(Dublin City University, 2006) Dean, Catherine Anne
My doctoral research presents my self-enquiry as an Irishwoman who has lived and worked in Ireland and Italy for over thirty five years. This context throws light on my life and practice in Kenya over the last nine years. I then focus more specifically on the evolution of my work with staff and students at Strathmore University in this time span. Through my research I show how I have sought to understand the meaning of my life and practice in greater depth while trying to improve my teaching practice at Strathmore University. I express my new knowledge in my living educational theory and show how my work contributes to the knowledge base of practitioner research. I employ a methodology which I developed using elements of a living educational theory approach which embraces values and diverse forms of meaningful representation such as personal reflective narrative, autoethnography, intellectual representation and visual narrative. I use philosophical and theological reflection and analysis to explain the deeper meaning of the values that emerge in the course of my research as well as in the explanation of my living educational theory. I provide evidence of my contributions to knowledge using feedback from students, colleagues, friends and family members. I present the living values which give meaning to my life and practice as creating a spiration of love, in freedom, for personal growth. This expression illustrates how I understand these values as an analogical mirroring of the free flow of love among the Divine Persons of the Blessed Trinity as I explain in my living theory.