SARAH

What exactly does collaborative inquiry look like? How can it be facilitated?
From //The Mindful Teacher//, by Elizabeth MacDonald and Dennis Shirley

"Abandoning orthodox professional development strategies and appropriating participatory research strategies that would provide multiple opportunities for teachers themselves to generate new findings, we determined at the outset that we would not articulate pre-established outcomes for the seminar. Rather, our goal would be to establish maximum openness for teachers to identify and to explore collaboratively what they experience as core dilemmas and problems in their practice; to address the whole host of issues that emerge in the urban environment that make it difficult for their pupils to excel; and to keep a fluid structure so that new topics could emerge continuously and be taken up by our cohorts in ways that would advance their awareness and deepen their understanding of the complexities of teaching and learning." (pp.4-5)

"Our role became that of compassionate allies who sought to establish a precarious balance between the needs of the pupils for learning and the needs of the teacher for a profesision that invites not three years of idealism followed by burnout and exit, but long-term sustainable growth and fulfullment." (p. 69)