Space for Transformation

Abstract

Given the current and historical trends favoring the view of teachers as passive followers of “expert” directives, teachers are in need of continuing education that encourages them to be active change agents in educational reform. Teachers need professional education that helps them critique trends which question the legitimacy of their knowledge and experience as vital to critical conversations about school improvement. In this article, we elucidate the epistemic stance and the dialogic, relational approach to pedagogy that we adopt during the 3-week Summer Cohort experience. Second, we describe and analyze one of these activities—autobiographical writing which sets the framework for the course in terms of the relational and dialogic processes of our pedagogy and suggest ways in which such writing provides spaces for transformation in our students. We hope to demonstrate the ways in which a relational epistemology and dialogic, relationally oriented pedagogy provides one way to invite teachers to personal and professional transformation.