One of the great privileges of my job is bearing witness to the process of ‘reconstruction’ that teachers experience as they transit to more inquiry-based practice. Becoming an inquiry teacher can mean a significant degree of ‘unlearning’ as beliefs and roles are reconsidered and re-shaped. In a series of conversations I held with groups of teachers last week, I asked what they were noticing about themselves and how they were changing as they engaged in a year of learning about and through inquiry. We discussed the struggles and the joys of working this way and the new questions and goals that were emerging. Taking time to do this – to press the pause button, look back over the year and identify new growth makes us better teachers, I am sure of it.
Read MoreInspiring inquiry through picture books.
"The bridge will only take you halfway there, to those mysterious lands you long to see. Through gypsy camps and swirling Arab fair, and moonlit woods where unicorns run free. So come and walk awhile with me and share the twisting trails and wondrous worlds I've known. But this bridge will only take you halfway there. The last few steps you have to take alone."
Read MoreTuning in... to tuning in...
‘In pursuit of knowledge, something new is learned in pursuit of wisdom, something old is unlearned. To grow, we need to learn, unlearn and re-learn.’ Med Jones I began this week working with collaborative planning teams at St Bernadette's primary school in the western suburbs of Melbourne. The school is only a few blocks away from my childhood home (in fact I vividly remember the school office calling home on occasion when our adorable Border Collie found his way to the school ground at lunch times!) At the end of the day, I decided to take a small detour and drive past the house in which I grew up. It’s been a while since I have seen it and curiosity got the better of me.
Read MoreInquiry and the art of listening
I’ve been wondering a lot about listening. I am currently in the very rare position of being home for a while – recovering from surgery. My head has been too foggy to do much reading or viewing…so I have turned to podcasts to pass the time. I am a huge fan of the podcast already but have been very grateful to have so many beautiful things to listen to while recuperating. Listening has given be hours of joy and learning. As a teacher and teacher educator I DO spend a lot of time talking so it is both luxurious and enlightening to spend hour after hour not saying a word…but instead listening to the wisdom, humour, music and passions of others. Teachers, in general, are talkers. Older readers of this blog might recall the animated Charlie Brown cartoons where teacher voices were communicated only with a kind incessant trumpeting sound as the children endured the boredom of their classroom. When I interview students about teachers, the most common criticism is simply that they ‘talk too much’ – we do! But true teaching - especially in the inquiry classroom is surely more as much about listening as it is about talking.
Read MoreCurating for inquiry learning...reflections on a learning space.
As many of the readers of this blog will know, I am in the final stages of completing a new book. For several reasons, it has had the longest ‘gestation’ period of any book I have ever written - so seeing it now at the design stage is EXCITING. Still a few months off but we are nearly there! It was with this book in mind, that I recently spent the morning at one of my partner schools here in Melbourne. It was time for me to capture some images to support the text – and I wanted that to happen in a school really ‘walks the talk’ of contemporary learning. I knew that Mother Teresa primary school – in the far outer suburbs of Melbourne would not disappoint. As a relatively new, purpose-built school, it is light-filled, spacious and flexible and we could photograph the children in a relatively unobtrusive way. The images we came away with are beautiful and support the text just as I had hoped.
Read MoreIs this a habitat in which inquiry can thrive? Questions and warning bells for the inquiry classroom
I was reading an interesting post from @langwitches in which she refers to @brholland’s slideshow from a recent ASCD conference. In true domino style, Beth's post got Sylvia thinking and blogging and Sylivia’s post got me thinking and blogging! The issue being explored by these two educators was around what we are ‘looking for’ when we walk into a learning space/classroom. Beth raised a number of key questions that we can ask to help reflect more closely on the effective use of technologies. The post and slideshow are great…as is Sylvia’s sketched response to it. You can find them here: http://langwitches.org/blog/2015/04/09/used-effectively-or-simply-used/ As readers of this blog know, I pretty much obsess over all things inquiry. So of course, this got me thinking about the questions that roll around in my head when I enter a classroom. Most of the time, I am looking through an inquiry lens … looking for connections between what I see (and hear) going on and inquiry learning/ teaching. I am lucky. I get to walk into many, many different classrooms in many different places and I am often intrigued by the things that signal 'inquiry' to me and, equally, by the things that, well...don't. So I am wondering: what questions do I ask?
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