1. What is Living Educational Theory Research?

Living Educational Theory Research is a form of values-led professional practitioner educational (self-study) research. As a distinct research paradigm, it is academically rigorous and regularly features in national and international conferences.

A significant aspect of Living Educational Theory Research is that it brings to the foreground the practitioner's embodied values that inform, and are expressed in, their professional practice. These values are used as standards against which to test the validity of associated claims – an emphasis makes this research paradigm and methodology unique.

The professional practitioner's values – their embodied humanitarian values - are identified and clarified as they emerge in the course of the research. These values are then used as:

• the explanatory principles in accounts of their living-educational-theory and form the basis and structure of the account
• the practical standards of judgement to support claims, also publicly validated, to have improved educational practice
• epistemological standards of judgment, also publicly validated, to evaluate the validity of knowledge-claims.

2. Who engages in Living Educational Theory Research and why?

If you are drawn towards this distinctive form of values-led practitioner research then it is likely that you have already developed a particular perspective on your professional practice. For example, while you may or may not be a member of a professional body, it is likely that:

• you accept your responsibilities as a professional practitioner, which include holding yourself to account by researching your practice to better understand and improve it, and help others do so too.
• you wish the outcome of your research to itself be educational for all those involved in it, including those who read your scholarly accounts of your research.
• you wish yourself and those you work with, and those in the wider world, to flourish as human beings – to grow and develop in a healthy and vigorous way and to help others do so too.
• you hold distinctive values – principles, standards, or qualities you identify as life-affirming and life-enhancing, significant, worthwhile and desirable – that guide your actions as a professional practitioner.

3. Why do Living Educational Theory Research?

Professional practitioners engage in Living Educational Theory Research as a form of continual professional development. They hold themselves to account for understanding and improving their practice, whatever the field of practice and whatever social formation that forms the context of their practice. They contribute to the growth of a global knowledgebase of developing values-led practice. 

Living Educational Theory Research is routinely carried out world-wide in countries as diverse as Nepal, South Africa, the UK, the USA the Philippines and Canada. It is also engaged in by practitioners working in various fields and sites of practice, such as Education, Community Activism, International Development, Health and Business.

Those engaged in Living Educational Theory Researcher form a world-wide collaborative community. By means of this international reach, its principal intent is to make a contribution to the flourishing of Humanity in all its manifestations.

4. Why create and publish a validated academic and scholarly account of your research?

Periodically creating and making public an account of your research is an integral aspect of Living Educational Theory Research. As you create such an account, it enables you to identify and critique your previously unexamined assumptions and implicit knowledge, and identify where you need to extend your cognitive range and concern.

Preparing and submitting an academic and scholarly account of the knowledge you create for critical appraisal by members of a global educational community, as a contribution to a global knowledgebase, is a feature of ‘research’ that distinguishes it from ‘enquiry’ and ‘inquiry’.

5. Why submit an account of your research to EJOLTs?

EJOLTs – the E-Journal Of Living Theories – is the public-facing aspect of Living Educational Theory Research. It holds an archive of 18 years of peer-reviewed research papers published by EJOLTs since its inception. These papers have been written by professional practitioners working worldwide in an extraordinary range of contexts.

If you submit a draft account of your research for publication in EJOLTs, then you will have access to an in-house review team that will take an active part in helping you to strengthen and clarify your account. Thus, if you decide to use Living Educational Theory Research to explore and improve your own professional practice and help others do so too, and to make public an account of that work, then you become a member of a collaborative community of practice with a global reach.

Now have a look at the dedicated Glossary that contains details of vocabulary and processes associated with Living Educational Theory Research.