…each student and teacher is engaged in the art of composing a life.”
-Anne Murray Orr & Margaret Olson
When I was hired by the Coalition for International Initiatives for their positive global impact initiative in education, I was reading an article by Anne Murray Orr & Margaret Olson titled Transforming Narrative Encounters. This particular research study focuses on the power of narrative-inquiry as a legitimate research tool in educational settings. The authors explains that transformations can be made in education through careful reflection and inquiry into the individual stories of teachers and students. As a part-time consultant and full-time English teacher, the notion that our lives are nothing but intersecting storylines appeals to me on a level that transcends the everyday.
One of the areas that interested me was the idea that curriculum development is shaped by teachers and students as they attempt to make sense of their worlds through the various rising actions and conflicts. It is this constructivist notion of curriculum that now drives the Triggering Teachable Moments (T2M) lesson design on the eKWIP website.
After reading the article on narrative inquiry, I began to think about the educational power of allowing students to author their own worlds with collaborative global partners. The eKWIP website is designed to open a collaborative platform for students in the US and India to attempt to share their stories and ultimately their worlds. The T2M model focuses on allowing students to develop narratives that add a rich narrative content to the otherwise stale academic standards. Teachers using eKWIP will be asked to establish an environment that is conducive to the development of a rich story line between the learners in the two countries and written in a purely digital medium.
As the storyline develops, the eKWIP team will be blogging about our journey as we try to make a positive global impact in global education collaboration.
Gregory M. McGough, M.Ed.
CII Chief Academic Officer