Two-Way Inquiry Learning

It is one matter to identify the key issues reverberating around the modern world and which press down on us all, issues such as globalisation, democracy, ideology-critique, morality, perspective and reconciliation, yet quite another to account for such factors when attempting to transform education systems in the interests of the majority. If this cannot be done, then the words remain lifeless and abstract, withered theory without applicability. On the basis that practice and theory are a unity, the historic task involves participation with the principles that guide practice and reflection on practice to inform knowledge and understanding. A progressive and democratic education system needs to be able to construct its programmes of teaching and learning in this way so that all children are respected and included and are encouraged to develop their own culture and ideas from a diverse and genuinely educative experience.

Through the narrative representation of people’s experiences in learning, we are allowed to catch glimpses of their meaning-making processes and of the frameworks and structures they use to make meaning of their experiences in the contexts of their whole lives (Mary Beattie, 2001, p. 170).