Reflective and appreciative actions that support the building of ethical places and spaces

Abstract

This reflective account discusses the ‘creative renderings’ that surfaced as a consequence of a workshop about ethical issues in education, with school staff in a municipality in northern Sweden. The paper is part of a longer, ongoing conversation in that community about building and sustaining an ethical place and space called ‘school’. The focus for the conversation on this particular day was around every child and every teacher being valued in school. We worked alongside 30 school staff throughout that day with two appreciative activities—the Show‐and‐Share activity and the Building Blocks activity. During the day we also made field notes of teachers’ shared experiences, we analysed their writing on Building Blocks and documented the process with a digital camera. After the workshop we invited teachers to write some reflective notes. In the paper we share our collective reflections on what we felt we learnt. The workshop was guided by the principles of participatory and appreciative action research or PAAR.