Sean Wiebe
University of Prince Edward Island, Education, Faculty Member
- Curriculum Theory, English Education, Poetic Inquiry, A/r/tography, Cultural Foundations of Education, Arts Education and Pedagogy, and 26 moreSelf and Identity, Education, Teaching and Learning, Teacher Education, Learning and Teaching, Creative Writing, Media, Curriculum Studies, Digital Literacy, Lacanian theory, Narrative Methods, Narrative, Continental Philosophy, Communication, Literacy, Narrative Theory, Poetics, Arts Education, Media Studies, Media Literacy, Media Education, Social Communication, Educational Research, Pedagogy, Autobiography, and Narrative and Identityedit
- Sean Wiebe is a professor of education at the University of Prince Edward Island. His research explores issues in dig... moreSean Wiebe is a professor of education at the University of Prince Edward Island. His research explores issues in digital literacies, writing pedagogy, autobiography, teacher narratives, and arts-based methodologies. His career has spanned 25 years in education, beginning as secondary English teacher before moving to educational administration and higher education.edit
Canadian Association of Curriculum Studies 2018 Call for Submissions Where: Regina, May 26th to 30, 2018 Deadline: October 1st, 2017 Paul Zanazanian and I (CACS co-presidents) invite you to submit a proposal for the CSSE conference in... more
Canadian Association of Curriculum Studies
2018 Call for Submissions
Where: Regina, May 26th to 30, 2018
Deadline: October 1st, 2017
Paul Zanazanian and I (CACS co-presidents) invite you to submit a proposal for the CSSE conference in Regina.
https://csse-scee.ca/conference-2018/
2018 Call for Submissions
Where: Regina, May 26th to 30, 2018
Deadline: October 1st, 2017
Paul Zanazanian and I (CACS co-presidents) invite you to submit a proposal for the CSSE conference in Regina.
https://csse-scee.ca/conference-2018/
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In celebration of the 4th International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry, we invite submissions of poetry and full chapters for inclusion in an edited book Resonance: Poetic inquiries of reflection and renewal (publisher to be determined).... more
In celebration of the 4th International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry, we invite submissions of poetry and full chapters for inclusion in an edited book Resonance: Poetic inquiries of reflection and renewal (publisher to be determined). Poetry and chapters may come from presentations given at the symposium held in Montreal from October 23-26, 2013. Submissions from authors who did not attend the symposium are also welcome. All submissions must be previously unpublished.
Submissions should be in a Word document and not exceed 3000 words, including title and references. We anticipate a large response to this call, so please adhere strictly to the word count. Visuals may be included, but will only appear in black and white. Please use Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (Sixth Edition) when referencing.
Submissions for “Resonance: Poetic inquiries of reflection and renewal” should be sent in one e-mail to all of the editors before February 15, 2014. Once all submissions are received, a timeline will be developed for the next stages of the process.
Lynn Butler-Kisber
[email protected]
John J. Guiney Yallop
[email protected]
Mary Stewart
[email protected]
Sean Wiebe
[email protected]
Submissions should be in a Word document and not exceed 3000 words, including title and references. We anticipate a large response to this call, so please adhere strictly to the word count. Visuals may be included, but will only appear in black and white. Please use Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (Sixth Edition) when referencing.
Submissions for “Resonance: Poetic inquiries of reflection and renewal” should be sent in one e-mail to all of the editors before February 15, 2014. Once all submissions are received, a timeline will be developed for the next stages of the process.
Lynn Butler-Kisber
[email protected]
John J. Guiney Yallop
[email protected]
Mary Stewart
[email protected]
Sean Wiebe
[email protected]
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To find new ways around thinking about tenure track, we propose seven movements as a means to think beyond the limitations of binary, conceptual frameworks. A living inquiry in place, language, time, and self/other is the lens through... more
To find new ways around thinking about tenure track, we propose seven movements as a means to think beyond the limitations of binary, conceptual frameworks. A living inquiry in place, language, time, and self/other is the lens through which we experience the complexities and complicities of tenure ambitions; we point out the difficulties of a track which defines what matters, what is possible, and even what exists. Also. in the poetic and performative process of co-constructing text, we attend closely to the contexts and strategic relationships for performative knowing and exploring.
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An Editorial by the Guest Editors for a special issue of in education on the practices of poetic inquiry.
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Much public dialogue around pedagogy is now propelled by a dwindling number of best practices, a kind of corporate gate-keeping which insures an ongoing instrumental quality to classroom teaching. By contrast, and to contest such... more
Much public dialogue around pedagogy is now propelled by a dwindling number of best practices, a kind of corporate gate-keeping which insures an ongoing instrumental quality to classroom teaching. By contrast, and to contest such educational tsuris, our voices offer a poetics of understanding one's own pedagogies, and those of others, through a multiplicity and complexity of ways of being in the world. By shifting attention to the multiplicity, we have come in differing and always complicated ways to our readings and subsequent conversations of Anne Sexton’s pedagogy, which Paulio Salvio (2007) represents favorably as having potential for questioning the strictures we as teachers hold about keeping our personal lives outside the door of the classroom. Our reflections have become more vulnerable, more fluid, teasing out the tensions of what we have lived everyday as teachers and how we have woven the everyday into our practice. By becoming publicly aware of how much our personal ...
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Dear Carl, Pamela, Natalie, Sandra, and Kimberly, Would you like to come out and play? John, Lynn, Celeste, and I are knocking at your door. We wonder if you might be interested in joining us in a poetic inquiry? The call from CJE asks... more
Dear Carl, Pamela, Natalie, Sandra, and Kimberly, Would you like to come out and play? John, Lynn, Celeste, and I are knocking at your door. We wonder if you might be interested in joining us in a poetic inquiry? The call from CJE asks for papers that address play, playfulness, and childhood. Poetically yours, John, Lynn, Celeste, and Sean P.S. Can’t, too busy, don’t have time? Ready or not, here we come.
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In this chapter we discuss how we have incorporated duoethnographies in our teaching to assist our students in an examination of their teaching beliefs and practices. We explore both the teaching of education courses and duoethnography as... more
In this chapter we discuss how we have incorporated duoethnographies in our teaching to assist our students in an examination of their teaching beliefs and practices. We explore both the teaching of education courses and duoethnography as a methodology as we simultaneously introduce both, adapting lessons to the various types of student who we have encountered. Reflexivity, openness to uncertainty, vulnerability, diversity, placeholders, points of view, and assessment criteria are some of the emergent themes.
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In N. Ng-A-Fook, G. Reis, & A. Ibrahim [Eds], Provoking curriculum studies: Strong poetry and the arts of the possible in Education, (pp. 55-66), New York, NY: Routledge.
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There is an inherent mismatch between the prevailing individualistic narrative implicit within the 20th century education gospel of higher skills equals better jobs equals a better economy, and the realities of the emerging knowledge... more
There is an inherent mismatch between the prevailing individualistic narrative implicit within the 20th century education gospel of higher skills equals better jobs equals a better economy, and the realities of the emerging knowledge based creative economy where precarious, part-time labour persists and outsourcing of employment globally is compounded. Before broad implementation of innovative approaches within classrooms can be realized, underlying ideologies that have shaped and continue to shape education systems and policy must be surfaced and challenged, taking seriously the shifting employment landscape and social context in the enigmatic digital era.
