Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Supports learners in engaging in ethical inquiry practices within their specific professional contexts.

COURSE DETAILS:

This course builds on the philosophical and methodological foundations of teacher inquiry in EDUC 718 by taking a critical creative look at our inquiry and related data collection methods, analysis and interpretation and the intimate connection between them. The focus of this course is to help you to develop as an attentive teacher researcher, to become ‘wide awake’ and ‘critically reflective’ as a person, learner and practioner (Brookfield, 1995; Greene, 1978). You will engage in activities, readings, discussions and dialogues related to teacher and participatory action research as lived inquiry. Thus, this course is designed to enable us to become better at “noticing” and interpreting meaningful moments and patterns within and across our individual inquiry activities.

As a community of inquirers, we will support each other in making meaning of teaching and learning within our specific contexts through diverse methods.

Data analysis and interpretation has been described as the ‘black hole’ of qualitative research (Lather, 1991).  It varies in style and form (Saldana, 2011) and ranges from analytic (Miles & Huberman,1994) to arts based, narrative, poetic, phenomelogial and interpretive (Springgay, Irwin & Kind, 2005).

As such it is important to know ourselves and to take into consideration our research questions, purpose and epistemological/ontological framework in order to align our beliefs and wonder to the modes and methods that guide our journey and knowledge creating practices. If we stay true to ourselves this so called ‘black hole’ of qualitative practice can be a place of beauty, continued exploration and meaning making.

By embracing this stage of our research practice in all of its messiness and uncertainty we are conquering the unknown and arriving in a new place of understanding.

Making sense of ourselves/our practice will be approached through our research questions and dialogue, analytic techniques, holistic ways through narrative writing and analysis, as well as creative and forms of (re) representation. Together we will seek to better understand methods of collecting, refining, defining, connecting and organizing ‘data’ in meaningful ways that lead to interpretation, voice, and empowerment. Your research stance will be deepened as you work through recursive cycles of action and reflection (both individually and in partners or small groups).

Overall these approaches allow you (and others) to see your inquiry in new and interesting light(s) and allows deep examination of your practice and yourself. The course is designed to assist us in developing the tools and the disposition(s) to live inquiry—to critically and creatively investigate, reflect upon, and (re) consider our practice as teachers, imagine relations that go beyond normative categories, and reconfigure lives in schools.

*original course outlines developed by Hill, MacDonald and Fels

Capacities:

The MEd EP program aims to develop teachers-learners’ capacity to:

• Deepen and extend a disposition of inquiry, ethical practice, critical and creative reflection and responsiveness to learners as well as communities
• Develop their own inquiry practice through the investigation of multiple educational theories, philosophies, paradigms, and methodologies
• Inform and articulate their scholarly understanding of various world views and orientations in relation to their educational perspectives
• Develop a relational dispositon, a humility, and an ability to listen deeply to others
• Critically and creatively engage in learning communities to situate, further develop, and align their inquiry practice within personally relevant and related paradigms
• Develop the disposition of a teacher-leader and enable an active voice and presence within and beyond the classroom
• Theorize their practice and contribute to professional conversations both written and oral

Materials

REQUIRED READING NOTES: