Research Quest: Traditions

What traditions of mine are likely to shape my inquiry?

I feel there are many traditions that form my ways of knowing and ultimately my inquiry. Some traditions of practice and research are evident in my ways of knowing. Interconnectedness, collaboration, usefulness, beauty and possibility have been central to my ongoing inquiry. In my ways of knowing missing are some traditions that are embodied within me - particularly those which represent my immediate and more distant family. There is a conscientiousness and deep caring within me that is commonly exhibited within my family. These traits have had an enormous range of consequences for us - many self destructive at the same time as being enlightening and some just self-destructive. In some senses I feel it is this that has nurtured my ways of knowing - but in what senses?


What consequences do my traditions have for the purposes of my inquiry?

There is a broad and clear direction in terms of my inquiry and its purposes - but i think my answer to the previous question illustrates there is an-other I need to consider. Broadly my purposes are to take this playfulness and freedom of being thing that I know works for me and work out how it could work for others. The very personal traditions brought to me by my family need to be explored for me to be able to situate myself in my research. So one of the purposes of my inquiry turns out to be to explore that of me which is not mine. I am attracted to re-exploring Heidegger's they here - something to I will need to contemplate more.


What are the consequences for me? What personal resources can I bring to this inquiry? What do I lack and how will I cope with this?

The consequences for me are that I will have to go deeply in ways that I was not really expecting. I bring hope, motivation and some experience to this inquiry, but I know that there is so much I need to do, know, be... I guess that would be a purpose of this research for me to explore other aspects of being. In brief - I am ready - there are worlds out there (and in here) for me to explore...


Might my traditions conflict with these traditions that might influence my inquiry? Is this a problem? Why?

Percieved conflict is a powerful tool for reflection for me. I would be more concerned if my traditions did not show this sort of complexity. That I would view it as more problematic if there were no problems.


Could there be conflicts between different traditions that might influence my inquiry? What are the possible grounds for judging the quality of the inquiry?

I can view percieved conflicts between traditions as opportunities for transcendence and deeper understanding - transcendence tested through my ways of knowing and caring. This perspective is in conflict with some traditions - these traditions can be used to generate questioning to help keep me honest and ensure I have not strayed onto a path of tangential arrogance. These seem like possible grounds for judging the quality of my inquiry. Are they grounds enough?


Questions: (c) Pugh, R & Yaxley, B. 2005

Research Quest: Knowing and being

For me, are there ways of knowing that will lead me through my inquiry?

This represents an inquiry in itself and I think that in some ways that it will be a major aspect of my own inquiry. I think it is important to distinguish between knowing (which implies an ongoing process) and knowledge. I am far more comfortable considering knowing - probably because I feel I am lead by the evolution of understanding rather than accumulation what I do not know.

Some of the ways of knowing I prefer to use (and that drive the evolution of my understanding):

• interconnected - how can the new be interpreted through my internalised understandings? What are the disconnects with these understandings?



• collaborative - how do my interpretations and understandings compare with others' when in dialogue with texts and people?



• utilitarian - is it useful for practice, furthering my or others' understanding etc?



• aesthetic - eg. does it take a form which embodies both its own understandings and paradoxes? Is it elegant?



• propositional - is my questioning flowing feely? Is the questioning forming eddies? Is it turbulent or chaotic? etc. Each of these have value - what might a state of questioning mean? How can we open possibility without losing integrity of what has come before?

These are not in any particular order or definitive and are just a start to reflecting on my understanding and raise further questions such as how do these ways of knowing manifest themselves and/or are chosen?

What account can I give of my ways of knowing?


When I reflect on my ways of knowing I tend to gravitate towards ways of knowing as being, rather than, for example, knowing as conformation knowledge or knowledge annexed. Again in my self referential, and possibly obsessive, way playfulness (moving between ways of knowing) appears to be useful. Sometimes I feel the freedom of moving between ways of knowing and sometimes this is not the case. I use this freedom (or lack of it) as an indicator for me about my ways of knowing. Thinking of playfulness as a state-of-mind disclosing itself as freedom appears to be useful here. My ways of knowing are one way my being prefers to disclose itself and it would seem a likely place to glimpse manifestations of my authentic being.


