How does Living Educational Theory research enable individuals to research into their higher education to improve it and contribute to educational knowledge?

Abstract

Living Educational Theory researchers ask, research and answer questions of the form, ‘how do I improve what I am doing’, by generating valid, values-based explanations of their educational influence in their own learning, the learning of others and the learning of the social formations in which their practice is located. The ontological and relational values that form the researcher’s explanatory principles and living standards are clarified as they emerge. The self that is researched is not an egotistical ‘I’ but a relational one, similar to an African notion of Ubuntu as expressed by the phrases, ‘i am because we are’ and ‘we are because i am’ and the relational quality of self is represented by ~ in i~we. Our innovative relationally-dynamic, multimedia research methods include a process of empathetic resonance, with digital videos of professional practice, to clarify the meanings of the embodied expressions of life-enhancing, energy-flowing values that form explanatory principles in explanations of educational influence. Accounts by researchers researching into their Higher Education will show the use made of this method and how the legitimation of their living-theory doctoral theses, with their unit of appraisal, standards of judgment and living logics contribute to a new educational epistemology