 What I want to do first is to indicate how I have structured my keynote address and I feel very privileged to call it a keynote address but I need to deconstruct this keynote address first by undressing myself. Unfortunately I'm now wired so I can't go much further than this and perhaps taking all the belt etc. Based on the ontological epistemology, that's always a tongue twister. No, not that word. Questions, who am I when it comes to action research and who are we when it comes to participatory action research. So I would like us to start by playing a game and since Martina knows all of this I would like her to co-facilitate the session by handing out these cards to the guys at the back there. We will always have the slow learners amongst us. Perhaps you know the answer. This is one of the questions in one of my tests for my students that they have to answer. So let's make it easy for you since my time is gone. I have to explain to your next door neighbours why you have chosen it first and the last one. I am still busy prioritising. Yours is also the wrong choice, wrong choice. So what do we learn from this simple exercise? Quick responses. We are all different, that's the usual answer so what else? I.S. I.S. I.S. I thought you said I.E.S. And what? But not I.E.S. I am. He said I.E.S. Okay. Is it not about your comfort zone? Okay. Different people, different times. That might be. But in general you might have the same preference. So the need is for adapting in whatever circumstances. Whether it is teaching, doing research, it is about your thinking preference in general. Becoming adaptable professional and we refer to whole brain thinking. But the most important to me is to get your students out of their comfort zones. Because they will have the different preferences as you are sitting in front of me. If you were to be my class I had to accommodate all of you. But I have to get all of you out of your comfort zones because it is about maximising potential. So it is about maximising my potential as a lecturer or researcher and maximising my students. Maximising those that might form a team working with me when it comes to participatory action research. So this will have an impact on our professional development, scholarship of teaching and regard. And research scholarship, scholarship of engagement. So let's do some practical application. Unfortunately we do not have time to do it properly. So all that I am going to expect you is to write down the first observation, the first thing that comes to mind when observing the next scene on the screen. Yes, first observation. Imprompt to write it down. You did not listen. Please listen. Lizzie would not mind doing that to you. I know. So let's weigh this person with a blue card. I don't want you to answer because you know the answer. Professor. Someone. Right, your answer. That's a bad answer. Do they have insurance? Do they have insurance? Are the blue cards too much speed? Chaos. Okay. Some of you are making up stories. Okay, let's leave it there. Some of the green. You are like Lizzie, but okay. Green. The big car in the little car. Excellent. More greens. Crash. Okay. So what is the difference? It might not be that clear. Usually I put the blues in one group and the greens in one group and they need more clear what the differences are. What do you do with? Just wait please. I did not. Did I? I asked you not to. Okay, so what the difference usually is is that the blues come up with the facts. The facts, it's a crash. It's this and only that and that's it. When it comes to the greens, it's more of a procedural explanation of what happened there. First this car and then that car and giving more detail. And now what do the rates bring to the table? We are the rate people. I said yeah, probably nobody died. Yeah, so nobody died. More rate people. Ouch. Okay, another ouch. Okay. My focus here is on the people, the injured. Some of you came up with the people stuff but that was making up stories. Okay, now the yellows. Nearly it's your turn. We had that. Something else. No, not from you. No, did you observe that? Did you think of that? Good. Yellow? Now this is now making up stories. Other ideas from the yellows? This has been raining and all sorts of stories. And that is what we did, the comparisons. So what do we learn from this exercise? If you are a structured person, the green card, we tend to structure your program in that way, assist in that way, et cetera, et cetera. Instead of including all the possibilities. No, I didn't allow her, and Neil, but can we allow her? Is it a constructive contribution? I'm just thinking about you saying that it affects the way that we assist things. But I think what you're not taking into account is that our students have also chosen our own particular discipline. So they may in the majority tend towards the same kind of perception. Okay, that's your constructing of meaning for now. Right. And to me what is important here is interpersonal when it comes to participatory action research and the intrapersonal when it comes to action research. And it's the experimental self. We heard that yesterday that we have to experiment with ideas. So it's about holistic thinking, intuitive thinking opposed to analytical thinking. It's synthesizing and integrating. So examples of when we do profiling, one would have this practitioner with a high on the blue quadrant and the yellow quadrant. And what is interesting here is that would also be a stress profile. That is a dotted line. So that is a stress profile. So when this person is under stress, he or she becomes more fact based. That person becomes more emotional, et cetera, et cetera. So we did research coming back to your question on this with a thousand first year students and that was the outcome, a composite group profile equally representing all the quadrants. Now what would you think is a typical profile of a medical student? Right. But if I am to be a blue person, I would like my doctor to family, et cetera. I don't believe you. I'm sorry. No, no, no. That might be the case. But if I'm intellectual, I would like the doctor to tell me to lie down and I'm going to examine you. And only then I will get to perhaps some medication, how to sequentially take it and then to the personal stuff. Right. So that would fit your profile. Professor Dieter Holm is top of the class. His answer was correct because this is the typical profile of the medical students. Composite whole brain group. So what is the typical profile of an engineering student and for that matter an engineer? We have engineers in this room. A lot of weights, but... So what is the typical profile of an engineer? Now