What images do I hold of myself as a researcher? What images do I aspire to? Why?

The notion of 'images' is at first distracting for me - automatically I picture photographs, films and other ways we share imagery - which tend to flatten out my reflections. So I will take images as related to imagination - how do I imagine myself as a researcher? What do I imagine that I could aspire to? Why?

One throw away answer is that I am a researcher waiting to happen. This has some resonance here and it makes me smile. Is that the limit of such a statement? On reflection, I reckon everybody is a researcher waiting to happen - so there is a limit applied through its universality. As a researcher I see myself as trying to fulfil the five points I outlined in response to the first question above. How I imagine myself now and in the future seems to be relatively stable. I imagine myself with understanding that is enhanced and enriched with greater:

• interconnectedness



• collaboration



• usefulness



• beauty



• possibility

Questions: (c) Pugh, R & Yaxley, B. 2005

Research Quest: Motivation

What is my motivation for my research?

Pursuing this research allows me to explore some big questions within my life in ways that have freshness and depth which may not be available through everyday reflection. This experience of iterative renewal of my inquiry with and for others, research, and practice embodies my motivation. This research, my research, sharing and informing my reflection is a way of giving my inquiry a life outside my own. Playfulness and freedom are within my being - not a place where they can live a healthly life for long.

What values and beliefs motivate me?

If I am honest, I can't avoid that behind my motivation is that a belief that my inquiry has a life that that is larger than mine. I value my thoughts and reflections enough to be shared. I value working with others (through their practice and inquiry), philosophical discourse, and being of and with research. I believe these within this place my inquiry can have a life of its own - a separateness. I value what works for learning and believe my inquiry has practical implications for the learning of others as well as my own. I believe that everybody is learning all the time - valuing others as learners means allowing them the freedom to believe this too. I value exploring playfulness as a state-of-mind which can either open or close learners to their possibilities.



Questions: (c) Pugh, R & Yaxley, B. 2005

Research Quest: Purpose

After quite a break from blogging I am changing my path for a while - I am going to reflect on my research using questions provided to me by Roy Pugh and Bevis Yaxley. This serves a practical purspose for my studies in addition to giving me a chance to inquire into my inquiry. The first of these questions relate to purpose.

For what purposes am I involving myself in educational research? In other words, why am I involving myself in this?

Playfulness and freedom appear to me everywhere and in everything I do. Being free to learn, playfulness enabling freedom to learn etc plague me. Being plagued with freedom and obsessing with playfulness is something I need deal with! This is within me and I need to sort it out. Intrinsically these thoughts will not let me go until I inquire into them. I have experienced how powerful these thoughts are personally - generating questions such as:

• How might playfulness ensure transcendence of play?



• In what ways does playfulness, and my inquiry into it, affect what I do
, how I interpret the world - my being?


• How do people exercise their playfulness, even when their world appears to be at its worst?



• What allows people to be playful and transcend the games of their own construction, even when they perceive them to be central to their being?



• How can shared play, games, playfulness and freedoms be created with others without them feeling played?



• I glimpsed shared playfulness and freedom within learning - what might allow this to be recreated for me and others?

These questions, and many more, deserve and demand some attention.


What are the educational purposes that will be supported by my research?

I would like to take what has been personally empowering inquiry and explore the extent and nature that further research could be empowering for others. I feel that freedom and playfulness can be seen as central for learning beings and provide a place for being a learner.

Often in research and practice the fundamental, difficult, and problematic, question of what it is to be a learner (or a teacher) has been left behind or to one side. What is often carried forward is how to be a learner (or a teacher). I feel dimishing the is in favour of the how can mean that the essence, soul and substance of learning can fade. Freedom and playfulness appears to me to give an opportunity to have both. Even exploring this and its place in practice is educational purpose enough.


