Opening Letter(or as the University insists on calling
it: Folks, Here's a go at thinking about Educating as Inquiry: A Collaborative Investigation into Reflective Practice—the focus of this course is on reflective practice; the purpose is to provide an opportunity to synthesize what you've learned from your previous courses. Our objective is to become more inquisitive, reflective practitioners. We'll go about that in a number of ways. First, we'll be reading to discover various ways educators engage in collaborative, reflective inquiry. The point, here, is to develop as broad a picture as we can of our professional lives as educators. I will be trying to help you articulate various theoretical arguments about learning and schooling so you can discuss more coherently your own theoretical beliefs and those of the various people we're reading. The intention behind whatever reading we do is to think with the authors. I use the notion ‘thinking with’ to highlight the fact that professional reading isn’t memorizing; it doesn’t involve regurgitating ‘the facts.’ It entails allowing your personal questions, thoughts, connections to come as you read, and to make note of them so that you have a record of what was going through your head as you were reading. ‘Thinking with’ is intended to help you view your work differently, to question what you’re doing professionally, to see your role with new eyes, with new interpretations. You will receive a collection of readings. They were compiled for a version of the course which I intended to teach several years ago but never did (as I was preparing for this course I found the story they told still relevant and because I don't have time to search more widely right now I figured it a good place to begin). I've augmented them with articles you can download from the internet. Selections from books and journals are in the collection. Click here for links to articles on the internet. Second, you'll be writing about how the reading you do affects how you think about your professional work. In the past I have had people exploring ideas from the readings by choosing one or more quotes that catch their attention. It's a good strategy since it seems to produce exploratory writing. Remember, I’m interested in what connections you see to your own practice, what questions you have about what's going on for you as a learner and teacher. My experiences with a listserv have been positive, so I want to continue using that medium as a way of conducting our conversation. That way you’ll be able to read what everyone else is writing as well as respond to a couple of folks on a regular basis. With a Yahoo group there's no waiting around for the screen to update—you get your messages all at once. Paula provided me your email addresses and I've sent you a message inviting you to join the group—please follow the instructions in that invitation. My expectation is that you'll contribute regularly to our conversation by responding to the public discussion as well as via private emails. We'll need to monitor the volume of email generated, but at least one contribution a week will keep you actively involved. Third, I encourage you to keep a journal—a place (an actual notebook or on the computer) where you examine your professional work. You will find it useful to make regular entries in which you describe and analyze some of the things which happen during the day/week. Because writing is a central aspect of engaging in reflective practice, we’re going to attempt to pull together an inquiry from your ongoing collection of critical incidents. I encourage you to use excerpts from your journal in your written conversation on the Yahoo group. You'll find it helpful to think about what's happening in your daily lives in connection with what we're reading as a group and with whatever else you are reading yourself. The journal is really a vehicle to help you examine
Describe what's going on, the context in which it's taking place, your intentions, and your interpretation of events where you can. Again, if you'll allow yourself to be vulnerable, that is, to use the journal to explore situations which surprise you, activities which didn't go as expected or planned, or unexpected encounters with students, you'll learn a lot more about your beliefs and about the theory/practice relationship. If you record those moments in your professional work that leave you uncomfortable or wondering about something, you'll find your inquiry will take shape more quickly. I want to say something about using reading and writing as a mirror. The purpose of this course is to let you uncover your beliefs about learning and teaching. It's only by writing about connections between what various researchers have to say and your own experiences, by contemplating one another's responses, that you'll find tentative ways of expressing your understandings. It's particularly at moments of anger or surprise that you have an opportunity to confront your assumptions. It's precisely because something you believe is being challenged that you react; it's that reaction you need to explore. By writing about your reactions to what you read (both in the professional articles and the writing of other members of the group), to the conundrums in your work, that you can make your assumptions / values / beliefs visible, available for scrutiny. Fourth, I'm inviting you to engage in a 'formal' inquiry into your professional activity. That inquiry will unfold as we converse and read and write about what you do. I can't at this moment offer any guidelines simply because I can't know in advance what aspect of your work might capture your interest. The reading we do and our written conversation will help define what reflective practice is and how you might engage in inquiry into your professional work. You'll get a better idea about the sorts of inquiries people engage in and how they go about it from the readings both in the collection and online. I began using a vehicle for reflective practice in the mid-80s which has proven very useful for examining our professional work. I called this vehicle critical incidents because it involves collecting incidents from the daily flow of classroom work (although critical incidents aren't limited to the classroom). These incidents proved important for helping uncover underlying beliefs/ assumptions about learning and teaching. Take a look at my piece "Learning to teach by uncovering our assumptions” to find out more about critical incidents. Some of you may have read the piece before. Read it again. We’re going to use incidents from your own teaching to build an inquiry to share with others. One of the best ways to learn about reflective practice is to read reflective practice studies—you learn how others engage in action inquiry and reflective practice, you learn about the role of writing in reflective practice, and you learn how to write by reading like a writer. The anthology of readings contains a few reflective practice pieces. More are available on my website: http://www.lupinworks.com/ar/. We'll be reading many of those pieces and as well as others on the web. (Click here for some examples of the kind of short inquiry we'll undertake during the fall; click here for some examples of longer investigations which we'll attempt during the winter.) I want you to think of this as a just try experience. I'm expecting you to take lots of risks, to explore your reactions to whatever we're reading as a group, to be open about looking at the problems within your professional practice. As well, I'm intending that we will share our insights with a wider audience by publishing your studies on a website so others can read them (the articles at Educating As Inquiry are read by a surprising number of people - I will want to add your work to that collection). My advice, if you want to get the most you can out of this course, is to set aside some time each week to read, make entries in your journal, and share your thoughts via the Yahoo group. As we work along you'll find you get much faster at reading, freewriting and responding. This isn't the kind of enterprise where you'll be able to put things aside for a while. Your inquiries won't go anywhere unless you work at them steadily. It will be particularly important to collect problematic moments or memories of your professional work which will serve as the basis of your inquiry. We'll spend some time in the beginning learning about various techniques for engaging in reflective practice. Pretty quickly you'll be able to create a way of making sense of your professional work for yourself. I’ve prepared a tentative schedule which paces us through the process. It's fairly worked out up until January. I can't fill the rest in yet. I have to see how our conversation plays out before I suggest other readings and activities which might be useful for helping you become inquisitive, reflective practitioners. I should warn you that it’s entirely likely that the schedule, as I've developed it so far, will change substantially as we work toegther (I'll keep you informed about changes). It simply represents my current best guess about how this experience might play out. Because we're engaging in this experience predominantly online and not face-to-face it's important for you to keep in touch. I expect either to hear from you personally at least weekly and/or to contribute briefly to the communal converation at least once a week. I read my email daily and will respond to both private and public submissions as quickly as I can. The more we (both personally and collectively) correspond, the more enriching you'll find the experience. If I don't hear from you via email expect to hear from me by phone. If a crisis should develop in your life, let me know immediately so we can work out some kind of plan for allowing you to keep up with the conversation. Now to address the issue of "grading"—I could identify some criteria for grading but to do that would undermine the reflective process I'm attempting to foster here. Since grading/evaluation is such a major stumbling block for those of us wanting to implement learning-focused classrooms, discussion about evaluation will be a part of our agenda. In the past I've side-stepped the problem by indicating at the outset that I'm willing to give you an A based on my expectation that everyone will take risks and you will explore your professional practice in depth. I am perfectly willing to do the same thing in this situation. However, I need to interject a caveat here: if you're not engaging seriously, if you're not reading and reflecting on a regular basis, if you're not thinking and writing about your professional practice, I'll raise my concerns with you. I don't intend to police your work; I will have a sense, from your involvement in general whether you're engaging or not. We'll discuss your feelings about this whole matter when we get together. [I'm supposed to say something about plagiarism and research here—it's absurd given the kind of learning experience I hope to set up, but here it is:
Think about what those statements convey about learning and teaching! The stuff about plagiarism is certainly irrelevant because you're writing to make sense of your experiences and ultimately for some public audience but certainly not for "teacher as examiner"—I won't be grading what you write, I'll be responding to it [Check out Hunt for some interesting thoughts on this issue.]. As for "research involving human participants—we're not conducting "Research"—we will be involved in a collaborative learning experience, one that includes your students but isn't about them;our inquiry is focused on you—your learning and your teaching.] I look forward to our conversation and meeting with you in September. Regards, |
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