How can I improve my practice as a Chief Executive working with carers and their families creating my living theory of caring?

I have begun with a question of ‘How can I improve my practice as a Chief Executive?’ This is the current context of my research. However, I have many contexts and I want to bring these into my research. By using an ethno autobiographical methods I want to look at my story and where I have come from to reach this point. By this I mean

‘Ethno-autobiographical inquiry is a self-exploratory journey that investigates the ethnic, cultural, historical, ecological, and gender background of the participants. As a creative and evocative type of narrative healing storytelling, ethno-autobiography explores consciousness from a subjective perspective.  It enhances a sense of balanced living, which includes a participatory sense of being knowing. This incorporates symbols of presence and wisdom, nurturing and awakening. (Kremer, 2003)

My story incorporates all of these elements;

‘I am a 29 year old female, 1/8 African, 1/8 Polish, 1/8 Scottish, 2/8 German, 3/8 English (but they never give space for that level of detail on those equal opportunities forms). I am both middle class (my foster parents own their own business and I have a BSC Upper Second class degree in Psychology and Social Policy) and underclass (my biological parents both had/have schizophrenia, have been/were unemployed for most of their lives and at various points have been/were drug addicts and alcoholics (my dad is dead)). I was fostered at 3 and half, in my foster family I am the youngest and have 3 older brothers, in my biological family I am the oldest with a brother with the same mum and dad and a sister with the same mum and a different dad. As a result I am also a middle child! I am heterosexual although in my early 20’s I did make some experiences with a female friend. I am an atheist although I was once a born again Christian and I do believe in my amazing brain which is capable of being what some people would call spiritual. I have no physical, mental or learning disabilities that have been diagnosed by white, western medicine, although I suspect other cultures may have something to say about my health! I vote Liberal Democrat although I have voted Green Party but believe politics in Britain needs to make a stand for justice. I believe in justice.’ (Hutchison, 2009)

I wrote this on 29/03/09 in a piece of writing called My Mad Mum and Others. I wanted to get across the complexities of my story and this is the context that I want to set my PHD proposal in. The fact that now I am a Chief Executive is framed by these experiences. I want to research my lived experience and the lived experiences of those that I work with both service users and professionals. The majority of my professional life has been working with young carers and my research will focus on how I have developed a participative method and how I am now bringing that into working with adult carers and their families.

My work will be an original piece of research exploring how my lived experiences have influenced my professional practice, how I can support my workers to acknowledge how their lived experience influences their professional practice and how the lived experiences of the carers I now work with and the young carers I previously worked with have impacted on their lives. These experiences are part of our education as people and as professionals and this research will explore how I can support that living learning.

My research will build on Adichie’s concept of The danger of a single story. In my story, the stories of my staff and the stories of the carers I work with I want to show the complexities of these stories. Adichie describes the relationship stories have with power;

It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power structures of the world, and it is "nkali."It's a noun that loosely translates to "to be greater than another." Like our economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali. How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power.
Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. (Adichie, 2009)

By telling these stories I will live my values of empowerment by showing the many stories, some of tragedy and some of joy and hope.

‘when we realise that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.’ (Adichie, 2009)

My lived experience has been that by coming together we create energy. My research will explore the pooling of energy by engaging in collaborative research with carers and their families, my staff and other colleagues. Heron describes experiential knowing as;

‘feeling and imaging the presence of some energy, entity, person, place, process or thing. It is knowing through participative, empathic resonance with a being, so that as knower I feel both attuned with it and distinct from it.’ (Heron, 2001, p. 195)



Conscious Conversation 1997

This picture I drew when I was 18 captures in art form the energy I am proposing to study. Whitehead describes ‘explanatory principles that include energy-flowing values that carry hope for the future of humanity and my own, such as loving what we do.’ (Whitehead, 2010, pg. 11) I experience these energy-flowing values and want to bring these out into the academy, where they have largely been ignored.


‘It seems, then, the innovators in science are frequently those with sufficient courage to challenge widespread assumptions, enabling them to observe phenomena that were concealed from their peers by the veils of pre-conceived ideas.  Norwood Russell Hanson comments: “the paradigm observer is not the man who sees and reports what all normal observers see and report, but the man who sees in familiar objects what no one else has seen before.”’ (Wallace, 1996, Pg. 61)

My research will look at how energy flows and helps us to learn and to improve what we are doing.  It will look at how energy effects interactions when we’re working with people and look at the way of measuring energy that motivates us and how we pool energy when we are together.  I want to make a paradigm shift in the way that we think about working with people that shows that basing it on outcomes that are measurable such as what jobs they get, how much money they earn or what grades they get misses what is important.  But I don’t want the energy to be something that is measurable in the same way.  I fear that we will become like 1984 or brave new world if we try and measure the energy.  This is because if you try to measure the energy you have to define the energy and say what is energising for one person, but only the individual can realise what is energising for them. This will be a new epistemology which will need to

‘create enquiry approaches that enable new, valid understandings to develop; understandings that empower practitioners to improve their work for the beneficiaries in their care’  (Dadds and Hart, 2001, Pg. 169)

I want to look at the relationship between our personal and professional reflections.  I believe this is because it is where part of our energy comes from.  When we only reflect on the professional this does not reflect where all of our energy comes from.  We are motivated by where we have come from in our whole lives not just in the job we’re doing.  By reducing reflection to professional reflection we lose this motivation that keeps us going.

