TO CITE THIS ARTICLE PLEASE INCLUDE ALL OF THE FOLLOWING DETAILS: Saada, Jessica (2019). A place to think. Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 16 (2) p. 4-15 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index A Place to Think Jessica Saada1 Riverside School Board, Canada Finding truth in autobiographical research I am a teacher. My stories corroborate this. But until recently, I denied it. I am a reader, a writer and a teacher. But until recently, I had not truly listened to my stories, had not reflected on who I am in teaching. I had no place to think. Palmer (2007), with his extensive work on spirituality, community, education and self, asks: “Who is the self that teaches?” (p.7). For more than a quarter of a century, although I was enthusiastically and passionately involved in teaching, I never crossed paths with any form of this question. Who is the self that teaches? Had it been raised, I could not have answered it for my self. I was teaching but did not acknowledge that I was a teacher. My parents were both teachers in my early years (my mother retired after 41 years of working in schools). As a result, daily life and family conversations had often revolved around school, classrooms and students. I had bathed in the world of education from my earliest memories onward and I was now spending quality time with students in classrooms. But for me, this teaching I was doing was a full-time, fulfilling, sideline event occurring as I waited for my true vocation to emerge. For almost twenty-five years, with my sights clearly on the students, there was no reason for great introspection into my self as a teacher. Today, I am admittedly a teacher, currently cloaked in the position of Director of Educational Services for a school board. Once a teacher, always a teacher. I am a long- standing practitioner who, for some years, straddled the world of academia as I pursued graduate studies in the form of a Ph.D. I highlight this straddling as it plays a significant role in the story I wish to share, one in which heuristic inquiry, a form of autobiographical research, generously handed me a place to think and brought a necessary truth to my authenticity of being, in teaching and in learning. The disjunction between planned and lived Relatively early in my educational career, I had heard of Ted Aoki, with his ‘curriculum-as-planned’, generated from the outside and filled with “intent and interest” (2004, p. 160), and ‘curriculum-as-lived’, experienced from within, with “face-to-face living” (p. 160). However, the two were brought to me only very briefly and only in their disjuncture. Something about the distinction had provoked a tiny and very momentary bubble of self-questioning, to which I had not really paid attention, caught up as I was in the whirlwind of daily urgency that is school life. Later, as a language and literacy consultant at my school board, a teacher with new responsibilities, questions began nudging me again, sometimes overtly poking and prodding, but never explicitly connecting to that initial bubble around the disconnect between curriculum-as-planned and curriculum-as-lived. These were still the early years for the Quebec Education Program, sold as The Reform. Somewhere deep inside, I wondered about my place in this curriculum reform to which I had not contributed but that was directly affecting me. In https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index Saada. A place to think 5 Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index my milieu, I was expected to carry the torch of the educational revolution, yet no one was asking how I - a still personally unavowed teacher now required to support other teachers through the upheaval - considered the plans and was experiencing their implementation. No one brought me to contemplate the tension I- or we - might feel between the imposed theory and the concrete practice in all of its nuances. No one asked me to situate my self in the midst of what was to be done. Maxine Greene (1978) says of teachers: “If they are personally involved in what can be a most demanding human enterprise, those others – students, or co–investigators – may be caught up much more readily than if the teachers’ sense–making efforts have all taken place in the past” (p. 3). No one prompted me to think along these lines. There was no time, no place to think. Who was I, who were we - each of us - in teaching? Aoki (2004) states that “there is forgetfulness that what matters deeply in the situated world of the classroom is how the teachers’ “doings” flow from who they are, their beings. That is, there is a forgetfulness that teaching is fundamentally a mode of being” (pp. 159-160). I was subject to that forgetfulness, and involved in perpetuating it. Were teachers and students faceless generics interacting over competency development and program expectations? In the dizzying speeds of the educational Autobahn, there was no place to remember, no place to think. A critical episode with no time to think In the foreword of Provoking Curriculum Encounters across Educational Experience (2020), Madeleine Grumet writes, “If our rhetoric in Toward a Poor