User:Soler99

for the attendant Wiki editor. I am seeking advice about the possiblity of publishing an article

I am an academic with a rather wide range of experience, qualifications and membership (and lapsed membership) of professional societies. I feel that what I have contributed to education and the psychology of learning (see my attempted contribution to your article on Self-Organization) and am wondering whether we could offer a fuller article on what Prof. Sheila Harri-Augstein and I have developed as Self-Organised Learning, (S-O-L). Before we retired, we ran a post-graduate research centre in Brunel University, called The Centre for the Study of Human Learning, (C.S.H.L.). Over a period of 35 years we had carried out a number of major research projects, dozens of smaller projects and consultancies and had post-grad students who produced forty Ph.D.s and various M.Sc.s theses.

But whilst our research activities were too lucrative and useful for the university to lose. Our developing theory of S.O.L and its related ideas sat very uneasily with the traditionally inclined psychology and other social sciences staff. And also with the university hierarchy. So I gave up my readership in psychology, but was appointed professor in human learning. I had already had visiting professorships in the U.S.A and was Carl Rogers professor at Clayton Univ ???(I forget). Then we were shunted out of the psychology department around the various schools, until we ended up answering directly to Senate and Council through our own governing board; the chairman of which was a world renowned chemist. He started off very dubious indeed, but after we had conducted a series of learning conversations with him, about how he had developed his ideas, he recognised that he was an S-O-Ler and he gradually became our greatest advocate.

When I eventually came to retiring age, the board recommended that the university offer us a grant to set up C.S.H.L. independantly outside. But whilst the university did arrange for us to officially take C.H.S.L. out with us (we are now cshl.ac.uk - i.e officially recognised academically) there was inevitably no financing from Brunel attached. In addition to the research theses published by our students, we have published six books about our work, with Thames and Hudson, Methuen, Routledge and McGraw-Hill and numerous chapters in other peoples books, conference proceedings and academic journals etc. I shall be away now for 3 weeks now, but when we return I would welcome advice about how to proceed. We would like to contribute a full article on S-O-L. and will be in touch with you then.

The following which is unfinished (hardly started) is not meant for publication, here or anywhere, but merely to acquaint you with the background that led to our (Sheila Herri-Augstein and I) lifes' work. I am now going to add references to the Self-Organization contribution.

If it is of any interest? My own life journey illuminates where the S-O-L ideas came from. In summary; I was Battersea scholarship grammar school boy, evacuated during the war and then drafted to do an electrical engineering degree (and playing ice hockey). I then served my national service,( boxing, playing cricket and hockey), and eventually as a captain in R.E.M.E; first doing a six months E.M.E. course and then in command of a tank repair and re-assembly line. When I complained that I was an elecrical engineer, I got transferred to R.E.M.E. headquarters and after a two week army method of instruction course, was put in charge of their communications engineering courses. On leaving the army as soon as my national service finished, I first served a graduate apprentice-ship in an electrical instrument company, then became their development engineer, and later was moved to become deputy production engineer to produce the instrument(s) I had developed. At the same time I started an evening degree course in physics at University of London, Birkbeck College. But whilst I have maintained a general interest in the physical sciences, the production management job got me interested in management, and hence occupational psycholgy. So I transferred to do a post-grad diploma course in that. But it was exceedingly boring so I transferred again, to do a psychology degree. --- to be continued if nec.---

The lapsed memberships in a variety of professional societies  arose as my interest in a subject area expanded and I found other ways to pursue them. I am now retired and feel a strong need to leave a permanent record of the contribution Sheila Harri-Augstein and I have made. I am currently a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine.