Living theory approach

The Living theory approach is an approach to explaining educational influemnces in a person's learning.

Educational and other researchers are always faced with issues of validating their claims to knowledge. In the UK and elsewhere there is much interest in developing appropriate [standards of judgement for assessing the quality of the knowledge generated by educational researchers. In 1995 Donald Schon advocated the development of a new epistemology for the new scholarship by Boyer and explained that this new epistemology would be generated from action research and would be a challenge to the epistemology of the modern research university (Boyer, 1990).

The idea that individuals can generate their own unique explanations for their educational influences in their own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of social formations, as their living educational theory has been gaining credibility since the establishment of the Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association in 1993 (S-STEP, 1993)

The most notable paper on living educational theory appeared in the "Cambridge Journal of Education" in 1989 (Whitehead, 1989)

References

*Boyer, E. (1990) Scholarship Reconsidered: Lessons for the Professoriate. Carnegie Foundation.
* [http://web.ku.edu/sstep/ S-STEP (1993) Self Study of Teacher Education Practices] Retrieved 25 March 2007
* [http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/writings/livtheory.html Whitehead, J. (1989) Creating A Living Educational Theory From Questions Of The Kind, 'How Do I Improve My Practice?', "Cambridge Journal of Education", Vol. 19, No.1,1989, pp. 41-52] Retrieved on 1 March 2007 from

External links

* [http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/mastermod.shtml Making Public The Embodied Knowledge Of Master Educators]
* [http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/living.shtml Living Theory Theses]
* [http://www.jeanmcniff.com Jean McNiff's website includes living theory dissertations and theses] .