Curriculum became a bit rhapsodic in our celebration of individuality, we were desperate to make a place for persons, real students, and teachers, in the deserts of educational bureaucracy” (p. x). Making a place for real others requires having a place, in space and time, for ourselves. Palmer (2007) calls for the same when he defines educating as “to guide students on an inner journey towards more truthful ways of seeing and being in the world” (p. 6), and he asks “how can schools perform their mission without encouraging the guides to scout out that inner terrain?” This brings to mind a critical episode from my years as a consultant, one that significantly impacted my professional decision-making and eventually led to my embarking on an intense personal academic journey. That year, as data analysis in my school board revealed a crying student deficiency in the area of literacy, a colleague and I designed the “Literacy Toolbox” sessions, a four–year, bilingual professional development initiative involving over 100 English and French language teachers. This is documented in my doctoral dissertation: One incident early on in the Literacy Toolbox sessions changed my course of thinking and our plan of action. During the first year of implementation, the focus was on reading strategies. To launch our first session, with no purpose other than to “break the ice”, all teachers were asked to describe their earliest memory of reading. I must admit I had some subconscious expectations of what answers might emerge based on my personal experiences. And indeed, some of the teachers shared a memory of someone, usually a parent, reading to them when they were very young. These memories seemed linked to an emotional or affective moment of some kind. In contrast, however, others shared with us an academic moment, such as an imposed novel they were required to read by their elementary school teacher. As the months and years of these workshops passed, two important points dawned on us (my colleague and myself) as informal but significant observations. about:blank Saada. A place to think 6 Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index First, the teachers who did not have an initial emotional connection to reading reported having difficulty generating attachment to reading in their students. Second, as a consequence of the first point, gradually our workshops tended towards getting to know the individuals with whom we were working and fostering the teachers’ own literacy, mainly reading and writing, rather than simply focusing on student needs. We had never before considered this in planning professional development. Through our careful consideration of student needs (which were corroborated by teachers as they, too, deplored student weaknesses in literacy) and our research into relevant teaching practices, we had never given thought to the individual teachers with whom we would be working. We had never thought that obtaining significant teacher input could mean uncovering more about who these teachers were as individuals. This was a turning point in my perception and conception of professional development that actually altered the course of the project at hand: the content and delivery of the workshops I was giving. More and more, I planned with specific people in mind – a novel that would interest Richard, a picture book that would appeal to Marie, a topic that would resonate with Caroline – rather than to a global group under the general heading of teachers. (Saada, pp. 29-30) ‘More and more, I planned with people in mind…’ Curriculum-as-planned, curriculum-as-lived. I was indeed making new efforts to be the right guide towards stronger teaching practice for enhanced student learning, but I was still missing the mark. As Dobson (2012) states, “deep within the heart of the educational matter, there is a persistent and determined search for self, a who that is not artificially engineered (i.e., moulded by concept and constructed by will), but originally generated and authentically expressed from within”(p. 212). I believe I was blindly, instinctively involved in this search, yet I was not focused on it; I had not carved out real thinking time for my self, for my who. Who Almost twenty years after a Master’s of Education degree that had checked off the graduate studies box of academic progress without truly adding depth to my understandings (at the time, I still believed I was not a teacher), a series of coincidences led to my throwing myself into the doctoral ring. This moonlighting into academia did not occur as part of a detailed career plan or for advancement of any kind. In hindsight, I believe that it was somewhat of a bequest to myself. It had dawned on me that I was indeed a teacher (one involved in school administration by this time, as a vice-principal in a large high school). With that realization, I needed to know how, despite myself it seemed, education had chosen me. From this personal need, questions of a more universal nature emerged that would include others in an investigation: How does literacy teaching become a personal part of a definition of self? What commits us to such teaching? These shone