Insight is the endpoint of a long-term iterative process (Syed, 2015), but further, deeper insight may be gained through further iteration. This is the case with insight into what we are trying to achieve through inquiry, and, in this case, specifically Signature Work inquiry in Year 9.
The Year 9 Signature Work inquiry, you will recall, is embedded in English. The most obvious reason for this is that it serves as preparation for the GCSE English Language Speaking and Listening NEA. However, the integration with English — and, indeed, all academic subjects/ disciplines — is more profound.
Paulo Freire, in The importance of the act of reading (1983, p. 5), writes that
reading the world precedes reading the word, and the subsequent reading of the word cannot dispense with continually reading the world.
This, essentially, is inquiry — coming to know and understand the world and ourselves in it, through reading the world (experience) and reading the word (record), as the basis for responsible participation in community.
Now, there is more to be said about reading the world through the various academic subjects/ disciplines, which I will return to. As for reading the word, Eric O. Springsted, discussing Simone Weil’s notion of attention in Attention, Availability, and the Reading of Books, writes that
if the development of attention — making oneself available — is what is most important for a student, then it is clear that the teacher’s most important task is to make that possible. No one can teach attention, just as one cannot teach insight. It has to come from within the student. But one can give students texts that are worthy of attention, that can be revelatory to them.
The question, then, in English as it is in the other academic subjects/ disciplines, is what are the revelatory texts that we are enabling our students to read? More to follow on this, too.
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