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BERA 1 2006.‘Different cultures, different paradigms: How lasting are our educational influence for good as our educational ideas spread their influence out side the context of our own culture?

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Warwick, 6-9 September 2006

Abstract.

Communication and the transfer of ideas and values across cultures is now an everyday occurrence with the World Wide Web linking humanity in a global network of exchange and inter-connectedness. The classroom practitioner of today is presented with a complex array of choices concerning educational theories, insights, methodologies and paradigms. Practitioners have become competent in negotiating and accepting responsibility for their own influence in educational terms within the context of the classroom.The complex nature of knowledge and its legitimacy set within any cultural context reflect the issues raised by the truth of power and the power of truth (Foucault, 1980). Navigation of these issues places moral responsibilities on the educator. Such responsibilities are embedded within a culture of ever-shifting political issues as the power stakeholders within education seek to assert their agendas and decide the shape and form of education and what constitutes knowledge (Bernstein, 2000).

Focus on Enquiry

As practitioner researchers we create our own living educational theories and we do so with the intention of improving our practice as educators. This paper examines the questions and dilemmas that arise when our models or theories are no longer bounded by the context of our classroom and are exported to other cultures by way of publication, or integration by others into an educational context or curriculum. Such a change of context gives rise to questions of the nature: “What are the ramifications of exporting bodies of knowledge into different cultures?” and “What moral or ethical responsibilities do the carriers of such ideas share in the impact their thinking may have on the culture to which it introduced?”This author asks these questions from the positional stance and lens of a White, male Nurse educator in Japan, where he introduced the first healing nurse curriculum in a Japanese university.(Adler-Collins, 2005).

Data Collection

The global reach of knowledge impacts directly on the classroom where practitioners are influenced by those with the position or ability to present or control change. The author had to find his own way of coming to terms with difficult choices where the lines of morality and commitment are not so clearly defined (Freire, 1970;Wink, 2005). This paper reflects on the data collected from a pilot cohort of Japanese nursing undergraduatestudents in their freshman year using new data collection instruments which were unfamiliar to Japanese students and the social formation. These instruments were:web based student assessments of the teaching, portfolios, and reflective journals.

Theoretical and analytic frameworks

The research framework for this paper was grounded in a heuristic living action research paradigm and uses several different forms of data representation, both qualitative and quantitative.

Contribution to Knowledge

This paper’s contribution to knowledge is its focus on highlighting the need to look closely at imported educational paradigms and how they can impact on and in the culture to which they are introduced. It is suggestedthat knowledge is not directly transferable and needs to be bounded and modified to the cultural context

1. Introduction

It is with great pleasure that I am once again given the opportunity to outline my ongoing research , its findings and the questions it raises to a group of my peers. The focus of this paper is;

“ Different cultures , different paradigms: How lasting are our educational ideas for good as our educational ideas spread their influence outside the context of our own culture.”

The central theme of this paper is nursing and nurse training in a Japanese university faculty of nursing where I developed and introduced a new curriculum for healing and reflective nurses. This curriculum was developed and exported from my work in the United Kingdom. As a foreign nurse and educator trained in a western paradigm I was not originally aware of the bias in terms of the whiteness of my curriculum’s methodological approaches to teaching and content. Such insights and awareness clarified over time as my Doctoral research progressed and gave rise to my questioning myself and my influence. I need now at this early stage of my paper to amend my title for I believe that I was in error in the type of question I have asked. I am referring to the word “good”. I see at this point of my awareness that such a term is exclusional and confrontational. For it begs the questions; “What is “good” and whose “Good” is best? I was concerned with the improvement of nursing and nurse education in Japan as it is my adopted country. A series of inpatient says in different Japanese hospitals also reinforced my desire to get involved with nurse training. I believed I could make a positive contribution to Japanese Nurse Education.Such concerns were timely as the Japanese Ministry for Education had embarked on an expansion programme of University Nursing faculties in Japan. As a professional educator I have the personal aim to teach for a greater good, guided by my Buddhist principles. By this I mean that my teaching would impact positively on the student’s and the profession of nursing so that the nurses whom I trained could confidently take their place as care delivers in the Japanese nursing workforce. I hold the belief that may be one day the insights and values I incorporate into my curriculum, my teaching practice and my nursing may find a fertile place to grow in my students who are the future nurses of Japan. In 2003 I took up post in the department of mental health in FukuokaPrefecturalUniversity.

In terms of educational ideas the curriculum I designed was one based in a complex model of integrating several different European paradigms of education. These being Heuristic enquiry of Moustakas, (1990), Living Action Research. Whitehead, (1993)and Boyer, (1992).At the core of my curriculum was the concept of teaching critical awareness and thinking to nurses.