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With the intention of disrupting and re-imagining traditional conference spaces, this article is a poetic compilation developed from a Curriculum Studies conference symposium that took place on a school bus. During the School Bus... more
With the intention of disrupting and re-imagining traditional conference spaces, this article is a poetic compilation developed from a Curriculum Studies conference symposium that took place on a school bus. During the School Bus Symposium, in situ poetry writing and reading, song and storytelling occurred in response to open ended prompts and facilitation of creative activities. After the symposium, a call was issued to invite participants to submit any poetry or stories produced during, or inspired by the session. Consisting of 18 submissions including poetry, story, photography and creative essays, infused by curriculum theory and poetic inquiry, this collection offers an inclusive, reflective, participatory, and experiential rendering where participants are living and journeying poetically. Emphasizing creative engagement with personal memories, the authors collectively aimed to promote art education through imaginative approaches to curriculum studies, poetic inquiry and academ...
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This article discusses social innovation in education informed by arts-based and Indi
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First Stanza: We can't write that holding the controller we feel most worthy pushing buttons on the projection of ourselves
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In this chapter, written in three parts, we present two separate journeys that detail the use of poetic inquiry in the conducting of research. We describe the processes and the products, and we offer possibilities for how others might... more
In this chapter, written in three parts, we present two separate journeys that detail the use of poetic inquiry in the conducting of research. We describe the processes and the products, and we offer possibilities for how others might conduct this form of inquiry. Poetic inquiry has many forms (Prendergast, 2009), but essentially it is about the using of poetry to investigate and come to deeper understandings of the topic or subject of our research (Educational Insights 13(3); Guiney Yallop, 2008; Prendergast, Leggo, & Sameshima, 2009; Wiebe, 2008).
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In dialogical theories of the self, presence is understood as socially constructed as each ‘I’ position within the self comes to voice the multiple and socially influenced selves that are always in relation. In this poetic inquiry, the... more
In dialogical theories of the self, presence is understood as socially constructed as each ‘I’ position within the self comes to voice the multiple and socially influenced selves that are always in relation. In this poetic inquiry, the poems stage a dialogue within the self where each speaker voices a different ‘I’ position. Framing the dialogue within Anderson’s (1835) The Princess and Pea, I’ve written into the text “a poet” who is positioned as the princess in relation to the other interlocutors. The resulting interplay of the original and my adaptation follows the features of Menippean dialogue in that the interlocutors converse in an unusual world where one of them has a crisis which needs resolution. How authorial presence emerges in relation to the poetic dialogue is a central feature of the artfulness of the inquiry and its application to education. Throughout the paper, I employ Lacanian theory to explore ways a dialogical understanding of the self can offer a different kin...
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Work intensification is a problem for the teaching profession. Even with increased preparation time for teachers, the work intensification burden remains. As multiple studies have reported, today it is as difficult as ever for teachers to... more
Work intensification is a problem for the teaching profession. Even with increased preparation time for teachers, the work intensification burden remains. As multiple studies have reported, today it is as difficult as ever for teachers to perform their primary pedagogical role. While casting teachers as mere technicians implementing provincial (or state) mandated outcomes reduces planning responsibilities, in this chapter we demonstrate how such a production model devalues the profession, teachers themselves as human beings, and ultimately, the very critical pedagogy teachers might be able to enact if work intensification difficulties were addressed differently. Framed in the lived experience of curriculum inquiry, we propose that teachers in complicated conversation with each other might regain the profession that is theirs, and in so doing restore their primary pedagogical role of social reconstruction through self-mobilization.
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In this chapter I argue that to practice poetry, or to live poetically, is an artmaking process where the self has an aesthetic/empathetic sense of being in the world. I utilize Lacanian theory to explain how artmaking processes of... more
In this chapter I argue that to practice poetry, or to live poetically, is an artmaking process where the self has an aesthetic/empathetic sense of being in the world. I utilize Lacanian theory to explain how artmaking processes of aesthetics/empathy (1) resist the long-standing traditions of modernist education, and (2) create worlds of desire where desire is not hidden or disciplined in a social form. Tightly coupled, perhaps even functioning as a singular concept, aesthetic and empathetic artmaking processes can create distortions and disruptions to overly familiarized aesthetic norms, not only for personal meaning, but for relating to others who share those same experiences as human beings. Rather than call for more artmaking in education, I contend that an aesthetic/empathetic orientation to pedagogy might be so different from current, modernistic educational practices that it would be more publically valuable and viable for young people to participate in something other than e...
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In a recent essay, Walsh (2012) examines “being present to the artifacts derived from research” (p. 271). Instead of analyzing or interpreting as she might have done earlier in her research career, Walsh’s intention is to dwell: She says,... more
In a recent essay, Walsh (2012) examines “being present to the artifacts derived from research” (p. 271). Instead of analyzing or interpreting as she might have done earlier in her research career, Walsh’s intention is to dwell: She says, “I sit with, listen to, write from particular moments of the research process” (p. 274). In writing the poem below I have noticed how Walsh’s process is similar to my own.
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The purpose of this paper is to document the perceptions of school leaders regarding the technological use, skills, and attitudes of high school teachers. Using a qualitative research approach, 11 educational leaders from Prince Edward... more
The purpose of this paper is to document the perceptions of school leaders regarding the technological use, skills, and attitudes of high school teachers. Using a qualitative research approach, 11 educational leaders from Prince Edward Island (Canada) were individually interviewed. Participants represented the Department of Education, principals, vice-principals, and department heads. Analyzed through the concept of e-leadership, the findings indicated that participants used a growing array of technological tools and activities including Smartboards, flipped classrooms, Prezi, educational apps, YouTube, and teacher blogs. Participants identified lack of time as a possible reason why some teachers were not incorporating technology into student learning. Findings highlight the need for provincial and school district authorities to promote policies aimed at promoting e-leadership among teachers. We insert an appendix to provide descriptions of the technological terms included within th...
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ABSTRACT As more and more educators face the impact of Web 2.0, and as we see emerging what could be called a Learning 2.0 environment, it has become urgent to extend teaching to meet the literacy and learning needs of the Net Generation.... more
ABSTRACT As more and more educators face the impact of Web 2.0, and as we see emerging what could be called a Learning 2.0 environment, it has become urgent to extend teaching to meet the literacy and learning needs of the Net Generation. These ‘new’ learners and their expanding literacy needs have major implications for current models of post-secondary programs which are traditionally focused on knowledge acquisition and transmission. Discussions and resources about this challenge are rapidly appearing, appropriately within Web 2.0 environments. Arising from these discussions is the need to critically question long held tenets of post-secondary teaching/learning and to create a new research-based vision that will accord with the current economic and social directions driving educational change. This study contributes to that process by exploring the needs, interests and skills of new learners entering the University of Prince Edward Island for the first time. This inquiry was guided by research in new literacies, new learners, and the new learners’ understanding of global issues.