a light on two distinct figures in my story: the who of the person doing the teaching and the what of the teaching itself, in this case literacy teaching. Considering the who was pivotal: “the who is not only at the heart of the story; it is the story’s raison d’être” (Saada, p. 9). Indeed, as Dobson (2015) points out: “If we do not know who we are, how on earth about:blank Saada. A place to think 7 Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index can we know what we are doing?” (p. 10). Over a quarter of a century of teaching, and this had never before occurred to me... The subject was complex. Literacy teaching, the what, brought to the table many ambiguities and questions. But the who, elusive and intangible, was difficult to name or define. In my initial writing, I struggled with this abstract who, at times referring to it as personal identity, and then personal dimension of identity. I was confirmed in this through the literature I was encountering. All the while, however, I felt uncomfortably that these expressions segmented what was actually a whole. Arendt (1998) writes about “the unchangeable identity of the person” (p. 193). Palmer (2004) underlines that “we are born with a seed of selfhood that contains the spiritual DNA of our uniqueness” (p. 32). With guidance from Dobson, Palmer and Arendt over the course of my doctoral journey, the who was understood as unique, indivisible, omnipresent, unchanging in its DNA yet constantly evolving at the “moving intersection of inner and outer forces” (Palmer, 2007, p. 14). But how this understanding came to be is essential to the ongoing story of finding a place to think. Heuristic Inquiry As the subject of my doctoral investigation was complex, so was the search for methodology. I held steadfast to very specific requirements, including the means to be both participant and researcher at once, and to allow the same for others. I also knew that the methodology would have to embrace a self-study, autobiographical dimension, while enabling the relational and the collaborative. At first, I looked to phenomenology, thinking that I was interested in the phenomenon of literacy teaching. However, I quickly realized that I was more interested in the person experiencing the phenomenon. I then found Clarke Moustakas’ work on heuristic inquiry, a derivative of phenomenology. Despite its infrequent use in education, this method was appealing as it 1) promotes starting with a personal, internal search; 2) enables self-study within a relational, collaborative process that holds stories, first-person accounts, in high regard, and 3) focuses on bringing to light the “essence of the person in experience” (Douglass & Moustakas, 1985, p. 43). Moustakas (1990) states that heuristic research “refers to a process of internal search through which one discovers the nature and meaning of experience and develops methods and procedures for further investigation and analysis” (p. 9). In heuristic inquiry, we cannot pass ourselves by: “The process of discovery leads investigators to new images and meanings regarding human phenomena, but also to realizations relevant to their own experiences and lives” (Moustakas, 1990, p. 9; emphasis added). Deeply human and transparent in its subjectivity, heuristic inquiry called to me. Heuristic inquiry involves six phases: 1) The initial engagement phase, where “the question takes form and significance” (p. 27); 2) The immersion phase, where we are enabled to “come to be on intimate terms with the question – to live it and grow in the knowledge of it” (p. 28); 3) The incubation phase, where we retreat from “the intense, concentrated focus on the question” (p. 28); 4) The illumination phase, the “breakthrough into conscious awareness of qualities and a clustering of qualities into themes inherent in the question” (p. 29); 5) The explication phase, where we “fully examine what has awakened in consciousness, in order to understand its various layers of meaning” (p. 30); 6) The creative synthesis phase, where we are “challenged to put the components and core themes into a creative synthesis” (p. 31) . about:blank Saada. A place to think 8 Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index These phases not only guided the journey and investigation, but prompted both as well. The journey began as ‘I’, with my personal questions and preoccupations. It then grew into a collection of ‘I’s as eight participants, current and former language and literacy teachers worked collaboratively to explore the questions at the heart of the investigation. Finally, the journey transformed into the larger ‘We’, extending beyond the investigation and returning me to my self. A considerable testimony to the value of the heuristic inquiry process is that, over the course of the journey, a more pertinent investigation question surfaced, presenting itself to replace my initial ones: How does our definition of self connect us and commit us to literacy teaching? Crossing the heuristic gap During my doctoral years, weekdays were dedicated to schedules and department meetings, teacher evaluation and hiring, student achievement on tests, report cards and Ministry