What are the purposes of the research for all of those different people involved in some way in the research?

As I inquire into freedom and playfulness I intend for a model for practice should emerge. This model will be tested with and by learners with the aim of increasing their freedom to learn through playfulness. As the aim of including others is for them to willingly reflect on their practice and learning I envisage that participating would at the very least assist participants in reflective learning and pratice. So participation would have its own intrinsic value for participants and the model would have to tailor itself to enable all people involved to have the freedom to learn through playfulness.

Questions: (c) Pugh, R & Yaxley, B. 2005

Understanding and Interpretation - learning?

Considering 'interpretation' in Being and Time in light of my previous thoughts has led what feels like further insight - but I am not sure. The direction of further exploration is unclear for me so what follows is scouting for possible paths...

The projecting of understanding has its own possibility - that of developing itself. This development of the understanding we call 'interpretation'. In it the understanding appropriates understandingly that which is understood by it.
In interpretation, understanding does not become something different. It becomes itself. Such interpretation is grounded existentially in understanding; the latter does not arise from the former. Nor is interpretation the acquiring of information about what is understood; it is rather the working out of possibilities projected in understanding. (pp 188-189)

Meaning is the 'upon-which' of a projection in terms of which something becomes
intelligible as something; it gets its structure from a fore-having, a fore-sight, and a fore-conception. In so far as understanding and interpretation make up the existential state of Being of the 'there', 'meaning' must be conceived as the formal-existential framework of the disclosedness which belongs to understanding. Meaning is an existentiale of Dasein, not a property attaching to entities, lying 'behind' them, or floating somewhere as an 'intermediate domain'. (P. 193)

In every understanding of the world, existence is understood with it, and vice-versa. (p. 194)

This process of interpretation and building meaning could be one way of starting to define learning.

The ability to move between possible interpretations and meanings is a freedom and requires playfulness. In this sense the understanding could be freedom - understanding and choosing possibilities as possibilities.

Learning can be assisted by the freedom to move between, subsume and synthesise interpretations and meanings.

Previously I have suggested that playfulness may be one state-of-mind which has freedom as its understanding. This is not the totality of understanding as other states-of-mind have their own understanding. This is problematic for me. I do not think playfulness to should be limited to itself as a state-of-mind in this way. Freedom is clearly not this simple either. They are more universal than that. As is learning.

I have so many questions! Cheers Martin, I am further towards insight, I have started really exploring learning and freedom - as well as playfulness. The view from here looks interesting.

Playfulness and Understanding - a start

Since my last post (where things were appearing to crystalise for me), I developed and then shook off a seemingly unshakable flu. As I was recovering I discovered my mother was seriously ill and so here I am in Tasmania again; spending time with her and my family - some of whom have also travelled from overseas. These events have filled my time - though freedom and playfulness have not been very far from my thoughts. Events have sharpened and developed what I thought was understanding. Now I am ready again to continue my inquiry with the help of Heidegger.

State-of-mind is one of the existential structures in which being of the 'there' maintains itself. Equiprimordial with it in constituting this Being is understanding. A state-of-mind always has its understanding, even if it merely keeps it suppressed. (p. 182)

Playfulness as a state-of-mind has its understanding. Building further on a previous post: playfulness can inform and replenish Dasein by being a conduit for greater awareness of authentic being or it may allow further falling to the they. Each of these has its own apparent understanding.