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In this paper, we use Sameshima’s Parallaxic Praxis Model to create collaborative poetry. The model invites juxtaposing articulations to generate alternative thinking. Similar to Daignault's (1992) notion of a “thinking maybe"... more
In this paper, we use Sameshima’s Parallaxic Praxis Model to create collaborative poetry. The model invites juxtaposing articulations to generate alternative thinking. Similar to Daignault's (1992) notion of a “thinking maybe" space, we invite readers into what we call a liminal studio to theorize new understandings of social justice. In the data phases for this project, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s (2015) The Sympathizer served as a play object: The narrator, the sympathizer, is a captured communist spy in the aftermath of the Vietnam war, and his confession (the novel) considers a critical question for understanding social justice: “What is more important than independence and freedom?” Nguyen refuses simplistic overtures of social justice. Instead, readers are confronted with questions: “What do those who struggle against power do when they seize power? What does the revolutionary do when the revolution triumphs? Why do those who call for independence and freedom take away the in...
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In this essay I argue that social ideals create an imaginary that inspires self-discipline in beliefs, thinking, and practices in order to achieve social-utopian hopes that the world will improve in particular ways. As such, social ideals... more
In this essay I argue that social ideals create an imaginary that inspires self-discipline in beliefs, thinking, and practices in order to achieve social-utopian hopes that the world will improve in particular ways. As such, social ideals limit human agency in general, and, for teachers in particular, there is limited terrain in which they have the right to speak. As a substitute for their right to speak, I argue, teachers are given the token social status of superhero, a fantasy consistent with neoliberal styles of thought. Following Pinar's notion of art-as-event, I propose that deep engagement in the arts might be a means of restoring agency and voice to teachers; I argue that art troubles the strong socialization motif in education and creates intellectual room for the development of genuinely educational moments in schooling.
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New digital technologies are changing the nature and contexts of work in Canada. It is essential that education policy and practice acknowledge and respond to these changes. The impacts and implications of new and emerging technologies... more
New digital technologies are changing the nature and contexts of work in Canada. It is essential that education policy and practice acknowledge and respond to these changes. The impacts and implications of new and emerging technologies for work can be summarized within two paradigms: technology is replacing work through automation and digital Taylorism; and technology is changing communication, collaboration and knowledge creation. Derived from a SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis report, this article explores how nurturing uniquely human abilities by employing a threshold concept approach will help create education policy and practice that can better prepare students for the realities of the evolving knowledge-based creative economy. Highlighting the complexity and transdisciplinary nature of knowledge, The New Literacies Threshold Concepts in English Language Arts are presented as a curriculum heuristic that is wellsuited to developing uniquely human abilities.
This chapter emerges as a surprise, as we have come through this writing to understand that critical to arts-based collaboration or participatory research is mindful attendance to the in-between-relational-spaces of tensions, absences,... more
This chapter emerges as a surprise, as we have come through this writing to understand that critical to arts-based collaboration or participatory research is mindful attendance to the in-between-relational-spaces of tensions, absences, learning and curiosities that are revealed through reflection over time. Over the last few years, the five of us have collaborated on a variety of arts-based research projects, bringing poetry, drama, and dance to understanding education and our experiences as educators working with pre-service and graduate students in faculties of Education and Social Work in post-secondary institutions. In our collaborations, we have invited each other into ongoing conversations about our ways of being (Wiebe & Guiney Yallop, 2010), particularly how multiple art forms have been part of our engagement in and presentation of our work across discourses. Poetry has been a way to return to, reflect on, and share significant moments in our lives (Wiebe & Margolin, 2012); it has been a way to understand how we make meaning in our unique educational contexts (Wiebe & Fels, 2010); and it has provided the means and form to represent our collaborations provocatively, a way to disrupt the comprehensible, a space to re-imagine culturally-bound knowledge processes (Wiebe & Snowber, 2011).
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ABSTRACT The digital turn has so profoundly increased the possibilities of teaching writing that traditional writing assignments, on their own, feel too static, too structured, and too limited. In an age of connectivity, young people are... more
ABSTRACT The digital turn has so profoundly increased the possibilities of teaching writing that traditional writing assignments, on their own, feel too static, too structured, and too limited. In an age of connectivity, young people are clearly connected outside of school, and comfortably use a variety of tools associated with new technologies to transform, create, and distribute knowledge. Wiebe, S. (2013). How do I teach writing in a digital and global world? In K. James, T. Dobson, and C. Leggo, English in Middle and Secondary Classrooms, (pp. 223-227). Toronto, ON: Pearson.
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In this article, we invite readers into a conversation about ways of being in teaching. Through e ‐ mails, telephone calls, and face ‐ to ‐ face meetings, we use our first conversa ‐ tions with each other as shared moments that we... more
In this article, we invite readers into a conversation about ways of being in teaching. Through e ‐ mails, telephone calls, and face ‐ to ‐ face meetings, we use our first conversa ‐ tions with each other as shared moments that we returned to, seeking to better under ‐ stand how we made meaning in our individual school teaching careers, and how we continue to make meaning as teacher educators. Exploring together our memories, we use poetry and narrative to collaboratively interpret what those memories might mean for us and for educational communities. Key Words: autoethnography, collaborative research, poetic inquiry, teacher educa ‐ tion, writing as research Dans cet article, les auteurs invitent les lecteurs a participer a une conversation sur les facons d’etre comme pedagogues. Les conversations que les auteurs ont eux ‐ memes engagees entre eux a travers des courriels, des echanges telephoniques et des ren ‐ contres ont constitue le point de depart de leur reflexion en vue de mi...
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Parallaxic Praxis is a research framework utilized by interdisciplinary teams to collect, interpret, transmediate, analyze, and mobilize data generatively. The methodology leverages the researchers’ personal strengths and the collective... more
Parallaxic Praxis is a research framework utilized by interdisciplinary teams to collect, interpret, transmediate, analyze, and mobilize data generatively. The methodology leverages the researchers’ personal strengths and the collective expertise of the team including the participants and community when possible. Benefits include the use of multi-perspective analyses, multi-modal investigations, informal and directed dialogic conversations, innovative knowledge creation, and models of residual and reparative research. Relying on difference, dialogue, and creativity propulsion processes; and drawing on post-qualitative, new materiality, multiliteracies, and combinatorial, even juxtaposing theoretical frames; this model offers extensive research possibilities across disciplines and content areas to mobilize knowledge to broad audiences. This book explains methods, theories, and perspectives, and provides examples for developing creative research design in order to innovate new underst...
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ABSTRACT Amid the relentless proliferation of digital devices, social media, and innovative gadgets, a Net Generation of students are entering classrooms. In turn, many educators are recognizing a magnified need to better integrate... more
ABSTRACT Amid the relentless proliferation of digital devices, social media, and innovative gadgets, a Net Generation of students are entering classrooms. In turn, many educators are recognizing a magnified need to better integrate technology into Kindergarten to Grade 12 environments. Yet, the literature suggests that there exists a disconnect between the instructional readiness of K–12 educators and the growing technological needs of students. This paper focuses on educational leaders and their views concerning this possible disconnect. The purpose of this paper is to document the views of Prince Edward Island (PEI) school leaders with regard to the current technological landscape of PEI high schools. (This study is part of a larger three year research project entitled “A University-College-Government-Industry-Community Partnership to Transform Education for Employment in the Digital Economy,” funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada [SSHRC]). The two research questions guiding the study are: (a) What do educational leaders perceive to be the technological culture of PEI schools? (b) What do educational leaders perceive to be the technological skills, abilities, and attitudes of PEI high school students and educators? Qualitative individual interviews were conducted with 10 educational leaders who represented: school principals, vice-principals, and department-heads. Data transcripts were examined, and a preliminary list of key ideas, commonalities, and differences converged to larger themes in response to the research purpose. Data were analyzed via concepts of e-leadership, a term that refers to the effective promotion and integration of technological learning and literacy in schools. For this study, e-leadership was embodied in the perceived views, attitudes, and actions of principals, vice-principals, and department heads. Implications arising from the study spotlight that, in order for students to thrive in a technologically-imbued world, it is important to listen to the experiences of school leaders and attend to leadership needs. In turn, when concepts of e-leadership are better understood, changes to the teaching profession and student learning will more naturally evolve within school settings that are now highly influenced by a digital world.