you had your chance, professor. More green. More green. And yes, because we don't want the bridges to come down on us anymore. Right. So that is the profile. So why? I do not sit in front of my computer anymore. I have to design a bridge. Be creative in designing that and I have to sell that idea to other people. So I need to have the soft skills. So at some stage that was missing in the curriculum at the University of Pretoria, are you a drama lecturer? Yeah, obviously. The only difference here is the sample size. If we had more, like the engineers, it would also have been a composite whole brain group. Right. So examples of practical application one of my students is a lecturer in dentistry. For the first time he allowed his students to work in groups. It's a fourth year dentistry module on tooth morphology and he allowed them to role play and to come to the front and work out things with him there. He gave them the opportunity to either work in groups or as individuals and this group came up with this idea of painting their clinical jacket. Now with teeth and all of that. This group painted their clinical jacket using the colors of the whole brain model. This group designed a game. Now it's not kindergarten students but that was their way of best thinking about how they could learn that model. Another one. Don't a quiz. Tooth allopolee. In Flight magazine. That was by an individual student. Now imagine sitting on a plane really on about teeth all the time. That was his understanding of how best to master that model. And then of course, not of course, there was also one of them who submitted this CD. He wrote a song about teeth and accompanied himself by means of guitar. Now do you think he will ever ever forget what he had to learn for that? No. So this whole theory is closely linked with a theory on multiple intelligences. Since we don't have time for that, I'm not going to go into that. Then examples from taxation. Can you think of a more boring subject than taxation? Do we have any people from a school or do we have any people from accounting or taxation here? But that is what they told me. So it's a group of young lecturers and they sit with those large classes to 300. And what do you do to get them engaged? We talked about engagement and participation. It's not that easy in a large class. So they divided them in groups and requested them or give the assignment or the task to come up with whatever idea in order to explain taxation terminology in layman's terms to the man in the street. So to speak. And one of the ideas there. You can see. There are games, there are posters, there's a lot of other things. And the one, the winning product was we are used to these yellow booklets. This and that for dummies. So this was taxation for dummies. And to me it's always important to celebrate that. And of course this group was the winning group and they did receive some money. Taxation is all about money. In my practice as the coordinator of the postgradient certificate in high education the focus is on action research and that would be the final example. Different products based on your action research like writing an article, conference paper, chapter, book, portfolio, whatever. Based on your action research. To me that's authentic assessment. And there are examples of the application of action research in different contexts. At the university institution wide and other institutions. For example in veterinary science. And we have Lana Bertha who received the prize for the best entrepreneurship project. She is from veterinary science. Health sciences, public health, anatomy, nursing. The foundation for professional development is a private high institution with a focus on leadership programs for medical practitioners. And my question would be so why do you expect your students to write the three hour exam. So then I'm a bit provocative. So it was great to see them as a collective, as a group contributing to our notion of participatory action research and going to a conference and being a group of 12 former and current students at that stage to the ALTASA conference. It's the Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of Southern Africa. There are other participatory action research initiatives that I initiated with the department of family medicine and public health in the faculty of economic and management sciences with the department of taxation and in the faculty of engineering there is a completed name now engineering, built environment whatever with information science where they have 8000 first year students who have to do a compulsory module on information management. So what is important to me is that we celebrate action research and at the university in the department of education innovation responsible for academic style development there are annually awards in terms of education innovation it's for groups, other groups or individuals so it's at institutional level and also at national level we have awards from ALTASA and that is sponsored by the council of higher education. So one of the departments are very innovative in what they are doing so they have been awarded education innovation awards from the university as well as at international level. Now you can see that creative person there is beyond the old model old brain model and he is the head of department so no wonder they get innovation awards. It seems to me you are a bit bored like Martina she is now googling and stuff. So what do you see on the next slide is the figure turning clockwise or anti-clockwise if you have seen this before don't participate it depends where are you looking top of bottom or are you not prepared to say anti-clockwise anti-clockwise anti this is the first time you are giving the wrong answer professor clockwise both sides both ways how it all has to do with left brain right brain thinking so I am not going to bore you with that is that not true for all research the focus here is on the us or the we and the we take a responsibility for monitoring our professional learning en we investigating our professional learning it's about us and it's interpersonal self-study but as a collective so how do your ideas about actual research match the following in my constructing of meaning I had to adapt some of those words so instead of improvement I thought I did not think I know from experience and reading and all of those things that have to do with constructing new meaning that actual research is emancipatory it is empowering it's empowerment self-empowering it's transformation that's beyond improvement or change and new meaning making constructing new meaning so actual research has the underpinning