The format of this paper is that of a story. Storytelling is used as both a verbal and a written form of reflective teaching practice. For example, Cooper and Collins (1992) andGillard (1998) haveused it in the verbal form as a way of bringing lecturers to focus on their teaching in collaborative sessions, and their case study reports employ the technique to provide a way for the audience to reflect.Daily (1994) offersa collection of insights intothe power and use of storytelling in the classroom and as educational narratives. My story is woven around the framework of heuristic enquiry of Moustakas (1990) and living action research.Whitehead (1993) andI introduced a pilot curriculum for the healing enquiring nurse in a Japanese university. Part of my narrative includes bracketing (Cunningham, 1999) which also allows me to identify what part of the heuristic process or action research cycle I am in.It also allows for a second story to coexist, as part is pedagogic academic discourseand part is reflective learning and considerations,and I include a number of questions I pose to myself about my process. Myheuristically analyzed narratives include my emotional, intellectual and spiritualjourney. For I believe that to understand the process of learning my students are going through, I need to have insights to my own process of life long learning. Myintellectual journey includes my integrated model which I developed as part of my PhD in Education at BathUniversity. The use and workings of my integrated model aresomewhat complex and I have made a multimedia presentation, a copy of which is available for any member on a CD-ROM. It can also be accessed at

My ontological inclusionality, which is expressed in many ways and about many levels of my experience, is found throughout my writings(Adler-Collins, 2000;Adler-Collins, 2003;Adler-Collins, 2004a;Adler-Collins, 2005;Adler-Collins and Ohmi, 2005;Adler-Collins, 2004b). My writings show that I have often been faced by a life changingevent or set of circumstances that has stopped me in my tracks, so to speak, and as such, in the silence of the moment, critical reflection on the events has repeatedly uncovered new issues and values of a personal nature that needed to be addressed. My ontological inclusional thinking cannot be separated out, even when it has been identified, therefore discussionis always tinted, infused,tainted, blurred, clarified.I can present each aspect as though itis separate but that is only for explanation purposes and brings with it the danger that one might think that these are clean, neat processes.

I feel the same way about my practicesand my research. Each may indeed be different elements of knowing by experience but each informs the other with consciousness. My practices are working expressions of my internalvalues, beliefs, hopes and aspirations. My research is the solvent that dissolves the boundaries of my ignorance through the finding, expressing and searchingfor answers to my questions. As this paper progressed I sensed myself changing as deep reflection became more central to my life world and I strove to dissolve the fluid dynamic boundaries that I had created as a separation between my inner and outer worlds. The cascading changes in my ontology were at times shocking to my image of self; I was at times cast upon the rapids of evolutionary change. I say evolutionary because the individual who re-emerged out of what seemed to be disintegrating chaos was different from the individual whoentered. This whole process is the essence and joy of heuristic living action research as the dynamics of the enquiry are so life-affirming, reflecting back to me the sheer privilege of being able not only to experience my humanity but to liveit as well.

Understanding the context in which my research takes place gives a depth of clarity and unique insights to a complex process, one that engages with issues of the power of knowledge, its control, and the politics of power at international, national and local levels. Exploring these issues brought home to me a subtle form of racism that existed in me and forced me to look deeply and critically at my awareness of my ‘whiteness'(Loomba, 1998) and my trans-cultural transformation.

A Question of Paradox?

Paradox seems to play a significant role in my life. In my nursing I am faced with issues ofparadox, these beingof loving compassionate caring against medical models of outcomes and interventions. When referring to the costs of careI am not just limiting myself to monetary values but includingthe costsof feelings, suffering, social and spiritual values, and relationships. Daily I see conflicting standards and values in my caring profession which is at conflict with itself over which paradigm is best, whetherhumanistic approaches to caring, or the delivery of care models and/or the science of care.

In my nurse teaching, I am faced with the paradox of professional academic standards in terms of learning outcomes, training objectives and competencies of practice. Ministerial requirements are to produce a more academic nurse from a resource pool of young people that is reducing at 11% a year. Of that resource pool, fewerand fewerof the academic high achievers want to enter nursing due to its dismal prospects both professionally and socially. Within these constraints, there is a constant tension between the balancing of knowledge with caring. There are also the pressures and stresses of the agenda of the social formation as I try to decode the social, cultural and economic codes of university practice in the delivery of a set curriculum.

In my role as a Buddhist priest and religious leader, I face the paradox of self and non self. I am mindful of the transparency of existence as I question our role as human beings, in a life affirming way, and I question the tensions that exist between religious teachings and faith. I also question our methods of teaching and learning, our citizenship and politics, and our social structures and systems relating to all aspects of our existence and community.

[I question myself at this point, does academia present a fair and impartial level playing field for all forms of knowledge to stand with equal weighting in terms of judgment of scholarship and hence legitimacy? I am asking this question within a global understanding of academia.

How are the tensions in nurse education being addressed concerning the dominantmedical model of teaching, which is a logic-drivenagenda with measurable outcomes, scientific and quantitative in its methodology, balanced against the humanistic concept that nursing is a caring and touching profession?

Has the dominantthinking of the science of nursing and evidence-based nursing completely marginalized the art and craft of nursing?

I have grave concerns as I watch the Paradigm War unfold here in Japan, which has a feudal system of education.By feudal I mean that the professors have total control over what low-ranking teachers can and cannot do.

It seems to be a question of working with paradoxes. How can I solve them? I remind myself that you do not need “A” levels or a nursing degree to change a bedpan or bed bath a patient, or to care with a compassionate heart for someone. You do need in-depth underpinning knowledge to understand what you are looking at in the bedpan and when you are caring for the patient. You do need in-depth knowledge to plan an individual’s recovery. You do need in-depth understanding and knowledge to act as advocate for your patients and defend their rights until such times as they can regain their own autonomy.

Why does it feel that caring nurses and academics seem to be on different sides of the knowledge skills divide? Why does it seem that nursing is losing sight of its skills base of practical care as it seeks to become more academic?

The qualitative/quantitative debate in Japanese nurse education is highly polarised. I show in this paper the development of the inclusional thinking approach, which may use elements of both camps where suitable and offer a way for the different camps to unite and thus bring about an end to the so-called Paradigm Wars. Bernstein(2000) warns us not to “thoughtlessly dismiss what the other is saying as incoherent nonsense” (p.66). To my understanding, he is defending the right of new forms of knowledge and representation to at least find a level playing field in relationship to their validation by academia.My tension is that my work not only challenges academia and the medical profession from the position of these learned bodies, even excepting that my form of knowing is academic or scholarly, but also some of my basic ontological values and “life truths” relating to the concepts of disease, which are grounded in Chinese medicine, Eastern philosophy, and spirituality concepts which are still very alien to the West. It strikes me with great irony that I am now in the East, teaching my subject from an Eastern conceptual grounding in an Eastern university so colonized by Western forms of knowing that it rejects the very history of its own knowledge base. This paper is set contextually in a complex web of conflicting opposites. I find myself as a white man in an Eastern society where male gender is the dominantaspect of society, working in the knowledge domain of the female power base of the traditional profession of nursing,where I am fighting for Eastern values against an Eastern system of education that has been so colonised by the Western forms of what is or is not knowledgethat they cannot see in themselves the colonisation that is taking place.]

I recognise that I am a product of my own educative journey, one where reflective practice and researching my own understanding of my Western “I” are fundamental aspects of my ontology. Yet in the same context I see my Eastern Buddhist understanding as the dissolving of the concept of my “I” as equally important and fundamental. I struggle with trying to see the separate areas of me- the nurse, the teacher, and the reflective practitioner and researcher - as separate items or areas. For me they are all part of my whole understanding and existence, in fact they form my holistic/holonic (Wilber, 2000a)concept of myself.

Throughout this paper I hold in positive tension some core questions that act as the enquiry framework on which my story evolves. These questions are:

“What are the ramifications of importing bodies of knowledge into different cultures?”

“What moral or ethical responsibilities do the carriers of such ideas share in the impact their thinking may have on the culture it is introduced to?”

“How then do I create and hold my teaching/healing space within the identified constraints and concerns?”

Outlined belowis my action planning to addressthese questions.

Action planning of this paper

Mindful of the complexity of context in which this paper is situated, I wanted to keep the action planning simple and focused.I therefore address the above posed questions in reverse order. By sharing the experiences of what I did in practise I can hold up for examination situations where moral dilemmas that are cultural are raised.

1. Creating my safe teaching/healing space

For this paper,my healing space was my classroom. I had no control over the building and the form the space took. No posters or individualisation of classrooms was permitted by the prefecture. Battleship grey was the overall colour scheme. However, I did have control over the “feel” of the space. I designed the room to be comfortable, well ventilated and welcoming with soft lights, the pleasant smells of aromatherapy oils and incense, and candles as a symbol of the light that we worked with in the process of healing and learning. The classroom layout was informal with tables and chairs laid out to facilitate small groups.Background music of the students’ choice was played quietly.I believe that my practice and actions reflected and informed the observation of my values and my thinking. I was “speaking” to my students who arrived in my class heuristically immersed in the knowledge gained by reading their world. The message I intended to give was not one from the traditional “banking educator” in the Freirian sense but rather a sense of respecting the students and creating a safe negotiated space for learning(compare figures 1and 2).