Abstract

This book is about an ecological-interpretive image of "the basics" in teaching and learning. The authors offer a generous, rigorous, difficult, and pleasurable image of what this term might mean in the living work of teachers and learners. In this book, Jardine, Clifford, and Friesen: *sketch out some of the key ideas in the traditional, taken-for-granted meaning of "the basics"; *explain how the interpretive-hermeneutic version of "the basics" operates on different fundamental assumptions; *show how this difference leads, of necessity, to very different concrete practices in our schools; *illustrate richly how it is necessary for interpretive work to show, again and again, how new examples enrich, transform, and correct what one thought was fully understood and meaningful; and *explore the challenges of an interpretive approach in relation to child development, mathematics education, science curriculum, teacher education, novel studies, new information technologies, writing practices in the classroom, and the nature of interpretive inquiry itself as a form of "educational research." This text will be valuable to practicing teachers and student-teachers in re-imagining what is basic to their work and the work of their students. Through its many classroom examples, it provides a way to question and open up to conversation the often literal-minded tasks teachers and students face. It also provides examples of interpretive inquiry that will be helpful to graduate students and scholars in the areas of curriculum, teaching, and learning who are pursuing this form of research and writing.