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As a means to develop Canadian economic security, more attention in the last decade has been given to supporting the creative economy and building Canadian creative capacity. One of the stumbling blocks to nurturing the growth of... more
As a means to develop Canadian economic security, more attention in the last decade has been given to supporting the creative economy and building Canadian creative capacity. One of the stumbling blocks to nurturing the growth of creativity is the popular belief that creativity is innate. Research refutes this dated notion; What is lacking are explanations of strategies and pedagogical practices for researchers and learners to engage in, to enable them to begin to see themselves as creative. This paper focuses on the procedural steps and possibilities of a creative process called the Catechization Process . This work stems from the Parallaxic Praxis Model wherein investigations take place through arts-making. In this explanation, We share seven response poems created in the Catechization Process to theorize the imaginative space of producing knowledge through creative inquiry. When researchers can imagine themselves as creative and experimenting with new strategies for gener...
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Curriculum integration often appears complex and when this happens those who are involved with providing professional development or teacher education may be inclined to promote simplistic or solution-oriented approaches to facilitate... more
Curriculum integration often appears complex and when this happens those who are involved with providing professional development or teacher education may be inclined to promote simplistic or solution-oriented approaches to facilitate integration. Many variants of a problem-solution model exist, and programs that encourage teachers to identify a few difficulties and then strategize possible ways to remove those difficulties more than likely minimize the very benefits of an integrative program. In contrast to this, we propose a conceptualization of curriculum integration that is rhizomatic. Supporting and extending the research that integrative arts practices lead to imaginative, flexible, and embodied pedagogical praxis, a rhizomatic integration of the arts values complicated and disruptive possibilities that enliven the imagination toward more socially just ways of living and learning. Integration, when understood as rhizomatic, will enable teachers to better respond to the everyda...
Research Interests: Music Education, Education, Curriculum Design, Critical Pedagogy, Curriculum Studies, and 15 moreArts Education, Collaboration, Pedagogy, Curriculum Theory, Postmodernism, Professional Development, Arts Education and Pedagogy, Arts Integration, Arts Based Research, Curricula, Expeditionary Learning, Counselling, Art Inquiry, Arts Based Educational Research, and Art Teachers
Reflecting on a previous study of teachers’ narratives, this epistolary conversation follows ideas of intensification and complexity that emerged in the authors’ return to the narrative accounts. Their conversation highlights... more
Reflecting on a previous study of teachers’ narratives, this epistolary conversation follows ideas of intensification and complexity that emerged in the authors’ return to the narrative accounts. Their conversation highlights representations of teaching as a struggle for recognition, personal happiness, and security—all within a system of accountability. Of central concern is the concept of complicity and how it is related to the seduction of consent through which teachers encounter a discourse of professionalism. By way of countering a misrecognized professionalism, the authors suggest that teachers’ narrative writings can be a means of forming a critical stance.
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In this paper we set out to explore the speculative function and nature of narrative in autoethnographic research. We consider how place--as locus, milieu, setting in which we narrate the distance between ourselves and events we can... more
In this paper we set out to explore the speculative function and nature of narrative in autoethnographic research. We consider how place--as locus, milieu, setting in which we narrate the distance between ourselves and events we can remember, places where we can remember being (or, in this case, becoming: becoming authors)--enriches our understanding of autoethnographic research in Education. Determining autoethnography as new frontier and as site for the construction of a way of life, we offer and invite beginnings in literary enjoyment of life through autobiographical writings for the Social Science of Education. We find ourselves digressing, and suggest that this may be a turn our memory takes on its homeward journey. We celebrate life.
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Looked at broadly, much of education is focused on skills training that rarely stimulates students' creativity and critical capacities (Digital Economy Research Team, 2011-2014). In some schools, there are teachers and students who... more
Looked at broadly, much of education is focused on skills training that rarely stimulates students' creativity and critical capacities (Digital Economy Research Team, 2011-2014). In some schools, there are teachers and students who are committed to creativity as a core practice, but these are the exceptions. Schools in general lack the entrepreneurial systems and infrastructure that could transform them into hubs for social innovation. In this symposium, we share our Pan Canadian research that addresses the creativity problem. In six Canadian research sites we have collaborated with teachers and established an ethos of creative practice in their schools. In helping teachers confront the difficulties of implementing creative pedagogy, we outline how a/r/tography and design thinking enable teachers to engage in research while advancing their artistic and analytical practices.
Do you remember boom-boxes with two decks so a personalized playlist could be recorded onto a cassette tape? Perhaps you received a playlist from a friend, family member, or lover? In this project, 14 colleagues first compiled and shared... more
Do you remember boom-boxes with two decks so a personalized playlist could be recorded onto a cassette tape? Perhaps you received a playlist from a friend, family member, or lover? In this project, 14 colleagues first compiled and shared their curriculum playlists—their favorite texts/performances about curriculum including some of their own texts/performances. Then, they composed responses, expressed in music, dance, poetry, narrative, ruminations, and drama, that annotate, trouble, riff on, and respond to one another's playlists in order to investigate how the art of (re)mixing offers metaphorical possibilities for artfully making curriculum (poiesis). How might the art of mixing be a way of mediating understandings of scholarly lives contingent on histories, politics, and psychologies of knowledge?
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Neste artigo, os autores ilustram como os sujeitos criativos podem usar um aspecto específico do modelo Praxis Parallaxic da PaulineSameshima, o “Processo de Catequização”. Eles descrevem os passosprocessuais e as possibilidades de... more
Neste artigo, os autores ilustram como os sujeitos criativos podem usar um aspecto específico do modelo Praxis Parallaxic da PaulineSameshima, o “Processo de Catequização”. Eles descrevem os passosprocessuais e as possibilidades de catequese, um processo que a Sameshima desenvolveu para promover o significado e a geração de criatividade na pesquisa. O processo beneficia sujeitos criativos em vários campos e pode ser aplicado sempre que as investigações ocorrem por meio da criação em artes. Nesta explicação, os autores compartilham sete poemas de resposta criados no Processo de Catequização para teorizar o espaço imaginativo de produzir conhecimento por meio da investigação. Quando pesquisadores podem se imaginar como sujeitos criativos e experimentam mais estratégias para gerar novas ideias, seu trabalho abre novas possibilidades de compreensão.
In this article, we summarize research on Prince Edward Island where a Prince Edward Island teacher, identifying as an a/r/tographer, designed a digital and multiliteracies unit, as part of a directed studies course in her Master of... more
In this article, we summarize research on Prince Edward Island where a Prince Edward Island teacher, identifying as an a/r/tographer, designed a digital and multiliteracies unit, as part of a directed studies course in her Master of Education program. Small in scope, this single participant case study was designed to give a fuller picture to three difficulties teachers often face when teaching new literacies. These are (1) applying multiliteracies theory, (2) thinking across literacies domains, and (3) assessing literacies holistically. Findings are derived from our six research conversations, and our discussion highlights the necessity of artistic ways of being and thinking for teacher education programs in the 21st century.
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ABSTRACT This short essay is a theoretical argument examining the common practice of rubrics in schools. I took as my starting point that we as teachers create rubrics as part of better assessment practices, and then I considered the... more
ABSTRACT This short essay is a theoretical argument examining the common practice of rubrics in schools. I took as my starting point that we as teachers create rubrics as part of better assessment practices, and then I considered the implications of a rubric-styled assessment with a deliberate aim of troubling the practice. Troubling pedagogical practices from a theoretical position benefits education because it brings to the foreground conversation and debate. It enables everyone involved in the conversation to think critically about the choices she or he makes, and often leads to new questions and different kinds of thinking.
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ABSTRACT In this co-authored autobiographical work, the threads of our personal and professional lives are closely interlaced. Where we have been, how we are changing, and who we are becoming are individually and collaboratively part of... more
ABSTRACT In this co-authored autobiographical work, the threads of our personal and professional lives are closely interlaced. Where we have been, how we are changing, and who we are becoming are individually and collaboratively part of those lived stories we explore together. What we write reflects that nature of working together, responding to one another in human ways, in the contexts of a scholarly profession. In such a human profession, much of our time is spent connecting with individuals, mentoring them in a multiple ways and nurturing not just their ideas, but their work, their engagement with others. It is here we look to poetry, and suggest that a willingness to be vulnerable with (and to) our limitations, rather than trying to overcome or minimize them, could actually be a place of spaciousness, a place where the fragility within us can be formative in creating and sustaining learning.
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This chapter reports on how a narrative inquiry approach to teacher education program evaluation can offer rich insights into candidates' teacher identity development. Data were drawn from the reflective entries of teacher education... more
This chapter reports on how a narrative inquiry approach to teacher education program evaluation can offer rich insights into candidates' teacher identity development. Data were drawn from the reflective entries of teacher education candidates in an on-line, interactive journal for a Foundations of Education course during an after-degree B.Ed. program in Atlantic Canada. Findings revealed the struggles of the "contested self" that occurred in the borderland of "pre-service" that situates the teacher education candidate between role of 'student' and 'teacher'. Analysis of the entries created a series of snapshots of the challenging epistemological journey of developing an identity of ‘teacher’. Narrative inquiry proved to be an appropriate and effective analytic approach to understanding the epistemologies related to identity transformation of pre-service candidates as they lived the course and the program. We conclude with the assertion that n...
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"Extending critical perspectives which have problematized “work,” in this essay we contest rationalist values of “work” through a/r/tography, noting that a/r/tography is particularly suited to troubling the artificial divisions and... more
"Extending critical perspectives which have problematized “work,” in this essay we contest rationalist values of “work” through a/r/tography, noting that a/r/tography is particularly suited to troubling the artificial divisions and correlative productivities between art and research, teacher and student, teacher and researcher, and so forth. We explore the notions of transmediation and pedagogical recognition to suggest that if our educative systems, processes, and imaginations could more generatively attend to students as creative beings, and if students could be invited to a fuller activity in the world across multiple domains, then an increasing social tendency to accept economic values as trumping all others might be redressed. We argue that how adults value young people in the progress and process of their making art, making knowledge, and making a life, comes to affect the ontology and epistemology of work in all its social manifestations."
In “Imagining Futures: The Public School and Possibility” Maxine Greene (2000) writes that “For all the talk of global citizenship, multiculturalism, social justice and the rest” what we have instead is “Distancing, abstractness, [and]... more
In “Imagining Futures: The Public School and Possibility” Maxine Greene (2000) writes that “For all the talk of global citizenship, multiculturalism, social justice and the rest” what we have instead is “Distancing, abstractness, [and] wishful acceptance” (p. 271). Greene has no trouble identifying the cause. It is “untroubled positivism” (p. 272), and she explains that in the last decade there has been an unexamined split between facts and values that has taken over.
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With the intention of disrupting and re-imagining traditional conference spaces, this article is a poetic compilation developed from a curriculum studies conference symposium that took place on a school bus. During the School Bus... more
With the intention of disrupting and re-imagining traditional conference spaces, this article is a poetic compilation developed from a curriculum studies conference symposium that took place on a school bus. During the School Bus Symposium, in situ poetry writing and reading, song and storytelling occurred in response to open ended prompts and facilitation of creative activities. After the symposium, a call was 1 Biographical statement: The School Bus Symposium was initially imagined by Sean Wiebe and Pamela
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In A. Kublik and D. Dronyk (Eds) Writing the Land. Blue Skies Publishing.
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Writing and the Digital Economy. Co-hosted by the National Research Council of Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
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In N. Ng-A-Fook, G. Reis, & A. Ibrahim [Eds], Provoking curriculum studies: Strong poetry and the arts of the possible in Education, (pp. 55-66), New York, NY: Routledge.
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In K. Galvin, L. Todres, & M. Prendergast [Eds], Poetic inquiry: Seeing, understanding, and caring (pp. 181-191). AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishing.
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In Casey Burkholder, Katie MacEntee, & Joshua Schwab [Eds.], What’s a Cellphilm?: Integrating mobile phone technology into participatory arts based research and activism (pp. 87-103). AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishing.
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In A. Cole & S. Sbrocchi [Eds], Professorial paws (pp. 277-292). Big Tancook Island, NS: Backalong Books.
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In J. Norris & R. D. Sawyer (Eds.), Theorizing curriculum studies, teacher education and research through duoethnographic pedagogy (pp. 15-38). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
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In E. Lyle (Ed.), At the intersection of selves and subject: Exploring the curricular landscape of identity (Chapter 8). The Netherlands: Sense.
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In T. Christou (Ed.) The Curriculum History of Canadian Teacher Education (chapter 5). Routledge.
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As more and more educators face the impact of Web 2.0, and as we see emerging what could be called a Learning 2.0 environment, it has become urgent to extend teaching to meet the literacy and learning needs of the Net Generation. These... more
As more and more educators face the impact of Web 2.0, and as we see emerging what could be called a Learning 2.0 environment, it has become urgent to extend teaching to meet the literacy and learning needs of the Net Generation. These ‘new’ learners and their expanding literacy needs have major implications for current models of post-secondary programs which are traditionally focused on knowledge acquisition and transmission. Discussions and resources about this challenge are rapidly appearing, appropriately within Web 2.0 environments. Arising from these discussions is the need to critically question long held tenets of post-secondary teaching/learning and to create a new research-based vision that will accord with the current economic and social directions driving educational change. This study contributes to that process by exploring the needs, interests and skills of new learners entering the University of Prince Edward Island for the first time. This inquiry was guided by research in new literacies, new learners, and the new learners’ understanding of global issues.
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Amid the relentless proliferation of digital devices, social media, and innovative gadgets, a Net Generation of students are entering classrooms. In turn, many educators are recognizing a magnified need to better integrate technology into... more
Amid the relentless proliferation of digital devices, social media, and innovative gadgets, a Net Generation of students are entering classrooms. In turn, many educators are recognizing a magnified need to better integrate technology into Kindergarten to Grade 12 environments. Yet, the literature suggests that there exists a disconnect between the instructional readiness of K–12 educators and the growing technological needs of students. This paper focuses on educational leaders and their views concerning this possible disconnect. The purpose of this paper is to document the views of Prince Edward Island (PEI) school leaders with regard to the current technological landscape of PEI high schools. (This study is part of a larger three year research project entitled “A University-College-Government-Industry-Community Partnership to Transform Education for Employment in the Digital Economy,” funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada [SSHRC]). The two research questions guiding the study are: (a) What do educational leaders perceive to be the technological culture of PEI schools? (b) What do educational leaders perceive to be the technological skills, abilities, and attitudes of PEI high school students and educators? Qualitative individual interviews were conducted with 10 educational leaders who represented: school principals, vice-principals, and department-heads. Data transcripts were examined, and a preliminary list of key ideas, commonalities, and differences converged to larger themes in response to the research purpose. Data were analyzed via concepts of e-leadership, a term that refers to the effective promotion and integration of technological learning and literacy in schools. For this study, e-leadership was embodied in the perceived views, attitudes, and actions of principals, vice-principals, and department heads. Implications arising from the study spotlight that, in order for students to thrive in a technologically-imbued world, it is important to listen to the experiences of school leaders and attend to leadership needs. In turn, when concepts of e-leadership are better understood, changes to the teaching profession and student learning will more naturally evolve within school settings that are now highly influenced by a digital world.
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In this co-authored autobiographical work, the threads of our personal and professional lives are closely interlaced. Where we have been, how we are changing, and who we are becoming are individually and collaboratively part of those... more
In this co-authored autobiographical work, the threads of our personal and professional lives are closely interlaced. Where we have been, how we are changing, and who we are becoming are individually and collaboratively part of those lived stories we explore together. What we write reflects that nature of working together, responding to one another in human ways, in the contexts of a scholarly profession. In such a human profession, much of our time is spent connecting with individuals, mentoring them in a multiple ways and nurturing not just their ideas, but their work, their engagement with others. It is here we look to poetry, and suggest that a willingness to be vulnerable with (and to) our limitations, rather than trying to overcome or minimize them, could actually be a place of spaciousness, a place where the fragility within us can be formative in creating and sustaining learning.
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Work intensification is a problem for the teaching profession. Even with increased preparation time for teachers, the work intensification burden remains. As multiple studies have reported, today it is as difficult as ever for teachers to... more
Work intensification is a problem for the teaching profession. Even with increased preparation time for teachers, the work intensification burden remains. As multiple studies have reported, today it is as difficult as ever for teachers to perform their primary pedagogical role. While casting teachers as mere technicians implementing provincial (or state) mandated outcomes reduces planning responsibilities, in this chapter we demonstrate how such a production model devalues the profession, teachers themselves as human beings, and ultimately, the very critical pedagogy teachers might be able to enact if work intensification difficulties were addressed differently. Framed in the lived experience of curriculum inquiry, we propose that teachers in complicated conversation with each other might regain the profession that is theirs, and in so doing restore their primary pedagogical role of social reconstruction through self-mobilization.
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This chapter emerges as a surprise, as we have come through this writing to understand that critical to arts-based collaboration or participatory research is mindful attendance to the in-between-relational-spaces of tensions, absences,... more
This chapter emerges as a surprise, as we have come through this writing to understand that critical to arts-based collaboration or participatory research is mindful attendance to the in-between-relational-spaces of tensions, absences, learning and curiosities that are revealed through reflection over time. Over the last few years, the five of us have collaborated on a variety of arts-based research projects, bringing poetry, drama, and dance to understanding education and our experiences as educators working with pre-service and graduate students in faculties of Education and Social Work in post-secondary institutions. In our collaborations, we have invited each other into ongoing conversations about our ways of being (Wiebe & Guiney Yallop, 2010), particularly how multiple art forms have been part of our engagement in and presentation of our work across discourses. Poetry has been a way to return to, reflect on, and share significant moments in our lives (Wiebe & Margolin, 2012); it has been a way to understand how we make meaning in our unique educational contexts (Wiebe & Fels, 2010); and it has provided the means and form to represent our collaborations provocatively, a way to disrupt the comprehensible, a space to re-imagine culturally-bound knowledge processes (Wiebe & Snowber, 2011).
In this chapter I argue that to practice poetry, or to live poetically, is an artmaking process where the self has an aesthetic/empathetic sense of being in the world. I utilize Lacanian theory to explain how artmaking processes of... more
In this chapter I argue that to practice poetry, or to live poetically, is an artmaking process where the self has an aesthetic/empathetic sense of being in the world. I utilize Lacanian theory to explain how artmaking processes of aesthetics/empathy (1) resist the long-standing traditions of modernist education, and (2) create worlds of desire where desire is not hidden or disciplined in a social form. Tightly coupled, perhaps even functioning as a singular concept, aesthetic and empathetic artmaking processes can create distortions and disruptions to overly familiarized aesthetic norms, not only for personal meaning, but for relating to others who share those same experiences as human beings. Rather than call for more artmaking in education, I contend that an aesthetic/empathetic orientation to pedagogy might be so different from current, modernistic educational practices that it would be more publically valuable and viable for young people to participate in something other than education as a means to attain the social objectives that having an education implies.
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In this paper I consider the question of what is good for the poem. First I put forward a case for addressing a poem as a living thing, and what follows is a Lacanian psychoanalysis of a poem’s unconscious. I conclude with a brief... more
In this paper I consider the question of what is good for the poem. First I put forward a case for addressing a poem as a living thing, and what follows is a Lacanian psychoanalysis of a poem’s unconscious. I conclude with a brief application for educators and recommend ways they might prevent an avoidance of poetry by deconstructing normalcy myths surrounding what makes a good poem.
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Today the dichotomy between superior academic writing and inferior online writing has collapsed. This digital turn has so profoundly increased the possibilities of teaching writing that traditional writing assignments, on their own, feel... more
Today the dichotomy between superior academic writing and inferior online writing has collapsed. This digital turn has so profoundly increased the possibilities of teaching writing that traditional writing assignments, on their own, feel too static, too structured, and too limited. In an age of connectivity, young people are clearly connected outside of school, and comfortably use a variety of tools associated with new technologies to transform, create, and distribute knowledge (Knobel & Lankshear, 2007). But inside the classroom, very little has changed with respect to writing pedagogy (Wiebe & McAuley, 2010). Content to deploy traditional paradigms, English teachers have yet to imagine how writing functions differently for today’s digital youth who are connected to a vast public. “I think therefore I connect with all the other cognizers in my environment” (Hayles, 2005, p. 213) illustrates how being connected offers an entirely different form of expression. This chapter looks at how English teachers can utilize the online world in the classroom without sacrificing traditional writing expectations.
In this paper the cultural and historical notions of “tool-using” and “fixing” are used to contest a functionalism of tools and techniques in education. Narrative and poetic writing are used to consider how illumination, mystery, and... more
In this paper the cultural and historical notions of “tool-using” and “fixing” are used to contest a functionalism of tools and techniques in education. Narrative and poetic writing are used to consider how illumination, mystery, and ambiguity can reinvigorate fixated notions of a fixed curriculum, thus helping a more honest and equitable unfolding of who we are in our lives and classrooms.