exams, textbooks and outings, suspensions and detentions, parent complaints and issues with transportation. Late evenings and weekends, I dove into the thinking, digging through literature, extracting what might matter, cracking the metal of my tools on sometimes immovable boulders, muscles aching, before finding new routes to explore the who. Initially, it was as though I were living two lives, that of the temporary academic on the one hand, that of the more permanent educator on the other, until, as the journey progressed, the evening and weekend reflection began seeping into my days. I had leaned on heuristic inquiry as a process, my research method, never quite imagining the driving force it would be. I learned to trust it to lead me from myself to my self, while having genuinely explored the revelatory in-between, carefully listening to the stories that carry my own voice. I observed heuristic inquiry as it deftly guided the members of my research group towards thoughtful solitude and meaningful interaction, towards memories and stories, recollection and reflection, discussion and writing, recounting the what and disclosing the who. I also began to notice that thoughts provoked by my doctoral research, simmering under the surface and sometimes relatively unacknowledged, began concretely affecting my professional vision, decisions or orientations. One example of this infiltration of thinking into practice is highlighted in my dissertation: From practice to theory and back again, inevitably it seems, I went from the Toolbox sessions, to heuristic inquiry, now to School Success Teams. These are voluntary groups, composed of teachers, principals and other staff members from a given school, focused on success for all students, whatever this might be, through professional collaboration. At the board level, in supporting this endeavour, my new understanding is that we will need to attend to the who wherever it might be, cherishing and nurturing it within the collective reflection. At the first School Success Team meeting, we, the board curriculum team, projected pictures of our own children onto the screens around the room, pictures of this year’s first day of school. We spoke frankly. For some of our children, this first day of school was a day of great enthusiasm and hopefulness, for others a day of unease, anxiety, dejection. We then asked the individuals in the room what they wished for the children in their lives, their own children, this school year. People turned to one another tentatively, at first. Soon after, the discussions took flight, the stories began. There were names and faces about:blank Saada. A place to think 9 Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index in these conversations, memories, laughter, hope and discouragement. It was not so much the personal nature of the discussions that struck me in this, but more so the genuineness I was perceiving within them. When we did move on to speak of school success, it was not as faceless collective entities, nor was it about generic students; I believe it was as individuals coming together to work collaboratively, towards benefitting the individual students composing our classes. This is a work in progress, of course, but one that shows promise. Collective conversation is interesting, but highlighting the individual within the collective, creating space for the who, can be empowering. (Saada, 2018, p. 202) Another example of the ongoing influence of my heuristic journey is the use of Palmer’s “third things”. Palmer (2004) explains: “we achieve intentionality… by focusing on an important topic. We achieve indirection by exploring that topic metaphorically, via a poem, a story, a piece of music, or a work of art that embodies it.” He calls these vehicles of exploration “third things” (p. 92). He says that “mediated by a third thing, truth can emerge from, and return to, our awareness at whatever pace and depth we are able to handle – sometimes inwardly in silence, sometimes aloud in community – giving the shy soul the protective cover it needs” (p. 93). Prior to the start of my investigation, considering the first phases of the heuristic inquiry process for participants other than myself, for whom the present study would not have emerged as their own internal quest, I had struggled with two issues. The first was how, on an individual basis, to provoke deeper attachment and thinking connected to the questions at stake; the second was how to create a collective atmosphere of willing and authentic discussion on the connection between the who and the what. Palmer (2004) underlines that the “soul is so powerful that we must allow ourselves to approach it, and it to approach us indirectly. We must invite, not command, the soul to speak” (p. 92). It was this invitation that I was seeking. I found it by way of Frank McCourt’s (2005) Teacher Man, an autobiographical novel. As a teacher and storyteller recounting his own personal life path through a 30-year teaching career pebbled with a variety of critical incidents, McCourt seemed to be the perfect individual through whom to launch our discussions and reflection. Palmer (2004) writes that “truth