Some great news to start the week. Congratulations to Jack Whitehead for the offer of a Professorship at Liverpool Hope University! Jack retired at 65 last August from Bath University after decades of determined scholarship to found a new form of educational research, in order to counter the dominant views of knowledge and theory. And there is no doubt that he's done it with his form of action research - living theory approaches to action research. In an action research enquiry an individual or group decides on a course of action to improve something. They make  plan, carry it out and evaluate it. With living theory approaches individuals do the above, but also judge it by the living standards of judgement that characterise their best practice and values. In other words, individuals empower themselves to conduct scholarly research in order to improve something educationally and practically, and then write about it in order to show what they have done. Living Theory Ph.D.s can be found at: http://www.actionresearch.net/living/living.shtml on Jack's website.

Jack was, for those of you who don't know, my Ph.D. supervisor in the 90s and without doubt the best teacher I ever had. If you look at:

http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/jack/jackvalidationsb.htm 

you'll see the Validations book that I and other colleagues worked on last Summer in order to be able to offer it to Jack as a gift when he left formal employment with Bath University. It is a compilation of some writings by students and colleagues of Jack's influence in their lives. An extract from my Introduction about, as I see it, the way he mentors students:

Jack’s enthusiasm and joie de vivre are legion. “The man with a big laugh” is what a mutual friend calls him. And yet he hasn’t always had an easy time of it. His form of knowledge has met many obstacles in his working life, not least from some of his colleagues. He has treated these episodes, some of them serious (and you can read about them in his book, The Growth of Educational Knowledge, at: http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/bk93/geki.htm) with logic, humour and resilience. And through the years from the late sixties to the present day, Jack has striven nationally and internationally to change teachers’, students’ and organisational life so that learning can be improved. It’s been a quest in many ways, and has paid dividends all over the world. I know I wouldn’t have gone to China without the learning I gained through my Ph.D. with Jack as my mentor. Living Theory approaches to action research are now to be found in this country, the USA, Canada, other parts of Europe, China, Japan, and Australia, and not only in education, but in medicine, alternative therapies and the police-force. Living Theory has its own internationally-reviewed e-journal, EJOLTS (see www.ejolts.net), recently inaugurated in order to serve the needs of practitioners’ voices, which, it was felt, weren’t then being sufficiently served. Jack travels all over the world – spent two months recently in South Africa, travelled twice to Guyuan to visit our action research centre there, and continues, despite being provisionally “retired” to do his bit to save the world. I know no one’s career that has superceded Jack’s in terms of his selfless dedication to education, and to improving the lot of individuals, groups and societies by paying attention to the improvement of learning.

He deserves more than a professorship. He deserves an honour from the whole country in my opinion, in that he has selflessly helped others for their good. He has taught in ways that change individual lives and the ways in which those lives and those of others can thus be led. He has revolutionalised the connections between theories and practices, by understanding more than anyone else – in my opinion – the ways in which people can be galvanised to understand and harness their better selves.

I’ve maintained for a long time that Jack is a genius. I am quite sure I am right about that. Sometimes people are recognised properly for what they contribute. And Jack deserves this appointment. He deserves a lot more. He deserves an OBE.

Moira 1.2.10.