Living Theories

Living theories is a term coined by the educational action researcher Jack Whitehead to describe contributions to action research emerging from enquiries of the kind ‘How do I improve what I am doing?’ in the context of a professional working life in education, most particularly between 1967 and 2012. Perhaps the most significant contribution is in the original idea that individual action researchers can create their own living educational theories as explanations for their educational influences in their own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of the social formations in which they live and work.

The idea of living educational theory was developed from a question asked by the logician Eward Ilyenkov: If an object exists as a living contradiction, what must the thought (statement about the object) be that expresses it? This question emerged from a 2,500-year-old battle between propositional and dialectical thinkers. Using Aristotelean logic, propositional thinkers eliminate contradictions between statements in ‘correct thought’, through a process that conceals as much, or indeed more, than it reveals. This entry focuses on the origins and development of a living theories approach to educational action research, originating in the work of Whitehead and colleagues at the University of Bath but spreading far and wide in more recent times. The reach and influence of living theories in various contexts worldwide is exemplified.

The recognition of existing as a living contradiction came to Whitehead in 1972, on viewing videotapes of his own classroom practice at a comprehensive school in London. While he believed that he had established [Page 515]inquiry-based learning with his students, in which he responded to the questions they asked, the videotapes actually showed that he was giving students the questions rather than enabling them to formulate their own. This was an embarrassing revelation and an example of the power and value of visual data on one's own practice to reveal one's existence as a living contradiction.

Further perceived contradictions within the field of educational theory contributed to the development of the living theories approaches to action research. In particular, the validity of the disciplines approach to educational theory, which holds that educational theory is constituted by the philosophy, psychology, sociology and history of education, is questionable. A number of educational theorists, including Paul Hirst, one of the proponents of the disciplines approach, along with Richard Peters and other philosophers of education, acknowledged that the weakness of the disciplines approach was its focus on the replacement and displacement of the practical principles which teacher-practitioners could use in explaining their educational influence on their own learning and on the learning of their pupils. Hirst acknowledged this error when he wrote that such practical principles were regarded in the disciplines approach as at best pragmatic maxims, representing an initial crude and superficial justification in practice that in any rationally developed theory would be replaced by principles with more fundamental, theoretical justification. Having articulated this weakness, he sought to rectify it with the suggestion that rationally defensible principles must in essence stand up to such practical tests and are necessarily inadequate without this.

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