In every case Dasein, as essentially having a state-of-mind, has already got itself in definite possibilities... ...Dasein is the possibility of Being-free for its ownmost potentiality-for-being. Its Being-possible is transparent to itself in different possible ways and degrees. Understanding is the Being of such potentiality-for-Being, which is never something still outstanding as not yet present-at-hand, but which is essentially never present-at-hand, 'is' with the Being of Dasein, in the sense of existence. (pp 183-4)

Understanding is the existential Being of Dasein's own potentiality-for-being; and it is so in such a way that this being discloses in itself what being is capable of. (p. 184)

A direct link to freedom. Playfulness as a state-of-mind of Dasein just exists and is not a definite precursor for disclosure of authentic Being. Playfulness as a state-of-mind could be how we manifest our potentiality-for-Being and disclose our possibilities. Could this be a sense of freedom?

...when that which is within-the-world is itself freed, this entity is freed for its own possibilities. (p. 184)

This sounds a little like play.

Dasein always has understood itself in terms of possibilities... ...understanding is the kind of Being of Dasein in which it is its possibilities as possibilities. (p. 185)

This sounds quite like playfulness. Hmmm... I would like to reflect further on playfulness and possibilities in association with understanding as described above - which is reminiscent of freedom. Considering freedom and understanding in this way 'freedom to learn' becomes even more intriguing for me - especially learning thought of in terms of understanding.

I will leave this post with a passage to ponder upon - freedom, playfulness, possibilities, understanding - and:

As existentialia, states-of-mind and understanding characterise the primordial disclosedness of Being-in-the-world. By way of having a mood, Dasein 'sees' possibilities, in terms of which it is. In the projective disclosure of such possibilities, it already has a mood in every case. (p. 188)

Could playfulness, as a state-of-mind, have freedom as its understanding?

Playfulness as a Mode of State-of-Mind

When looking at the example of 'fear' that Heidegger uses for state-of-mind in Being and Time, it has become difficult for me to directly compare with playfulness. So I will tease out playfulness and associated concepts, and then come back to fear. Below is informed by Gadamer's Truth and Method (which I need to at closely again), together with some insights inspired by Heidegger. This is intended to replicate in part the analysis that Heidegger has given to fear (pp. 179-182).

Play

Play has its own mode of being which we will call a game. This being exists only in the world and is not aware of its own being (ie does not have Dasein character). It does however require participants with Dasein character to give the game importance and make it matter.

Players

The players are the participants in the game. In order for them to be players then they must take the game seriously. All players are played by the game and lost to the game while they are playing it. They are concerned only with being-in-the-world, with the they, in fact only as it exists within the world of the game. Their 'authentic being' is lost to them. The game could not be disclosed to the world without the players being predisposed to being players in the first place.

Playing

Playing is giving oneself to the game and the play - in as much as the game has to be taken seriously one is played by the game. The point is to be part of the they and therefore it is unlikely for Dasein's authentic being to disclosed. It is useful to note here that this being lost is not necessarily negative or positive - I would like to say this depends on your playfulness.

Now to my terms of interest (and away from Gadamer's) and possible representations of them:

Being Playful

Being playful allows one to be able to play with what is serious and the games that matter within one's Being-in-the-world. Being playful can make one feel as though they are outside the game or games, it is also equally seductive in transforming what is serious into a game. In the constructing a new game, which may be more a complex or a simplified version of it constituents, it creates the pitfalls of other games. This game is still part of Being-in-the-world. It does have the benefit of being of Dasein's conscious construction, making it more likely to phenomenologically disclose aspects of 'authentic being'.

Playfulness

Playfulness as a mode of state-of-mind is of Dasein and cannot apprehend itself without losing authenticity. This allows playfulness to envision the possibilities of our 'authentic being' be realised within Being-in-the-world, and the possibilities of Being-in-the-world to inform our 'authentic being'. Here it can be said that Playfulness is a conduit and its phenomenologically is of 'authentic being'.

From Being and Time:

That which fear fears about is that very entity which is afraid - Dasein. (p. 180)

To paraphrase:

That which playfulness is playful with is that very entity which is playful - Dasein.


I need to reflect more on this; I am sure what I have done so far is only a small step - but I have a better sense of the journey to come.