Schools as equitable communities of inquiry

Abstract

If education is to play a role in the transition to a sustainable well-being society, what issues of purpose and practice arise? How can schools achieve the agility, not only to adapt to a changing environment, but also to engage in transformative action? What roles must the teacher assume in such a setting, and what kinds of training and development will be necessary? In this reflective essay on practice, the authors maintain that the school of the future ignores the basic axioms of twentieth-century schooling, i.e., separate students into “tracks,” divide knowledge into “subjects,” and hold school apart from the world. Drawing from their experiences at High Tech High, a public charter school organization in California, the authors offer concrete examples from across the K-12 years, describing efforts at High Tech High and its embedded graduate school of education to create an equitable community of inquiry in which all students and staff engage in action research, improvement science, and other forms of inquiry focused on key questions of sustainability: who are we, what kind of community do we envision, and how do we move forward together?.