Abstract
This chapter explores the relationships between inquiry, presence, and civic capacity in teaching. More specifically, it looks at the critical skill of descriptive inquiry, its place in the larger scheme of reflection, and its role in the cultivation of presence and civic capacity. Drawing largely on John Dewey and Patricia Carini, I explore two modes of inquiry in which presence might be cultivated and civic capacity developed: the descriptive review of children and children’s work (Himley and Carini 2000; Carini 2001; Rodgers 2006b), and descriptive feedback (Rodgers 2006b). I claim that the discipline of descriptive inquiry is a means of acknowledging and drawing upon the vast capacity of all teachers and learners, as human beings, to shape their individual and collective experience.
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Notes
- 1.
Many similar processes have been developed by others since, including Collaborative Assessment (Seidel 1998), the Tuning Protocol (Blythe et al.), and Critical Friends Groups. However, the Prospect processes are distinct in that they are committed to being processes always under examination and in the making, rather than protocols, which are more fixed.
- 2.
For an in-depth description of the descriptive review process please see Rodgers (2006b).
- 3.
I am, as always, grateful to my former colleagues at the School for International Training (SIT) in Brattleboro, Vermont for teaching me the value of feedback. It was introduced to SIT by Caleb Gattegno in the early 1970s and further developed at SIT under the name “structured feedback,” a term coined by Kathleen Graves and Donald Freeman in the 1980s.
- 4.
The internal and external barriers to conducting descriptive feedback remains an area in need of further inquiry.
- 5.
The length of this chapter prohibits a longer, thicker, description of an actual review session. A more fine-toothed account of an actual descriptive review can be found in Rodgers (2006b).
- 6.
All names are pseudonyms.
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Acknowledgments
I wish to acknowledge the students who so graciously agreed to share their work. I also want to acknowledge the immensely helpful feedback from my colleagues, Claire Stanley and Kathleen Graves, on an earlier draft of this chapter. My grateful thanks also to Miriam Raider-Roth and James Garrison for their very thoughtful and provocative reviews of this chapter.
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Rodgers, C. (2010). The Role of Descriptive Inquiry in Building Presence and Civic Capacity. In: Lyons, N. (eds) Handbook of Reflection and Reflective Inquiry. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-85744-2_3
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