Shagoury Ruth - Living the Questions : a Guide for Teacher Researchers

A GUIDE FOR TEACHER - RESEARCHERS

Ruth Shagoury & Brenda Miller Power

second edition

Stenhouse Publishers

www.stenhouse.com

Copyright 2012 by Stenhouse Publishers, except for those articles previously
published in Teacher Research: The Journal of Classroom Inquiry and by Choice
Literacy.

All rights reserved. Except for the pages in the appendix, which may be photocopied
for classroom use, no part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, or any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission from the publisher.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders and students for
permission to reproduce borrowed material. We regret any oversights that may
have occurred and will be pleased to rectify them in subsequent reprints of
the work.

Articles from Teacher Research: The Journal of Classroom Inquiry and Choice
Literacy are listed on page 289.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shagoury, Ruth, 1950

Living the questions: a guide for teacher-researchers / Ruth Shagoury
and Brenda Miller Power.2nd ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-57110-846-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-57110-944-6
(ebook) 1. Action research in educationUnited StatesHandbooks, manuals,
etc. 2. TeachingResearchUnited StatesHandbooks, manuals, etc.
I. Power, Brenda Miller. II. Title.

LB1028.24.H83 2012

370.72dc23

2011037286

Cover design, interior design, and typesetting by Martha Drury

Manufactured in the United States of America

18 17 16 15 14 13 12 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Heidi Mills, Amy Donnelly, and the entire community of learners
at the Center for Inquiry (Columbia, South Carolina)

May your garden of questions always bloom!

by Jane A. Kearns

by Jill Ostrow

by Ruth Shagoury

by JoAnn Portalupi

by Susan Harris MacKay

by Annie Keep-Barnes

by Heather Rader

by Andrea Smith

by Brenda Miller Power

by Jerome C. Harste and Christine Leland

by Brenda Miller Power

by Katie Doherty

by Sherry Young

by Andrea Smith

by Heather Rader

by Suzy Kaback

by Audrey Alexander

by Ellie Gilbert

by Kimberly Hill Campbell

by Melanie Quinn and Ruth Shagoury

by Jessica Singer Early

by Ruth Shagoury

by Julie Housum-Stevens

by Mary Lee Hahn and Franki Sibberson

by Suzy Kaback

by Jennifer Allen

Evelyn Beaulieu is a teacher-researcher in Maine. Her work involves building and sustaining networks of adult learners and educators throughout the state. When Evelyn began to integrate teacher research into her work among the adult education community, she found it almost impossible to express the place of inquiry in her life through words.

So she pulled out fabric, scissors, and thread, and began to cut and craft We Are Each a Gem, the piece of fiber art about teacher research that is on the cover of this book. Each element of the artwork expresses a different aspect of becoming part of a research community. We find her metaphors are apt in describing our research community, too, so we will use them in thanking some of the people who are responsible for this book.

As you look at the art, the background fabric represents the Northern Lights. This is a symbol for how people are always changing and evolving. Our evolution as teacher-researchers came from apprenticing ourselves to near and distant teacher-researchers. Jennifer Allen, Andie Cunningham, Katie Doherty, Beth Lawson, Kelly Petrin, Heather Rader, and Franki Sibberson have been the teachers recently who welcome us into their classrooms most often. Allowing us to see their many colors as inquirers has stretched our own thinking about research immeasurably.

The center of the artwork is the fire of knowledge, representing the fire of inspiration researchers receive from their closest colleagues. We thank Andie Cunningham, Maika Yeigh, Kimberly Campbell, Sherri Carreker, Jessie Singer Early, Melanie Quinn, Joan Moser, Gail Boushey, and Connie Perry for being those colleagues. Whenever the daily responsibilities of our professional lives become overwhelming, they give us the wisdom and compassion we need to renew our commitment to research and learning.

Every time you look at We Are Each a Gem, you see something new, each stitch and bit of fabric contributing to the whole. Were grateful to the team at Stenhouse for their inspired work on this project. Philippa Stratton, our editor at Stenhouse, has challenged us again and again over the past three decades to think more deeply and differently about research. Her good humor and friendship mean the world to us. Martha Drurys lovely design, drawing on the work of Cathy Hawkes from the first edition, brings the concepts of the book to life. Jay Kilburn and Chris Downey have carefully shepherded the text through the production process, with an able assist from Chandra Lowe and Jill Cooley (the Princesses of Permissions) and copy editor Laurel Robinson. We wouldnt have a new edition at all, if not for the marketing savvy of Nate Butler, Chuck Lerch, Rebecca Eaton, and Zsofi McMullin, who helped the first edition find a wide audience within a narrow niche.

Like Evelyn, we also find words fail us in expressing thanks to all the teachers in and out of these pages who have shaped our vision of teacher research. Robert Finch writes, True belonging is born of relationships not only to one another but to a place of shared responsibilities and benefits. We love not so much what we have acquired as what we have made and whom we have made it with. This book has not been written so much as made, by a community that cares deeply about listening to and learning from students. It has been stitched together from bits and pieces of insight about research shared by generous teachers over many years. Those in this community know who you arebut you can never know how truly grateful we are for how your work has transformed ours.

Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.

RAINER MARIA RILKE

Research is a high-hat word that scares a lot of people. It neednt. Its rather simple. Essentially research is nothing but a state of mind. A friendly, welcoming attitude toward change going out to look for change instead of waiting for it to come. Research is an effort to do things better and not to be caught asleep at the switch. It is the problem-solving mind as contrasted with the let-well-enough-alone mind. It is the tomorrow mind instead of the yesterday mind.

CHARLES KETTERING

Brendas niece Julie is a born researcher. When she was four, her plans one summer morning included persuading her mother to take her and her two-year-old brother, Johnny, to the playground. All morning, as her mom worked in the kitchen, Julie kept asking, Can we go to the playground this afternoon? The first six lobbying efforts were met with the response, I dont know. The seventh received the reply, I dont know, but if you ask again, the answer is NO.