![Sample our Education journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5932/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Education.jpg"})
Abstract
From October 2004 to June 2006 I worked as a curriculum leader across 18 elementary schools as part of an Alberta Incentive for School Improvement (AISI) project focused on the reform question “How does inquiry transform learning environments?”. In support of professional development, I worked closely with teachers in discussion, planning, and co‐teaching from an inquiry‐based perspective. In this task, a “monstrous” image of inquiry‐based teaching and learning began to emerge among the project’s participating teachers. This essay inquires into the monstrous image accorded to inquiry‐based practice as a means to articulate the challenges and problematic of both school reform and the character of inquiry “itself”. Working analogously with T. H. White’s A Once and Future King, this essay seeks to interpret the monstrous and uncertain image of inquiry as vital to the character of the curriculum‐as‐lived.
Notes
1. The Alberta (Canada) Incentive for School Improvement describes a reform movement focused on professional development based on the unique needs of individual school jurisdictions. My role as AISI consultant was focused on the professional development of teaching staff over 18 schools and was guided by the “organizing” question “How does inquiry transform learning environments?”.
2. Derrida’s (Citation1993) notion of the arrivant refers literally to “that which or the one who arrives”. It is a feature particular to borderlines, thresholds, and the monsters that emerge at the limit of such “marginal” spaces. From the Old French ariver, “to reach shore” and the Latin “ad ripa”, to shore, the arrivant emerges a priori identification and naming. It is in this sense that Derrida (Citation1995) suggests the arrivant as (a)kin to monstrosity, a word that etymologically evokes the presence of omens and signs of portend, demonstrations which both mark and disturb fixed conceptual categories.