Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Teacher educators often wonder about how best to prepare teachers for practice within a complex rather than a mechanistic system. As teacher educators, we facilitate a transformative inquiry (TI) course in which students investigate personally meaningful topics reflexively and relationally within larger educational and sociocultural contexts. This braided piece explores our own significant experiences with TI and how these experiences inform what we do as we mentor students through their own experience. By describing our personal entry points, we foreground some of the ways in which we work together to collaboratively and continuously revision the course. By making explicit our entry points into TI, we aim to reaffirm what matters to us as educators to improve our ability to deliberately engage in effective mentoring and to affirm our connections to the passions that sustain us amidst the many challenges and pressures that we face in our practice.

Keywords

transformative pedagogy critical reflection personal transformation

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Brown

(2005, January 10). Class lecture. “Theorizing Knowing.” Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia.

Caputo

(1987). Radical hermeneutics: Repetition, deconstruction and the hermeneutic project. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Caputo

(Ed.). (1997). Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A conversation with Jacques Derrida. New York, NY: Fordham University Press.

Chambers

(2004). Research that matters: Finding a path with heart. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 2, 1–19.

Chambers

Hasebe-Ludt

Donald

Hurren

Leggo

Oberg

(2009). Métissage: A research praxis. In Knowles

J. G.

Cole

A. L.

(Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research (pp. 141–154). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Clarke

Erickson

(2003). Teacher inquiry: A defining feature of professional practice. In Clarke

Erickson

(Eds.), Teacher inquiry: Living the research in everyday practice (pp. 1–6). New York, NY: Routledge Falmer.

Davis

Sumara

Luce-Kapler

(2008). Engaging minds: Changing teaching in Complex times (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Delpit

(1988). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people’s children. Harvard Educational Review, 53, 280–298.

Glisczinski

(2007). Transformative higher education: A meaningful degree of understanding. Journal of Transformative Education, 5, 317–328.

10.

Greene

(1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts and social change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

11.

Henderson

J. G.

(1992). Reflective teaching: Becoming an inquiring educator. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Company.

12.

Hicks

Berger

Generett

(2005). From hope to action: Creating spaces to sustain transformative habits of mind and heart. Journal of Transformative Education, 3, 57–75.

13.

Lather

(2001). Postmodernism, poststructuralism and post(critical) ethnography: Of ruins, aporias and angels. In Atkinson

Coffey

Delamont

Lofland

(Eds.), Handbook of Ethnography (pp. 477–492). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

14.

McIntosh

(1990). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Independent School, Winter, 49, 31–36.

15.

Minnich

E. K.

(2005). Transforming knowledge (2nd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

16.

Neufeld

(2011). The neufeld institute. In Making sense of kids. Retrieved October 29, 2011, from www.gordonneufeld.com/home

17.

Palmer

(1998). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

18.

Tanaka

M. T.

(2012). Transformative inquiry in teacher education: Evoking the soul of what matters. Manuscript submitted for publication.

19.

Tanaka

M. T.

(in press). Learning to dwell aright in the tensionality of a sweat lodge. In Hurren

Hasebe-udt

(Eds.), Contemplating curriculum: Genealogies/Times/Places (pp.174–186). New York, NY: Routledge.

20.

Tanaka

M. T.

Starr

(2011, May 31). Transformative inquiry with pre-service teachers: Creating spaces for professional development. Presented at Canadian Society for the Study of Education, Frederickton, NB.

21.

Thayer-Bacon

(2003). Relational “(e)pistemologies.” New York, NY: Peter Lang.

22.

Tobin

(2010). Opening the contemplative mind in the classroom. Journal of Transformative Education, 2, 28–46.

23.

Washburn

(2008). Editor’s perspective: The change we need. Journal of Transformative Education, 6, 231–234.

24.

Wilson

(2008). Research is ceremony. Halifax, England: Fernwood.

Committed to Transformative Inquiry

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References