Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

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

COURSE DETAILS:

  

OVERVIEW of the Aims & Intentions of the Course
In a compact sense, this course, building on the philosophical, theoretical and methodological foundations we explored in EDUC 718, is mainly concerned with helping you dive into your inquiry, further develop your capacities for inquiry, and to deepen your questions about your inquiry.

More specifically, it is aimed at supporting you in furthering your own powers of noticing (of observing, paying attention, of ‘wide-awakeness,’ as Maxine Greene says), of questioning through inquiry (your, and others’, perceptions, observations, assumptions, and actions), of sense-making (making sense of, analyzing, and interpreting, what you experience, and what you come to understand), and of representation (of putting these experiences and understandings into some ‘form’ that you feel both represents you and your emerging knowledge well, and which communicates meaningfully, effectively, and evocatively to others.)

Through readings/viewings/listenings, various in-class and field-work activities (ie, in your classroom and school, or outside of them), along with sustained (and sustaining!) conversations with each other, the aim is to support you in being an anthropologist of your village and an artist of your practice, or, in a word, of being and embodying the fullest sense of teacher you seek to be, and that you can be. We’ll explore more fully what the intersection of these three roles and ways of being involves, and why that might be significant for our practice.

NB: A more detailed week-by-week schedule of themes/topics, readings (etc), and activities/assignments, will be shared within the first two weeks of the semester.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

OVERVIEW of Assignments & Activities (subject to some modification, but always in your favour 😉)

1. Inquiry or Fieldwork Journal/Commonplace Book: An on-going practice of paying attention, noticing, taking note of, observations, questions, reflections, quotations, images, references, anything that contributes to documenting the journey of your inquiry, and the journey of your ‘being’ this year: [ungraded but highly recommended]
2. Stop moments/Tugs on the Sleeve: Observations & Reflections: Drawing on Lynn Fels’ use of Applebaum’s notion (“stop moments”) and her own (“tugs on the sleeve”), these are brief notations of the things that have caused you to look sideways, have stopped you in your tracks, have been ‘a-ha’s’, and have perhaps more subtly, tugged at your sleeves. In short, things that have called your attention, and called you to attention (ie, the cougars in your rock-face wall, or perhaps more subtly, those blades of grass coming up through the rocks); these notations will be moments that you document in your commonplace books/fieldwork journals. [to be shared orally, approximately every two weeks, in class, through October and November: MARKS: 20 pts]
3. The Haibun Experiment: This will be quite literally an experiment in playing with a particular form, the Japanese poetic form of haibun, which combines a short narrative essay about an experience (often from a journey one has undertaken), with an even shorter, compact ‘distillation’ or ‘crystallization’ of that experience in haiku form that then ends the haibun. Your stop-moments/tugs at the sleeve, notations from your inquiry journals will furnish the raw materials for your haibun. The reasons (beyond Michael’s idiosyncrasies 😉) for experimenting with this form will be discussed in class. [MARKS: 20 pts]
4. A Narrative of the Ecology of Your Inquiry: A selection of the collection of stop moments, tugs at the sleeve, observations, and reflections, you will draw together into a narrative of your inquiry so far, which we will share on our last evening of the course (November 29); you can be as creative, as playful, and as experimental as you like, perhaps presenting it as a piece of theatre, a dance, a song, in the form of an image (or images, moving or still) or an installation; this will be a draft, a workshopping of where you are at with your inquiry, towards what you will then submit as your final ‘assignment’ of the term, and which will serve as an articulation of where you are at in this moment, to carry forward into the next term. [DRAFT, orally presented in class: November

20 & 27; MARKS/ORAL: 20 pts; WRITTEN FORM: By or before Monday December 18; MARKS/WRITTEN: 40 pts] 

5. Attendance and Participation in class: As we know from our first term together, being together, really being together, in class as fully as we can is an essential part of the journey (even in the online platform, and maybe especially so). Do let me know if you have to be away at any point so we can keep you connected, and in the loop on everything.

“All members of the University community share the responsibility for the academic standards and reputation of SFU. Academic honesty is a condition of continued membership in the university community.” Please review the Policy at http://www.sfu.ca/policies/teaching/t10-02.htm  

“Simon Fraser University is committed to creating a scholarly community characterized by honesty, civility, diversity, free inquiry, freedom from harassment, mutual respect and individual safety. Each student is responsible for his/her conduct which affects the University community.” Please review the Policy at http://www.sfu.ca/policies/teaching/t10-01.htm 

Materials

REQUIRED READING NOTES: