Reverend Je Kan Adler-Collins Fukuoka Prefectural University Japan

1. HOW DO I KNOW WHAT I KNOW? AND DO I HAVE THE COURAGE TO PUT MY KNOWING INTO PRACTICE? A discourse with the mirror of self. Reverend Je Kan Adler-Collins Fukuoka Prefectural University Japan

2. BERA 2007 Introduction • In this paper I present, through narrative clarifications of my relationally dynamic standards of discernment and critical judgment through their emergence over time • these standards being those of inclusional respect, originality, caution and tolerance.

3. BERA 2007 Introduction • These have been acquired through my practice as an inclusional educator and nurse practitioner-researcher in the design, implementation and assessment of a new curriculum for the healing nurse. • This curriculum, the first of its kind in a Japanese University, focused on safe and culturally appropriate forms of touch therapies and awareness of traditional and complementary therapies to address the dominance of the modern academic science based nursing, and evidence based nursing.

4. BERA 2007 Introduction • I identify my values as they have emerged and solidified into standards of discernment. Each is defined from its causal context, which provides the reader insights into what I am using as a value.

5. BERA 2007 The context of the research • . The context of my research was a freshman class of Japanese nursing students in a new Prefectural university of 100 students ( 98 female, 4 male.) • The research period covered 15 ninety minute sessions for healing theory which was a mandatory requirement and 15 sessions of healing practice( Body massage) which was an optional choice in the second semester.

6. BERA 2007 The context of the research • . My method also included analysing the data produced from using different student-centred teaching strategies in my classroom. These included the introduction of new teaching strategies to a Japanese university classroom these being: • portfolio evidence • and reflective journals, • linking testable learning outcomes to the Internet as part of my means of confirming cognitive learning. • Web based student session evaluations

7. BERA 2007 The context of the research • My approach to narrating this paper is to focus on my learning as a practitioner and educator in a cultural context different from that of my birth. I do this by establishing my engagement with the method (Moustakas, 1990); • next, I critique knowing and knowledge in relationship to my experience of knowing (Wink, 2005); • then I explore the nature of the question as a heuristic; • and finally I address the issue of how to bring my knowing to knowledge and into praxis.

8. BERA 2007 The contribution to knowledge • made by this paper comes from emphasising the difficulty of importing educational systems from one context-bound environment into another. • The issues around colonisation of knowledge and ethics are highlighted, along with the need for global educators to be aware of their own biases of race, gender and culture. • Perhaps most importantly bias is a two way street and once the embedded educator realises their own issues • they then have to contend to those that are already present in the cultural social context of their working and living environment.

9. BERA 2007 The contribution to knowledge • This often frustrating process require courage to admit that you are wrong and courage to face others and the all powerful system when it or they are wrong. • It requires stamina, flexibility and a determination not to participate in the furthering of education paradigm wars or cultural mistrust. • This is not a theoretical paper but an authentic account of what happened in practice, the problems faced and how my consciousness and practices were remoulded and illuminated

10. BERA 2007 Method • This research uses mixed methodology of both quantitative and qualitative approaches as and when the strengths of the particular methodological approach move the research forward or help in its analysis. In order of usage or application these were: • Self Study Action Research (Loughran, Hamilton, Laboskey, & Rissell, 2004), • living action research with its six cyclic stages : (Whitehead 1989); • heuristics (Moustakas 1990); • the educational scholarship of Boyer (1991). • Its critique by Schön (1995) calling for a new epistemology forms a basis of my approach to the disciplines of education; • and narrative, which I used to present the written word (Marshall, 1999; Reasion & Brandbury, 2000; Winter, 2003).

11. BERA 2007 Method • The meta-methodology that guides my research is Action Research Self Study, succinctly described in the following quotation from the Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices, Part 1: • The term self study is used in relation to teaching and researching practice in order to better understand: oneself; teaching; learning; and the development of knowledge about these (Loughran et al., 2004, p. p.9).

12. Coming to know • Another part of my thinking and knowing appears to be a contradiction to my Buddhist thinking because according to Buddhist teachings: all things, exists and arises from the causal plane of consciousness. This causal plane is impermanent mental energy and not real.

13. A question of certainty within the constructs of knowing by doing • If Heidegger’s where I am in the everyday or being there is my world, arguably I create a being in the world through my senses, and then make sense of my sensory world through enquiry into and experience of that world. This gives rise to some intriguing questions: How certain is my certainty? How real is my world?

14. Situational learning • Lave (1988) argues that learning normally occurs as a function of the activity, context and culture in which it occurs (i. e. , it is situated). This contrasts with most classroom learning activities which involve knowledge that is abstract and out of context; as was the case with my curriculum of the healing nurse. Social interaction is a critical component of situated learning. (Vygotsky, 1978)

15. My values • and standards of discernment, which have arisen from the learning described in the above section, have taught me inclusional caution. • By this I mean that I understand that the very act of judgement is contrary to my Buddhist teachings. I am ontologically more comfortable with discernment.

16. A discourse on conflict and resolutions, the courage to do. • My living educational theory is being practiced within the context of another set of contradictions (Whitehead, 1989). • Within educational circles this is known as the paradigm wars, described by Gage (1989, p.43) as: … a minefield of conflicting polarities, • and this same issue was described by Schön (1995, p.32) as: … an epistemological battle .

17. Conclusion. • After Japan’s defeat in the Second World War and her subsequent occupation, all levels of Japanese society were affected by the Western colonial views of the occupying forces, particularly the United States of America, especially in terms of health care and education, and this is still a living legacy today • (Wolferen 1990; Petrini 2001; Furuta and Petrini 2003).

18. In the above sections I have explicated, in a narrative format, my process of curriculum development from its conception, which I wrote out on a beer-mat in a pub in Glastonbury, England, in 1995 (Adler-Collins, 1996), to the day in 2005 when the first student nurses completed an official healing session in a Japanese hospital, a day on which history was made and the first stage of the journey of the healing curriculum, ten years in the making, was concluded. Answering my question originally posed that it appears I did have the courage to teach as my heart thought and my head felt.