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This chapter reports on how a narrative inquiry approach to teacher education program evaluation can offer rich insights into candidates' teacher identity development. Data were drawn from the reflective entries of teacher education... more
This chapter reports on how a narrative inquiry approach to teacher education program evaluation can offer rich insights into candidates' teacher identity development. Data were drawn from the reflective entries of teacher education candidates in an on-line, interactive journal for a Foundations of Education course during an after-degree B.Ed. program in Atlantic Canada. Findings revealed the struggles of the "contested self" that occurred in the borderland of "pre-service" that situates the teacher education candidate between role of 'student' and 'teacher'. Analysis of the entries created a series of snapshots of the challenging epistemological journey of developing an identity of ‘teacher’. Narrative inquiry proved to be an appropriate and effective analytic approach to understanding the epistemologies related to identity transformation of pre-service candidates as they lived the course and the program. We conclude with the assertion that narrative inquiry offers not only deep insights into individual pre-service teacher identity development but also a rich and thick understanding of the complex processes of becoming of a critical, creative curriculum maker.
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In this chapter, written in three parts, we present two separate journeys that detail the use of poetic inquiry in the conducting of research. We describe the processes and the products, and we offer possibilities for how others might... more
In this chapter, written in three parts, we present two separate journeys that detail the use of poetic inquiry in the conducting of research. We describe the processes and the products, and we offer possibilities for how others might conduct this form of inquiry.
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Selection from page 95: For half my life now, I have worked with student writers: writers of all ages, talents, and interests, and the most consistent thing I have done over the years is teach writing to writers, not to students.... more
Selection from page 95:
For half my life now, I have worked with student writers: writers of all ages, talents, and interests, and the most consistent thing I have done over the years is teach writing to writers, not to students. Students often find it difficult to make the leap from student to writer—often the only impediment to writing well is belief in the identity of being a writer. Students wonder whether they are real writers, whether they will become writers, whether their writing is any good, and by extension, whether they are any good.
Once self-identified as a writer, a student can carry with her the commitment and care of writing practice, that tireless scrutiny and rumination of the world around her. This commitment carries over to one’s sense of self, even to confidence as a human being, and to a resonance in writing that is both artistry in craft, but artistry in an aesthetic living. As a teacher, I have influence on how and whether a writing identity is taken on.
For half my life now, I have worked with student writers: writers of all ages, talents, and interests, and the most consistent thing I have done over the years is teach writing to writers, not to students. Students often find it difficult to make the leap from student to writer—often the only impediment to writing well is belief in the identity of being a writer. Students wonder whether they are real writers, whether they will become writers, whether their writing is any good, and by extension, whether they are any good.
Once self-identified as a writer, a student can carry with her the commitment and care of writing practice, that tireless scrutiny and rumination of the world around her. This commitment carries over to one’s sense of self, even to confidence as a human being, and to a resonance in writing that is both artistry in craft, but artistry in an aesthetic living. As a teacher, I have influence on how and whether a writing identity is taken on.
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From migration, teaching, attending to the sick and dying, or navigating new relationships or identities, the poems in this collection are at once evocative and poignant and at times playful. This book offers insight into what is possible... more
From migration, teaching, attending to the sick and dying, or navigating new relationships or identities, the poems in this collection are at once evocative and poignant and at times playful. This book offers insight into what is possible with the poetic voice.
This book can be read from beginning to end or by reading non-sequentially among the contributions. The editors of this collection have brought together a diverse array of authors who use poetry as research, and who explore many ways in which poetry can bring the reader into deeper understandings of experiences or issues.
Drs. Lynn Butler-Kisber, John J. Guiney Yallop, Mary Stewart, and Sean Wiebe are Canadian education scholars who employ poetic inquiry in their work. Since the inception of the International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry in 2007, they have been an integral part of the international poetic inquiry community. Each has a keen interest and commitment to education and the arts, social science research, and literacy learning.
This book can be read from beginning to end or by reading non-sequentially among the contributions. The editors of this collection have brought together a diverse array of authors who use poetry as research, and who explore many ways in which poetry can bring the reader into deeper understandings of experiences or issues.
Drs. Lynn Butler-Kisber, John J. Guiney Yallop, Mary Stewart, and Sean Wiebe are Canadian education scholars who employ poetic inquiry in their work. Since the inception of the International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry in 2007, they have been an integral part of the international poetic inquiry community. Each has a keen interest and commitment to education and the arts, social science research, and literacy learning.
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As teachers, we share experiences with one another. It is a way to make sense of our teaching lives and teaching selves. Ways of Being in Teaching is that kind of sharing; it is a scholarly conversation that will appeal to teachers who... more
As teachers, we share experiences with one another. It is a way to make sense of our teaching lives and teaching selves. Ways of Being in Teaching is that kind of sharing; it is a scholarly conversation that will appeal to teachers who are tired of the tips and tricks, and want to talk more deeply about how to flourish in this profession.
Most of us know ways to strengthen and sustain self, soul, heart, identity, and how these key touchstones also strengthen teaching. This book recognizes that who we are, where we are, and why, is as much a social process as a personal one. Attending to life purpose is a way of attending to teaching. Chapters in this text are insightfully forthright, challenging us to undertake the rigourous work of discovering who we are as human beings and how this impacts who we are with our students. Canadian curriculum scholar Cynthia Chambers asks us to listen for what keeps us awake at night, and with Ways of Being in Teaching we bring what we have heard into the daylight, into the conversation.
“This collection of reflections and conversations does more than provide provocative reading for the reflective teacher. It invites practitioners to find their own place at the table of sharing and to welcome the stories that will certainly come as a result of engaging with this community of life writers.” – Carmen Schlamb, Professor, Seneca College
Most of us know ways to strengthen and sustain self, soul, heart, identity, and how these key touchstones also strengthen teaching. This book recognizes that who we are, where we are, and why, is as much a social process as a personal one. Attending to life purpose is a way of attending to teaching. Chapters in this text are insightfully forthright, challenging us to undertake the rigourous work of discovering who we are as human beings and how this impacts who we are with our students. Canadian curriculum scholar Cynthia Chambers asks us to listen for what keeps us awake at night, and with Ways of Being in Teaching we bring what we have heard into the daylight, into the conversation.
“This collection of reflections and conversations does more than provide provocative reading for the reflective teacher. It invites practitioners to find their own place at the table of sharing and to welcome the stories that will certainly come as a result of engaging with this community of life writers.” – Carmen Schlamb, Professor, Seneca College
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Blue Waiting is a collection of poems in conversation with small beauties formed through the geography of living. This geography takes shape in the edges of islands, mountains, families,and most of all the terrain of the inner life. The... more
Blue Waiting is a collection of poems in conversation with small beauties formed through the geography of living. This geography takes shape in the edges of islands, mountains, families,and most of all the terrain of the inner life. The inner life is imbued with the details of ordinarylife, where the contours of presence is unraveled in attention to what is in before us as humans.
