Replacing Representation With Imagination: Finding Ingenuity in Everyday Practices

Abstract

T his chapter is a call for consequential education research that has transformative potential: intellectually, educationally, and socially. It is about learning to see differently. It is an argument about seeing our work with youth and communities in ways that can help education researchers see ingenuity instead of ineptness and inability, to see resilience instead of deficit, and to imagine futures with youth from nondominant communities instead of imposing failure. We use the notion of "learning to see" both metaphorically and as a theoretical lens and methodological guide to illustrate how rigorous and consequential education research can help us imagine and design new forms of learning and schooling. We argue that rupturing educational inequality also involves new forms of inquiry that help reconceptualize what it means to work with nondominant communities.

An Ecological Approach to Understanding Assessment for Learning in Support of Student Writing Achievement

“…The classroom as an ecological setting where the Whole is More than the sum of the elements To this point, we have provided a description of the different elements of the classroom ecology for AfL as understood by the teachers but the particular value of an ecological approach is its strong emphasis on the whole being more than the sum of the parts-on the interdependence of elements. An ecological view also foregrounds the value of diversity and redundancy among the elements as well as developments over time (Lee, 2010(Lee, , 2017Gutiérrez et al, 2017). When reflecting on their classrooms, the changes they had made to their practice and the practices they would retain and or seek to develop further, all seven teachers described a constellation of inter-related practices, routines, and resources, as can be seen in the examples presented earlier.…”

“…Moss et al (2008a) writing within a sociocultural frame, acknowledge the need to consider the school, and wider context. Those working within an ecological view argue that to understand the functions of one level of the educational ecosystem it is useful to look up and down one level as well as across time scales (Lemke, 2001;Gutiérrez et al, 2017;Lee, 2017). In this section, we present themes from the teacher reflections that link to the project's whole school approach and involvement with the school community.…”

“…We propose that an ecological orientation offers the field a productive insight into the contextual dynamics of AfL as classroom practice that is connected to the wider community and that has long-term value for developing student independence and learning outcomes. With Gutiérrez et al (2017), we consider that by paying careful attention to the breadth of tools and support systems available to teachers, and students, we are likely to be better able to design arrangements and tools that foster learning in the present for the future. We hope this paper will contribute to further ideas for effective educational practice and policy.…”

Sustaining Multilingual Literacies in Classrooms and Beyond

“…We write this column as invited editors to a department that we titled “Sustaining Multilingual Literacies.” This new department provides a space for conversation among ourselves, other scholars, practitioners, and community members who will grapple with what is possible in “finding ingenuity in everyday practices” (Gutiérrez et al., , p. 30) of youths as they traverse diverse learning environments using their multilingual abilities.…”

Learning as Movement in Social Design-Based Experiments: Play as a Leading Activity

“…Further, the order of leading activities is not determined by biological age but by the typical age-related forms of social interactions with adults and peers in a given community (Chaiklin, 2003, p. 48). Vygotsky, Leont'ev, and Elkonin understood play as a way to facilitate preschool children's mastery of psychological tools and the development of higher mental functions, but we join others in viewing play as a leading activity that spans the lifetime rather than an activity specific to young children (Göncü & Vadeboncoeur, 2017;Griffin & Cole, 1984;Gutiérrez et al, 2017). Play emerges as "individuals attempt to make sense of their lived experiences, to interpret actions and events, and to predict and create their futures" (Vadeboncoeur & Göncü, 2018, p. 258).…”