This article draws upon and integrates a number of distinct but overlapping areas of inquiry in the literature on teaching: teacher inquiry, reflective practice, spirituality and education, and contemplative practice. In it, we examine the implementation of a particular phenomenological form of teacher inquiry, the Descriptive Review, in an urban teacher preparation program. The authors participated in a longitudinal study of graduates of the program and are engaged in the continual examination of student work to assess the efficacy of the inquiry process in helping students overcome bias and habitual thinking, become more mindful of the basis of their professional judgments, and develop a moral framework that might help them resist dehumanizing and ineffective policies and imposed practices. The article includes the authors’ autobiographical reflections about what brought them to this form of practice, a description of the theory and practice of the Descriptive Review as it is carried out in their teacher preparation graduate programs, a description of the urban context in which the work takes place, and a student narrative of practice, which is analyzed in relation to the theory of phenomenological inquiry. The conclusions are tentative; although the efficacy of the method is clearly demonstrated in the narratives that students produce about their inquiries into practice, the complex and challenging environments that new urban teachers are facing are problematic in terms of the capacity to develop contemplative practice.

No abstract

Each chapter includes references to leading ideas in the history of curriculum studies and to the current state of the field. Collectively, these chapters illustrate the widely held view that curriculum is a "complicated conversation" (Pinar et al., 1995). Each chapter is also an illustration of Pinar working as an essayist committed to study at "the site of education" (Pinar, 2005, p. 70). 2 Pinar ( 2005) explains his understanding of study: Not instruction, not learning, but study constitutes the process of education, a view, McClintock (1971) tells us, [that is] grounded in "individuality," "autonomy," and "creativity" (p. 167). . . . From the point of view of study, self-formation follows from our individual appropriation of what is around us; this capacity for selection, for focus, for judgment, McClintock (1971) suggests, is the great mystery to be solved. This is, I submit, the mystery that autobiography purports not to solve, but to portray and complicate (Pinar, 1994). (p. 70

No abstract

Almost a hundred years ago, John Dewey clarified the relationship between democracy and education. However, the enactment of a 'deeply democratic' educational practice has proven elusive throughout the ensuing century, overridden by managerial approaches to schooling young people and to the standardized, technical preparation and professional development of teachers and educational leaders. A powerful counter-narrative to this 'standardized management paradigm' exists in the field of curriculum studies, but is largely ignored by mainstream approaches to the professional development of educators. This paper argues for a reconceptualized, differentiated, and 'disciplined' approach to the professional development of educators in democratic societies that builds capacity for curriculum leadership. In support of this proposal, we amplify the tenets of Dewey's pragmatic social and educational philosophy, which have long been at the heart of democratic educational thought, with Badiou's more contemporary thinking about the important relationships between truth as inspirational awakening, subjectification as existential commitment, and ethical fidelity as 'for all ' action._ 533 213..229 If dogmas and institutions tremble when a new idea appears, this shiver is nothing to what would happen if the idea were armed with the means for the continuous discovery of new truth and the criticism of old belief. (John Dewey, 1999/1929 I shall call 'truth' (a truth) the real process of a fidelity to an event: that which this fidelity produces in the situation. (Alain Badiou, 2001, p. 42) In our first opening quotation, Dewey alludes to the intransigence of institutions, be they social institutions or institutions of thought, and he celebrates the power