emerges as we tell the stories of our lives” (p. 92), and Arendt (1998) underscores that “this unchangeable identity of the person…becomes tangible only in the story of the actor’s and the speaker’s life” (p. 193). In focusing on McCourt’s stories, we found the pretext to reveal ourselves through our own. Some time later, in my professional milieu, I wished to provoke genuine conversations among teachers who were neither very familiar with one another, nor particularly aligned in their thinking. Now equipped with the experience of using McCourt as the middle man and, perhaps more importantly, having deeply reflected on this experience of third things through the heuristic process, I reached out to find an appropriate invitation for these particular teachers to enter into genuine discussion. I had also understood that the time spent nourishing the conversation in less direct ways had the potential for great outcome. In discussing the impact of heuristic research, Moustakas (1990) quotes Polyani (1962) who writes: Having made a discovery, I shall never see the world again as before. My eyes have become different; I have made myself into a person seeing and thinking differently. I have crossed a gap, the heuristic gap, which lies between problem and discovery. (p. 56) about:blank Saada. A place to think 10 Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index Having crossed the heuristic gap, an irreversible voyage, my reflection on the who permeates my every day. Post-heuristic reflection, in all of its implications, now trickles into my memories and past considerations as well as into my current practice, perspective and future plans, as per the following: It was the month of May. In a large conference room, more than 800 educators were gathered: teachers, consultants, in-school and board- level administrators. A number of us had come here reluctantly to attend an imposed three-day session on what we feared might be another proposed miracle cure for the problems of education. A panel of speakers stood on stage. I could feel my own scepticism and tried to tame it. The first speaker launched into his initial words. He began by showing us pictures of his family, recounting with humour the challenges of being married to a teacher and the hopes and aspirations he had for his children. With a mix of self-derision and a measure of pride, he spoke of the meanders of his own life. The mood shifted in the room, from a “here we are at a conference” to a “here we are”; I sensed it in myself and in the people around my table. The woman sitting next to me whispered “I really like this guy! He is real.” While this was a very public setting, he was speaking to each of us from within, and, as a result, I was – we were, it seemed – ready to listen and to hear from within. Dobson (2015) states that “Although who is invisible to the eye, who is nonetheless identifiable by a reason of a felt radiance”(p. 194). I felt that radiance, the real possibility of a who- to-who connection. Would I have been able to identify this before my journey of heuristic inquiry? (Saada, 2018, p. 194) Time for the who Grumet (2006) writes, “When we select a story to read to a group of children, when we choose texts for a curriculum, we are extending this process of identifying what parts of the world, what relationships, creatures and events are worthy of their notice” (p. 218). What of our own stories, then, those we may or may not yet have acknowledged or consciously encountered, those we may or may not have chosen to recount but that, in essence, reveal what is worthy of notice? Muchmore (2001) indicates that “All teachers possess life stories in which their thoughts and actions are situated…” (p. 90) and Palmer (2007) underscores that, “Good teaching requires self–knowledge: it is a secret hidden in plain sight” (p. 3). With no one to ask me to recount my stories, no requirement to even question my self-knowledge, I had for years been forging ahead in teaching, essentially cut off from a vital source of comprehension and evolution. Clandinin and Connelly (2000) state that “experience is the stories people live. People live stories, and in the telling of these stories, reaffirm them, modify them, and create new ones. Stories lived and told educate the self and others” (p. xxvi). Until my doctoral journey, I had not consciously participated in or devoted time to the seeking out and retrieval of the stories that might help educate my self and others’. In her autobiographical article on curriculum, identity, stigmatization and exclusion, Khan (2018) writes: “I wondered, ‘How do I as a mother make sense of the hybridity of my children’s identity?’ I also wondered how my children’s teachers were making sense of their multiple worlds on the school landscape. Were they awake to them too?” (p.150). Upon reading these words, I pondered the numerous years I spent “doing” before allotting time to my sense-making, “doing” before awakening to my self. In fact, towards the end of my doctoral adventure, a segue into the ongoing journey, I remarked about:blank Saada. A place to think 11 Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index the following with regard to the questions that were raised and investigated, the questions rooted in my musings: Having lived with some form of these questions for so many years, I wonder at having escaped their deliberate exploration for so long. Should uncovering the who, reflecting on the question of who we are, not be a priority before being entrusted with the development of students and their who? (Saada, 2018, p. 200) Webster (2015) states: “So much attention goes on thinking about the kids’ thinking, but we really need to invest in supporting the teacher’s thinking. Because if the teachers are learning and growing, their kids will be learning and growing” (p. 45). I would purport that the teacher’s thinking, if it is expected to carry true influence, must include introspection and autobiographical stories. And thinking about the who, nurturing the who within optimal, thoughtful circumstances requires time. I have so often heard the teachers and school staffs with whom I work complain about the lack of time to think, and I can vouch for that myself. The heuristic inquiry process gave me the freedom to think, pushed me to think and developed me as a thinker. But – and this is vital – it also carved thinking time out for me, time for the stories that reveal me and keep me grounded, time for my who. A way of being, in teaching and learning Through my doctoral investigation, literacy teaching appeared as the connector between inside and outside ourselves, the what through which the who could be nurtured and furthered. Findings highlighted literacy teaching as a means to accomplish a vocation of self-fulfillment, rather than as an end point on a trajectory. They suggested that, for the participants, the fundamental commitment was not to literacy teaching as such, but to the who, their who, an indivisible whole evolving within various contexts. These findings emerged from heuristic inquiry. Palmer (2007) writes: To become a better teacher, I must nurture a sense of self that both does and does not depend on the responses of others – and that is a true paradox. To learn that lesson well, I must take a solitary journey into my own nature and seek the help of others in seeing myself as I am – another of many paradoxes that abound in the inner terrain. (p. 76) These words deeply resonated with me following my experience of heuristic inquiry as this process of the solitary journey into my own nature through the help of others. How do we foster the who as both an individual and a collective mission? What does this imply? Could research, reflection and practice in education further delve into heuristic inquiry as a means to accomplish the journey of self-study in collaboration? In my dissertation, I address the secret hidden in plain sight, that of the recognition of the who, first and foremost, in education. Starr (2020) writes of encountering curriculum as “a relational experience where we connect to one another as well as the learning we encourage” (p. 112). Without the who, there cannot be the what; the what of curriculum encounters; the what of creating, reflecting and innovating; the what of evolving; the what of teaching and learning. As I put the finishing touches to my dissertation, the much-anticipated annual reports by the Fraser Institute had just been released, ranking schools and school boards within various Canadian provinces including about:blank Saada. A place to think 12 Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index Quebec, based on academic results (https://www.fraserinstitute.org/school- performance). I knew that we, schools and school boards, would scramble to justify our defeat or chant our triumph with regard to these very public numbers. We would dissect the quality of examinations, student behaviours, socio-economic contexts. There would be analysis of gaps in results between boys and girls, and between students with or without special needs and intervention plans. Our speeches to administrators, schools, education committees, parent committees, councils of commissioners, would be filled with statements on the what. I thought of Buijs (2005), who writes: “the more we insist on standards of performance, be it on the part of the instructors or on the part of students, the less, it seems, we pay attention to the individual circumstances surrounding both the instructor and the student” (p. 339). I had first crossed these words before the onset of my heuristic journey. I read them differently following it. Buijs highlights that the more we attempt to standardize both teaching and learning, the more we withdraw from an inner sense of purpose or calling. I saw in this the statement that the more performance- based we are, the less we can address the person, the who, in all its colour and light, its nuances and inflections. Indeed, following the reports by the Fraser Institute, just as it happens following the publication of graduation rates and provincial examination results, there would be impassioned statements on the what. Prompted by my heuristic journey, I, on the other hand, would long for the questions on the who, questions that would address how we consider the who, questions that would