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What I am trying to discover is a theoretical framework for professional learning that might beuseful for others in analogous situations. The thesis has become, therefore, as indicatedtentatively above, an example of what Whitehead and McNiff (2006) term, ‘living theory’. Thenature of that theory and the way it is structured are explored fully in chapter 4.There are some subsidiary questions which are also explored through the research:• What might be the characteristics of such a framework?• Is the term 'auto/pedagogy' an appropriate shorthand descriptor for such a framework,should its existence be discernible?• What are the necessary conditions for auto/pedagogy to occur?The auto/biographic method I intend to employ derives from the fact that this hypothesis hasemerged in the story of my career so far. Thus, an auto/biographic approach to the developmentof a living theory.For a long time I resisted the impetus to set this piece of work in the continuum ofmethodologies coded ‘action research’. This was because I rather pompously believed myself tobe a philosopher rather than a practitioner. On reading Whitehead and McNiff (2006) morecarefully and with greater criticality, I now subscribe to their insight which is that practitionerscan, under certain conditions (see below), generate new theory by their participation instructured research of their own professional context:“These theories are living in the sense that they are our theories of practice generated fromwithin living practices, our present best thinking that incorporates yesterday into today,and which holds tomorrow already within itself.” (Whitehead and McNiff, 2006 p. 2)The illustrative moments that form the research objects for this study are selected from‘yesterday’ because they contribute to my understanding of ‘today’ and suggest ways in which134Simon Hughes Ph.D. Thesis (October 2012)