Ellyn Lyle
I have a longstanding background in innovative education practices, ranging from traditional classrooms to workplace and community partnerships, and technologically supported learning. In all these contexts, I have remained intensely interested in supporting the development of students and teachers as they contribute to socially equitable and sustainable programs. The use of critical methodologies shape explorations within the following areas: praxis; teaching and learning as lived experience; issues of identity; reflexive inquiry; narrative inquiry; and education for social justice.
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offer our stories “not to gain sympathy but instead to provide a concrete starting place for the dialogue to begin” (p. 99). We must be certain, she says, to frame our experiences in ways that adequately address our struggles without evoking anger in our readers. Afterall, the purpose of
our stories is “to engage people in a dialogue, so [we have] to be certain that everyone [is] still listening at the end” (p. 100).
Reflexive inquiry is both established and continually emerging. At its most basic, reflexivity refers to researchers’ consciousness of their role in and effect on both the act of doing research and arriving at research findings. In making central the role of the researcher in the research process, reflexive inquiry interrogates agency while examining philosophical notions about the nature of knowledge.
While advancements have been made in investigating the relationship between teacher knowledge and teacher practice, the research often fails to connect this meaning with self-knowledge and issues of identity. Through a consideration of these tenets, the authors in this collection embrace critical, qualitative, creative, and arts-integrated approaches to examine ways that reflexive inquiry supports studies in teacher identity. Moving between theory and lived experience, the authors individually and collectively lay bare teacher identity as negotiated while evidencing the epistemological merits of reflexive inquiry.
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
Ellyn Lyle uses the successful, deep communication with horses, a process called “Join-Up,” as a lyrical and practical metaphor for negotiating learning in multiple contexts. A fascinating personal story, Of Books, Barns, and Boardrooms is also an invaluable guidebook for learning, teaching, and questioning: for parents, teachers, students, administrators, and entrepreneurs. I am urged to consider where learning and systems fail and, also, to celebrate how “life is my classroom, and all encounters, my teachers” (p.xxx). I wish I had had these insights and inspiring analogies at hand when I was a university professor and president. — Dr. Elizabeth R. Epperly, Professor Emerita and Past President, University of Prince Edward Island
When I “Join-Up” with Ellyn Lyle’s philosophical inquiry, I experience a process of deep trust and listening that she suggests is the basis of authentic learning. Of Books, Barns, and Boardrooms, about learners and learning, is a critical and creative inquiry that questions and challenges practices that prevent learning. It is a way of doing philosophy, a method of (re)constructing narrative to examine some of the metaphors that shape and inform concepts, biases, and assumptions. Using her understanding of join-up to identify problems that prohibit growth, the author constructs a compelling story of change and invites readers to do the same. —Dr. Anne-Louise Brookes, Author, Feminist Pedagogy: An Autobiographical Approach.
Dr. Ellyn Lyle takes readers on an inspirational journey celebrating learning and teaching as a shared and respectful partnership—one that values the breadth of life’s experiences as sources of knowledge. —Dr. Debra Manning, Federation University Australia
…conversation in which interlocutors are speaking not only among themselves but to those not present, not only to historical figures and unnamed peoples and places they may be studying, but to politicians and parents dead and alive, not to mention to the selves they have been, are in the process of becoming, and someday may become. (p. 43)
The ways we strengthen and sustain self, soul, heart, identity, can strengthen teaching. Being a teacher recognizes that who we are, where we are, and why is as much a social process as a personal one, so we claim that attending to our purpose in life is also attending to our teaching. Chapters in this text have a surprising forthrightness that will appeal to teachers who are tired of the tips and tricks, and want to talk more deeply about how flourish in this profession. Readers will be challenged to put away the tidy boxes and neat platitudes and undertake the rigourous work of discovering who they are as human beings and how this impacts who they are with their students.
As a group of editors, we are listening to ourselves, each other (our community), our students, and to the world around us. We listen for connections to others and ourselves. We are listening to the contributions we make as beings in teaching, and the contributions others are making to who we are becoming in and through our teaching. Sometimes in our listening we can hear the needs and vulnerabilities that we express to one another, and sometimes, though not always – ours and others’ contributions meet these needs. As Chambers (2004) reminds us: we are listening for what keeps us awake at night.
Paul David Hewson was born in 1960 to a Catholic dad and a protestant mum in deeply divided Northern Dublin. At age 12, after misalignment with a couple of religiously affiliated schools, Paul was enrolled in Mount Temple, Ireland’s first non-denominational comprehensive high school. In his thirteenth year, Paul’s mother died suddenly, leaving him in the care of his father with whom Paul didn’t have a happy relationship. Finding solace in music, he sought the company of those with similar interests and became known as Bono Vox (colloquial Latin for good voice). Soon shortened to Bono, his name and talent have become known around the world.
As the lead singer of U2, Bono has earned the respect of both peers and critics. In addition to his creative pioneering of sound and style, Bono’s authenticity is captivating. Tracing his trek toward international fame, he acknowledges the perhaps unintended discouragement of his father as a major motivator. Together, with the influence of growing up in conflict torn Ireland, Bono was driven to motivate others to pursue a better tomorrow. An international icon and tireless humanitarian, Bono has successfully leveraged the music industry for transformational change and, as such, he has received commendations from the masses to monarchy.