Dialogical relationships in living cultures of inquiry for the creation of living-theories

This article describes and explains an educational journey shared by a university teacher, Michelle Vaughan, and myself , over a ten-month period. With the exception of being together in an ALARA workshop in June, 2018, our virtual meetings have been recorded, and shared through YouTube.

The ontological importance of dialogue in relationships informs this approach to educational conversations as a research method. The nature of our influence can be seen through the videos and emails, embodied in a form of inquiry that focuses on dialogue.

The research demonstrates my continuing commitment to building respectful, democratic and caring relationships within a living culture of inquiry and my ongoing, loving encouragement and support of practitioner-researchers as I love them into learning.

The nature of my educational influence in learning, resides in the creation of living-theories in living cultures of inquiry. It is embodied in my dialogic way of being and highlights dialogic research combined with digital data as a form of representation.

I intend this paper to contribute to the development of an educational knowledge-base. While the process of livingtheory research is a positive, productive and transformatory one, I include aspects such as epistemicide, burnout, and curriculum limitations on the dialogical journey. A Living Theory movement is growing in which individuals like Michelle share their embodied knowledge and commit themselves to influencing others to join us in improving ourselves and the world that we inhabit for the flourishing of humanity. My claims to know have been strengthened significantly through my validation group and the EJOLTs reviewers.