I also intend to find evidence to show that in order to work out what is energising to you, you need to reflect on your personal and professional experiences.  I also think that moments of energy or energising moments, can be missed if you’re not looking out for them.  Jack Whitehead has helped me realise that by using video you can isolate the moment of energy and reflect on how to make this happen again how and why it was important.

‘The point about a living theory methodology from an inclusional perspective is that it includes a relationally dynamic and receptive responsive to the flows of energy and values in the living space. I think that one of my original contributions to educational knowledge is my use of multi-media narratives
to communicate the explanatory power of flows of life-affirming energy in explanations of educational influence. We cannot do anything without energy, yet representations of the energy are not emphasised in explanations of educational influences in learning.’ (Whitehead, 2008, Pg. 13)

By using a living theory methodology it will enable me to complete the cycle.  I believe this is a new epistemology and therefore needs a new methodology to be able to measure it.

‘In using the idea of a living theory methodology I want to stress that this
includes the unique contribution of an individual’s methodological inventiveness in the creation of a living theory, rather than referring to some overarching set of principles to which each individual’s methodology has to conform, in an impositional sense of the word. There are however distinguishing qualities of a living theory methodology that include ‘I’ as a living contradiction, the use of action reflection cycles, the use of procedures of personal and social validation and the inclusion of a life-affirming energy with values as explanatory principles of educational influence.’ (Whitehead, 2008, Pg. 9)

Living Theory has unique elements that are not present in traditional methodologies.

‘This need for a unique explanation of our educational influences means that traditional theories cannot by their nature produce valid explanations for this influence. In a traditional theory an explanation is produced as a set of propositional relationships. These relationships are abstract and general. One of the characteristics of a traditional theory is that it is a general theory from which an explanation can be derived that applies to a particular case. Living theories are different. They are the explanations that individuals produce for their educational influences in learning. They are grounded in the relational dynamics of everyday life and explain the receptively responsive educational influences of individuals in their own lives. They are unique.’ (Whitehead, 2008, Pg. 14)

The word consciousness is useful to some degree as in order to be conscious about something we need to reflect on how it happened.  When we do things unconsciously, or a word that is often used is by our intuition, we cannot replicate it when we are in a different situation or explain it to others.  In order to improve professions we need to become conscious professionals.  In order to improve society we need to teach people to be conscious.  A term that is used in meditation is mindfulness.  By this it is meant for you are fully present, conscious and aware.  Perhaps this is a better word than just conscious.

‘Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non judgementally.  This kind of attention nurtures greater awareness, clarity, and acceptance of present moment reality.   It wakes us up to the fact that our lives unfold only in moments.  And if we’re not fully present for many of those moments, you may not only miss what is most valuable in our lives but also fail to realise the richness and the depth of our possibilities for growth and transformation.’  (Kabat Zinn, 1994, Pg. 4)

References

Adichie, C. TEDGlobal 2009; Filmed July 2009; posted October 2009. Retrieved 06/04/2010 from http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

Dadds, M., & Hart, S. (2001). Doing practitioner research differently. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Heron, J. (2001) The Placebo Effect and a Participatory World View, Understanding the Placebo Effect in Complementary Medicine: Theory, Practice, and Research, ed. David Peters. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone

Hutchison, S. (2009). Me, My Mad Mum and Others. Retrieved from http://www.spanglefish.com/soniahutchison/news.asp?intent=viewstory&newsid=25765

Kabat Zinn, J. (1994) Wherever you go, there you are Mindfulness meditation for everyday life  London: Piatkus

Kremer, W. Jürgen: Ethnoautobiography as Practice of Radical Presence, Revision, 2003
Retrieved 06/04/2010 from http://www.aboutleap.com/ethnoautobio/index.php

Wallace, B. Alan. (1996) Choosing Reality: A Buddhist View of Physics and the Mind New York: Snow Lion Publications

Whitehead, J. (2008) How Do I Influence The Generation Of Living Educational Theories For Personal And Social Accountability in Improving Practice? Using A Living Theory Methodology In Improving Educational Practice. Department of Education, University of Bath, Bath, UK.

Whitehead, J. (2010) Improving Practice And Knowledge Through Time And Space With Complex Ecologies And Action Research. DRAFT 2nd April 2010
A paper presented at the 2010 Annual Conference of the American
Educational Research Association in Denver, USA with the theme of
Understanding Complex Ecologies In A Changing World.
Saturday 1st May 2.15K3.45 Colorado Convention Center, Room 703.