STAR-POST (Music) July 2018 STAR-POST (Music) July 2018 | Page 10

What do we
know about
Critical
Inquiry
STAR explores the critical inquiry journey that
grows our teachers as reflective learners, as they
undergo a process of gathering and evaluating
information, ideas from multiple sources to
documenting observations, leading to new
knowledge and applications.
From 2016, 19 music teacher-leaders have grown as reflective
practitioners through their participation in a Critical Inquiry
Networked Learning Community (CI NLC). The CI NLC provided
a purposeful, supportive and sustained environment for our
teacher-leaders to engage in critical discourse to stimulate and
inspire further pedagogical ideas and critical reflection, as they
conducted their CI projects in their respective music classrooms
over a 4 to 6 month period.
The CI journey, guided by a Master Teacher (Music), was an
enriching one as it provided teachers with a transformative
learning experience 1 which impacted their teaching beliefs and
practices.
Transformative learning is introduced by Mezirow in 1978 as effecting change in a frame of reference. It focussed
on the centrality of experience, critical reflection and rational discourse. Illeris, in 2014, defined transformative learning
as learning that implies changes in the identity of the learner so that there is a change in understanding, a way of
behaviour, or a mode of experience.
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