Pete Mellett
My personal educational enquiry has been taking place over the past 30 years and has resulted in a number of publications. Each of these accounts has centred on a core purpose – the attempt to offer a valid claim that I understand my own educational development.
Past publications include:
MA dissertation (1994): Making the Break: How can I undertake and understand my search for an enhanced comprehension of my life through moving beyond forms of existence that are grounded in ‘mere formal rationality and instrumental reason’?
at https://www.actionresearch.net/living/mellett/pmmadis.pdf
... in which, starting with an enquiry into improving the quality of my thinking, I came to identify the negative implications of understanding and expressing my being through the cognitive categories of a positivist personal paradigm. I abandoned the search for a universal validity for knowledge and substituted for it the notion of conjecture shared by a critically-thinking but pragmatic community.
Key learning: responding to the two fundamental questions (i) What is my claim to knowledge? (ii) Can I make a valid claim that I understand my own educational development?___________________________________________________________________________________________
The BERA Review (2000) Educational Action Research within Teaching as a Research-based Profession.
... in which I held that it is not sufficient to stand outside the subject, to analyse it, and then to look for the construction of a definition, by asking the question: "What is Research-based Professionalism? Instead, I posed the question as "What is it to ask, what this thing – ‘Research-based Professionalism’ – is? With my review/research question posed in this form, I was obliged as the questioner to remain an integral part of the questioning, treading a path with others inside the subject of enquiry and giving an account of how it is for us as we undertake that journey. (at https://www.actionresearch.net/writings/values/pmreview.pdf)
Key learning: the nature of texts as 'readerly' (the text has closed meaning) and 'writerly' (the reader is able to collaborate with the text to construct knowledge – Sumara and Luce-Kapler (1993) building on Bruner’s (1991) concept of constructed realities).
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EJOLTS paper (2016) A living-theory pedagogy for postgraduate distance learning education
... in which I showed how the development of the new MSc distance learning module Consolidating Theory and Practice helped to move the focus from the delivery of teaching materials to students as recipients of knowledge to the engagement of them as active agents generating their own practice-based understanding. (at http://ejolts.net/node/286 )
Key learning: the role and function of collaborative communities of practice.
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EJOLTS Editorial Foreword (2017)
... in which I ask the question "What use has all this effort been?" in the context of 10 years' publication of living-theory research accounts in EJOLTS. I ask "... what am I actually going to do as the result of my reading?" It is one thing to hold certain values and to have those values confirmed or challenged by the writings of others – but it is a further step for those living-theory writings to make me behave in my life in a better way. It is not enough to exchange affirming thoughts amongst ourselves within the Living Theory community – each of us has to 'get out there' and do something. (at https://ejolts.net/files/0.pdf )
Key learning: the influence of living-educational-theory research accounts on practice.
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The Wiki of Living Educational Theory (2018)
... in which I set up and offered a wiki site for the purpose of providing an alternative channel into the understanding of Living Theory research, taking advantage of the hyperlinked relationship between ideas. 21 contributors have used the site to give autobiographies of their own learning and to explore the underpinning ideas within their living-theory research. (at http://ejolts-wiki.mattrink.co.uk/index.php/Main_Page )
Key learning: a wiki as a medium for facilitating and fostering generative engagement within a collaborative community.
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EJOLTS paper (with Jerome Gumede, 2019) Forming a ‘We’ through a good-quality conversation
... in which Jerome and I – two authors from two radically different cultural traditions – start from the production of intersecting autobiographical accounts to form a ‘We’ by progressively helping each other to ‘get on the inside’ of each other’s culture. In Living Theory terms, this is the process of each author’s educational influence on the other. Engaging with de Sousa Santos’ (1997) ideas of intercultural translation and with Jousse (1997) we seek “...discoveries [that] consist in the bringing together of ideas susceptible to being connected, which have hitherto been isolated” (p.49) to create a shared form of knowledge. (at https://ejolts.net/node/335 )
Key learning: an understanding of the generation, meaning and use of the word 'We' within a collaborative research enquiry; holding a good-quality conversation.
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EJOLTS paper (2020 – in press) Evolving my Educational Influence in Learning: Collaborative Communities of Practice, Relationally-dynamic Constellations of Values and Praxis
... in which I review the past as a springboard for my present and future praxis, enquire into the nature of Living Educational Theory as a research methodology, and identify the dynamic nature of values both within an individual and as shared by collaborative groups of researchers.
Key learning: Living Educational Theory is at the core of my praxis; values form patterns that are in flux; regenerative human settlements.
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Living Posters
... are intended as an opportunity to bring attention to researchers' sites of practice and research interests and to help connect people with similar research interests.
May 2015: Realising the educational potential of a death through the question: How can I work with others within our Living Theory research to sustain and develop Paulo's creative values as we try to make the world a better place? (at https://www.actionresearch.net/writings/aran/aranposters/PeteMellett2704.pdf )
April 2017: The creation of living theory through the generation of a Living Manual for the construction of regenerative human settlements. (at https://www.actionresearch.net/writings/posters/pete020617.pdf )
June 2019: Some of the things that are motivating me. (at https://www.actionresearch.net/writings/posters/petem0619.pdf ) – relating to my involvement in the local Neighbourhood Plan, the village Club, the Re-Alliance initiative (see https://www.re-alliance.org/ ) . . . and EJOLTS.
Key learning: there is a common thread that runs through all my diverse endeavours that is linked to my values.