ponder how we would foster the who. On the last page of my doctoral dissertation, I write the following: I keep hearing that today’s student is being prepared for jobs that do not yet exist. How can we then continue to focus on content and constructs, the what that perhaps comforts us in its seeming measurability, when so much depends on the vital who, within us through any circumstance, evolution or revolution, through any representation or aspect of the what? Examination results, marks on report cards, rankings and grades, these are all walls, statements behind which we fail to see that the who is negated by our emphasis on the what, and that the what is crippled by our lack of vision into the who. (Saada, 2018, p. 204) Over a year has passed since the formal end to an autobiographical doctoral journey that led me deep within myself and then outwards again. Following convocation, an emotion-filled moment officially underscoring a perseverance I was not sure I would have, a tenacity that had nearly deserted me on a number of occasions, and the achievement of a title I had not sought for itself but could now proudly display, I quickly found myself in a period of mourning. Throughout the four years of this doctoral journey, all the while maintaining my full-time work as an in-school administrator and then a board-level director, I had often deplored the hectic schedule and the multiple obligations pulling at me from all sides. But the truth was that the academic adventure I had imposed on myself, and in particular the methodology I had chosen for my research, had carved out for me a necessary place to think, a vital place to be. Within this place, I was prompted to reflect not only on the what, the how or even the why which were previously my main considerations as an educator. The heuristic inquiry I conducted was focused on the who, with particular attention to my who. In telling the story of a teacher, Miss O, Aoki (2005) writes of the “significance of allowing space for stories, anecdotes, and narratives that embody the lived dimension of curriculum life” (p. 209). In a professional environment dominated by urgency, standardization, accountability and results, the investigation I conducted into the who was about:blank Saada. A place to think 13 Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index revelatory and self-revelatory, invigorating and deeply empowering as an educator. It offered a welcomed bridge from concept to human being, from curriculum-as-planned to curriculum-as-lived, from generic to specific. No longer just a question, ‘Who is teaching’ is a statement, with stories to accompany it. Palmer (2004) tells us that “truth emerges as we tell the stories of our lives” (p. 122). Following my doctoral research, I mourned the leg of the journey that had gifted me with this invaluable space for stories… Until it was revealed to me that once created, this place to think, this place to recount, this place to be, could and would remain. Heuristic inquiry was not solely about answering my doctoral investigation questions. It was not temporary work of an autobiographical nature. It has become a permanent place for the uncovering of truth, a place in which to think, and a critical way of being, in teaching and in learning. Notes 1 jessica.saada@mail.mcgill.ca References Aoki, T. (2004) Teaching as in-dwelling between two curriculum worlds (1986/1991). In W. F. Pinar & R. L. Irwin (Eds.), Curriculum in a new key: The collected works of Ted T. Aoki (pp. 159-166). New York, New York: Routledge. Arendt, H. (1998) The human condition. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. Buijs, J. A. (2005) Teaching: Profession or vocation? Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice, 8(3). Clandinin, J. D., & Connelly, M. F. (2000) Narrative inquiry experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass. Dobson, M. L. (2012) Identity and creativity: putting two and two together. LEARNing Landscapes, 6(1), 201-214. Dobson, M. L. (2015) Educating for meaning: Who am I, really? Identity and creativity: Putting two and two Together. A critical Analysis in-formed by poetic and narrative perspectives. Unpublished dissertation. McGill University, Montreal, Quebec. Douglass, B. G., & Moustakas, C. (1985) Heuristic inquiry: The internal search to know. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 25(3), 39 - 55. Greene, M. (1978) Landscapes of learning. New York, New York : Teachers College Press. Grumet, M. (2020, in press) Foreword. In Teresa Strong-Wilson, Christian Ehret, David Lewkowich, and Sandra Chang-Kredl (Ed.), Provoking curriculum encounters across educational experience: New engagements with the curriculum theory archive (pp. x-xi). New York, New York: Routledge. Khan, M. (2018) Curriculum as planned: Who is affected when difference is marginalized? Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 16(1), 143-161. McCourt, F. (2005) Teacher man. New York, New York: Scribner. Moustakas, C. (1990) Heuristic research: Design, methodology, and applications. Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications, Inc. 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