notion of the constructivist epistemology and this one have you considered all of those into implementing of innovative ideas opposed to student focusing on student problems it's because this is our context but actual research can be applied in any context leadership and management medical practice practice of all of those since the professor has interrupted me now was that the last slide so instead of intervention I choose to use the construct initiative and it's practitioner research it's about living theory practice theory and it has its focus again self-study so what are the new constructs these are my constructs the whole idea of today's session is that you walk out with your own constructing of meaning so to me this is a marriage between scholarship of teaching and research scholarship contributing to the wish of the university and that's the university of Pretoria to be research driven now my concern with the other definitions and why I adapted those is moving from a deficit approach where I ask from the onset what is wrong with my practice that is where intervention comes in and student problems and all of that opposed to an asset based approach since we as the practitioners are the assets the self is an asset human capital innovative idea is an asset thinking preference is an asset initiative experiment all of those to me are assets so changing from changing from change to improve to transform so the Russian knowledge for action research they are several and I'm going to just run through them and you can read them as we go there we go and I hope it makes you think et cetera we've looked into the theory of whole brain learning now to me that is a theory that is applicable as the theoretical framework for practice whether it's teaching practice whether it's your weight practice your leadership practice it should be whole brain teaching and learning whole brain communication whole brain management et cetera in terms of action research I consider action research as whole brain research since it's experimental it is focused on the self it's interpersonal the C quadrant it's process you have to follow some process and it's new meaning making so that is aligned with A quadrant where it's about coming up with new facts participator action research is whole brain research in the sense that it's experimental and the difference here is interpersonal and it's process and it's about constructing new meaning and it's about thinking out of the box not so yes no no rather not perhaps I never could understand what it means to think out of the box apparently that was to think more creatively yes but if you are in the creative box what then so when we look at our whole brain model if I am it's not true for that being the creative box but for now let's consider that as the creative box if I'm already there but a very instructed person I have to think out of my box to think in the other boxes as well so I have adapted thinking out of the box to thinking out of my box so thinking out of my box it doesn't make sense the bullets there that's on purpose and I also refer to the perfect mismatch now think about your supervision practice we often get post grad students complaining about their supervisors so why is that it's about this mismatch of profile or profiles but if I know about the underpinning theory it can be complementary profiles there need not be so much conflict it's vulnerable if you are a lecturer and you ask students to give you feedback you don't know what you're going to get and you have to be very strong so in order to interpret that all that is my take on it it's the spiral there might be different spin-off spirals so since I am of the opinion that you start off with an innovative idea the spin-off spiral might be the problem that you have to face along the line and the point of departure is of your context and your vision so the spiral consists of different cycles also spin-off cycles and different steps to be followed not necessarily in this order but planning for innovation again to me what is important the asset based approach implementing the innovation reflecting on the innovation by reflecting before action in action after action that is the idea of shown you can see there are different if you are the mentor or the project leader that might be your spiral you have different participants and each of them have their own spirals and action research processes now what I would like you to do next is based on this comprehensive model it's the whole brain model that we have structure and we call it teaching in colours so I would like you to think in researching in colours and this is the model so will you please read what you can read there and adapt the model to the research context or going to choose one you have to substantiate your answer or justify these are the profiles and you have to choose one that fits my way of doing as demonstrated today I said you have to observe critical observation perhaps you know the answer this is one of the questions in one of my tests for my students that they have to answer so let's make it easy for you since my time is gone using the whole brain model is but one innovative idea that I propose and it can't be the only one it can't be just this you have to link that with others you have to integrate it you have to think about curriculum you have to think about assessment you have to think about other theories like as I said multiple intelligences constructivist learning metacognition self-regulated learning all those nice words I didn't want to bring that in so my constructing of meaning nowadays is it should be whole brain self-regulated learning whole brain metacognition whole brain this and this and this in order to maximise the full potential of the learner since out there what we need to do in the classroom is should we link to real life out there if not we are not doing what we are supposed to do and real life out there is a whole brain community environment the way we have and the other thing that you have to keep in mind you refer to the attributes of the graduates I think or someone else so it's leadership, teamwork all of those and I link that to whole brain leadership whole brain teamwork how can we improve what we are doing in terms of this program similar programs or at an informal level academic staff development let's as a collective look into that now to me it's not wrong to start off with asking a question about what is wrong but to me that's the deficit approach where I would rather take an innovative idea and see how I can experiment with that and how can I transform practice and transform myself that is where it should start