Knowledge in Action: Fostering the Social Imagination Through Poetic Inquiry in Teacher Education

• In Event: 52.083 - Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: 52.083-7 - Social Justice in Arts Education

Abstract

This presentation represents an autoethnographic study of a teacher education praxis that uses poetry as a tool to foster the social imagination (Greene, 1995) in English Education methods courses. This study is also a form of poetic inquiry, a discipline that “provides a contemplative alternative to the highly problematic paradigm of objectivist scholarship” (Elliott, 2012 p.iv). For many, poetic inquiry represents a valuable counterweight to the Common Core State Standards, which are framed in an objectivist understanding of reading.
Engagement with poetry became an essential part of these teacher education courses as it suggested a range of different approaches to interacting with texts.

Author

• Amanda Nicole Gulla, Lehman College - CUNY