This collection is one of two poets, whose work intersects not only thematically, but particularly in how Wiebe and Snowber continue to find the holy in the ordinary, and wonder in the sensate world. One poem has fed the other, and as each was written separately we invite you to see them as a place for dialogue. Dialoguing with self, other, and the soil beneath the words, which gives breath and life to language itself.
As both poets and educators Snowber and Wiebe find the immersion in present life as the catalyst for the deepest lessons, and the writing of poetry becomes a place of unfolding to what it means to be human and sustain nourishment on the planet. We invite you as a reader to travel along your own wondrous journey and be in dialogue with us.
This collection is one of two poets, whose work intersects not only thematically, but particularly in how Wiebe and Snowber continue to find the holy in the ordinary, and wonder in the sensate world. One poem has fed the other, and as each was written separately we invite you to see them as a place for dialogue. Dialoguing with self, other, and the soil beneath the words, which gives breath and life to language itself.
As both poets and educators Snowber and Wiebe find the immersion in present life as the catalyst for the deepest lessons, and the writing of poetry becomes a place of unfolding to what it means to be human and sustain nourishment on the planet. We invite you as a reader to travel along your own wondrous journey and be in dialogue with us.
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In this debut collection, Sean Wiebe’s compelling narrative lines take us on poetic leaps through childhood into adulthood, as a son and a father. Poetic leaps sprout from and fit beautifully into narrative and context that is heightened... more
In this debut collection, Sean Wiebe’s compelling narrative lines take us on poetic leaps through childhood into adulthood, as a son and a father. Poetic leaps sprout from and fit beautifully into narrative and context that is heightened and surprising and rambunctious... or undercut or complicate or jar in fine, even ironic, ways — the quirks and quarks that make us say “Eureka! I get it! This is what life is like!”
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An important foundational step for Canadian policy makers to ensure that Canada becomes a world leader in the digital economy will be a continued commitment to funding research that explores the links between the digital economy and... more
An important foundational step for Canadian policy makers to ensure that Canada becomes a world leader in the digital economy will be a continued commitment to funding research that explores the links between the digital economy and digital literacies. Ongoing investigation of these links is important as society moves beyond a traditional approach to texts. Canadian policy makers have an opportunity to support Canadians as they generate financial, social, and personal value through their participation as producers and consumers in a global economy.
Innovation requires new thinking about literacies, and simply replacing the current literacies with digital approaches is not sufficient. Models of conventional writing, publishing, and feedback are shifting, the structures of classrooms are changing, the writing process is evolving, and new digital media are impacting the way many Canadian citizens live, learn, and write. These changes not only affect education, but our society and economy at large.
Innovation requires new thinking about literacies, and simply replacing the current literacies with digital approaches is not sufficient. Models of conventional writing, publishing, and feedback are shifting, the structures of classrooms are changing, the writing process is evolving, and new digital media are impacting the way many Canadian citizens live, learn, and write. These changes not only affect education, but our society and economy at large.
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Commissioned by the PEI Teachers’ Federation
September 2010
September 2010
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First stanza:
The day was bony and hot
and I had thought why not share
a little of the pleasure of living here.
Everything in the world made sense
so I came outside smiling
with some ice-cold lemonade
The day was bony and hot
and I had thought why not share
a little of the pleasure of living here.
Everything in the world made sense
so I came outside smiling
with some ice-cold lemonade
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In this conference paper/performance I consider the question of what is good for a poem. I set out a case for addressing a poem as a living thing and conclude with a brief application for education, deconstructing how normalcy myths... more
In this conference paper/performance I consider the question of what is good for a poem. I set out a case for addressing a poem as a living thing and conclude with a brief application for education, deconstructing how normalcy myths surrounding good poetry too often lead to an avoidance of poetry.
Research Interests: Poetry and Poetic Inquiry
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"First Stanza:
With a kind of innocent buoyancy
I look out at the yachts on English Bay
and try to see myself, arms linked with you
the energy of the sun warm on our skin."
With a kind of innocent buoyancy
I look out at the yachts on English Bay
and try to see myself, arms linked with you
the energy of the sun warm on our skin."
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Keywords: Digital Economy, Teaching Writing, Secondary Schools, Shifting contexts and beliefs
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What I Meant to Say about Love is an ever-differing interstitial text which has left open spaces for artists, researchers, and teachers, called a/r/tographers, to contest the curriculum and pedagogy of reduction and pragmatic means-ends... more
What I Meant to Say about Love is an ever-differing interstitial text which has left open spaces for artists, researchers, and teachers, called a/r/tographers, to contest the curriculum and pedagogy of reduction and pragmatic means-ends orientations that monopolize schools. This text wanders, meanders, and digresses to places where, through poetic inquiry, the notion that there is no pedagogy without love can be explored. In a broad understanding of midrash, as it is performed poetically, three years of an English teacher's life are recorded fictionally. James, the main character, discovers that love is a physically potent force that structures and deconstructs, just as it connects and disconnects. His story considers how the professional emphasis in education compartmentalizes and separates the inner life from the outer life. In love with life, with learning, and with others, the James of this story writes poetry to acknowledge love's power, and to restore its credibility in the classroom—that the lovers' discourse might be trusted again. This un/authorized autobiography ruptures the predictable stories of what it means to be a successful teacher by considering one teacher's journey as a limit case, examining phenomenologically how he connects his life of love and poetry to his classroom practice and how his students respond to his poetically charged way of being. My hope is that it might be possible to offer here, in this place, one poet's understanding and celebration of difference in the world. Recognizing the relationship between what is original and what is shifting, I hope to keep complexity and diversity alive, to resist answers, to continue to converse and traverse and transgress. Thus, with careful attention to poetry as a way of knowing and unknowing, and by attending to the paradox, humour, and irony in one poet's lived experiences, both public professings and inner confessings, as they are understood in relations of difference, or as they are understood in relations of decomposition and fertility, it is possible to consider how powerful emotive experiences, oftentimes relegated to the personal and therefore insignificant, can and do have profound transformational effects on praxis.
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Paradoxically, fiction and truth in autobiographical inquiry are inextricably tied and as slanted as ever. Even before Emily Dickinson (1995, 252) made the claim, “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant…or every man be blind,” the... more
Paradoxically, fiction and truth in autobiographical inquiry are inextricably tied and as slanted as ever. Even before Emily Dickinson (1995, 252) made the claim, “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant…or every man be blind,” the boundaries of truth and fiction have been in juxtaposition. Such juxtaposition does not necessitate defining the world in binaries. This paper is an expression of my experience in fiction and poetry and my hope to speak beyond the limitations of binary, conceptual frameworks, particularly in curriculum, and to actively seek out those stores that value the body, the spirit, the emotional, passionate, the subjective, the intuitive, the non rational, the chaotic, and the sacred.
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With the intention of disrupting and re-imagining traditional conference spaces, this article is a poetic compilation developed from a curriculum studies conference symposium that took place on a school bus. During the School Bus... more
With the intention of disrupting and re-imagining traditional conference spaces, this article is a poetic compilation developed from a curriculum studies conference symposium that took place on a school bus. During the School Bus Symposium, in situ poetry writing and reading, song and storytelling occurred in response to open ended prompts and facilitation of creative activities. After the symposium, a call was 1 Biographical statement: The School Bus Symposium was initially imagined by Sean Wiebe and Pamela