I am on my way home from a wonderful week working with the staff of the International School of Uganda. It is such a privilege to be invited to spend a full week on campus, planning, hosting rich conversations about pedagogy, facilitating workshops and of course, lots of classroom teaching. Classroom ‘labsites’ or ‘learning labs’ as they are often called have been a consistent element of my practice as a consultant for 20 years. I know of no better way to collectively examine, critique and investigate what it means to bring an inquiry stance to teaching and learning than to get in a classroom, teach, and invite colleagues to observe and listen. We ALL learn – the teachers, the kids, and me. And as a trained and experienced early years and primary classroom teacher, working with and learning from children always feels like coming home. This is where my heart lies.
This is where the hearts of most teachers lie. The core of our work - the reason most of us do this, is about our day-to-day interaction with children as they learn. It’s about what we say, think and do when we walk into a learning space … and teach. As we wound up the week yesterday, the primary principal, Dan, reflected on the ‘artistry’ of teaching and the power of seeing ourselves as artists – mindfully choreographing our next move, standing back to ponder and appraise our work, thriving in the creativity of a responsive approach and intentionally dipping into a palette of practices as we observe, listen to and respond to learners. It is thoughtful, complex, creative and stimulating work. I was reminded of a quote from a blog I read a few years ago:
“Thinking of teaching as an art elevates our work from the pedantic to the profound. When we think of ourselves as artists, we set both a very high standard for the evocative nature of our work and a deeper compassion for the difficult challenges we will face in pursuing that standard. Thinking of our teaching this way challenges us to prioritize the interactions between teacher and student rather than the ‘grade’. In both art and teaching, attending to the work itself rather than the outcome of that work raises the authenticity of the outcome.” Catherine McTamaney, Ed.D.
To acknowledge and approach the work of teaching through an artistic metaphor was a beautiful balance to the very different kinds of conversations I had been having at home prior to my trip, where the word ‘science’ seemed to be increasingly attached to our work, often bringing with it a kind of didactic rigidity that seemed at times to suck the life out of the beautiful work we do … all head and no heart. We have much to learn from the work of cognitive scientists - but let us not ignore the artistry of teaching.
Perhaps the most potent teaching is in the centre of a venn diagram connecting teaching (and learning) as a science AND art. This seems to be a recurring theme for me (I have written extensively about this,for example, here and here) as I continue to resist unnecessary duality and acknowledge complexity, and to avoid dogmatism and orthodoxy and acknowledge nuance. While the word ‘nuance’ can prompt the occasional eyeroll, it remains central to my efforts to find ways to meet in the field beyond. Journalist Annabelle Crabb, in a recent article about a high profile court case here in Australia writes:
“Inability to see nuance in an issue about which one feels deeply is- when extrapolated to a group – the number one most frightening thing about tribalism. … people who are motivated by good and reasonable sentiments get so busy fighting the holders of other sentiments that they let go, sometimes without noticing, of the principles that got them into it in the first place. Why do we do this? Because we like to gather in groups of people with which we agree. It’s safe. It’s calming. It gives us a sense of purpose and connection. But it can also blind us to nuance …”
I read Crabb’s article not long after reading another wonderful post by another insightful and articulate educator, Tracey Ezard. Her writings about the ‘Paradox of Yet’ resonated with me strongly. Ezard writes about this in relation to leadership, but I could not help but think about the same idea when pondering the persistent problem of inquiry and explicit instruction being pitted against each other. When I returned to the article to write this post, I realised that she too had drawn on the metaphor of artistry:
“If we’re driven by a strong set of principles that centre us, we can bring this duality together. Like an artist mixing two seeming opposing colours together, we end up with a third choice. It becomes a richer choice that incorporates strengths from both sides.”
I nodded furiously as I read:
“Without the blending of the seemingly opposing strengths, we become a victim of extremities.”
Ezzard’s clever pairing of seemingly opposing approaches to leadership invited me to do the same for inquiry:
Flexible yet structured
Student-led yet teacher-guided
Student-led yet teacher-guided
Emergent yet planned
Responsive yet intentional
Collaborative yet personalised
Inductive yet explicit
Playful yet rigorous
Conceptual yet knowledge-rich
Integrated yet discipline-specific
Exploratory yet focussed
Messy yet organised
Open ended yet scaffolded
Action-oriented yet reflective
This proved to be an interesting provocation for the staff at ISU who helpfully added:
Hands on/authentic yet abstract
Teachers who bring an inquiry stance to their work acknowledge the ‘yetness’ of their approach. I have deliberately ‘bolded’ the elements that characterize inquiry. These are without question, the features I probably lean into more often. BUT the seemingly ‘opposing’ elements are not only present in my practice, they enhance it! I can make the most of the emergent nature of inquiry because I have a plan – a big picture view. I can engage kids in real experiences and hands on learning but this is made more powerful by the higher order, abstract thinking we do to build conceptual understanding. The word ‘yet’ gives permission to be nuanced and to dip into the vast palette of possibilities we have as educators. But it doesn’t mean ‘anything goes’, in the framing I offer here, the ‘yet’ is not necessarily about balance - it is about acknowledging the nuances so often overlooked in simplistic representations of inquiry.
As the teachers at ISU gathered to debrief their observations of lessons this week, an appreciation of nuance was alive and well. When we are slaves to ‘absolutism’ or programs that allow no room for artistry and adaptation, we lose the power of ‘yet’. And we lose the gift of learning from and with others who see it differently.
I found this such a helpful way of thinking about the pedagogy of inquiry. How about you? What would you add?