to be part of the diagnostic discussion. ‘Authentic’ as ‘true to one’s values’ makes no comment on whether those values are helpful or harmful.

You make a good stab at describing life reflection as a journey, with a beginning, middle and a future. Your ideal teacher offers you an excellent model of love, care, encouragement and relationship. You are lucky. I have reflected on my own primary, secondary and professional learning and have no such wholesome role models. There might be a tendency to feel one has to live up to the unwholesome role models, often over authoritarian, that governed one’s early life experience.

 I value the emphasis on validation, since it is important that an autobiographical record is not wholly subjective. Listening to a range of voices (dialogue) is an important aspect which keeps one’s feet on firm ground. Grounding philosophy on Nel Noddings and bell hooks seemed to me a good approach, but there are several substantial works by Noddings that would have been useful to explore beyond the brief summary article cited.  Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks equally deserved a deeper treatment.You could have drawn on many other authors and it may be helpful to explain why you settled on this brief list you have used

I hope that you have time to address some of these points before publication. Stephen

Dr Stephen Bigger

Hello Moira, Stephen, and Bernie - 

Thank you again for your thoughtful (and timely!) reviews of my manuscript, I truly appreciate your feedback and have had a wonderful week thinking and writing. I am attaching the latest revision of my piece and hope that the responses below highlight where I have expanded my writing as well as where I may still have questions. You'll see some of the following in this revision:

• Expanded abstract to capture the process I engaged in, I was unsure about including theory and in-text citations in the abstract as well. I certainly can and think it may provide some additional context, but would like to know your thoughts about this.
• Reorganized and expanded introduction - Thank you Moira for the advice and rearranging paragraphs, great suggestion! I have added more context here as well to provide the reader with more information about who I am as well as what led to this point.
• Significantly expanded theory section - Thank you all for your thoughts on this section, it was important for me to go back to the original writing and really think about those connections after spending so much time outlining my own living-educational-theory. 
• Through my writing, I felt a deeper connection to the ideas of caring, connection (outlining what I mean by authentic), and dialogue. I felt the power issues come up when I discussed my own position within academia so I tried to highlight them more in that area using Rochelle Brock's work as opposed to within the teacher-student paradigm. I felt that was more true to who I was and I hope that it reads that way. 
• I did not choose to extensively discuss the role of technology and I hope by expanding the introductory contextual pieces that describe my background in the field it helps the reader to understand that this is, and has been, an integral part of my practice. I provided additional references as well for my work in this area.
• I have added some overview sentences about my validation process to give the reader a sense of what I did and why.

Thank you all for the great suggestions about additional readings, I enjoyed reading some new pieces! I look forward to your feedback.

Michelle