Poetry as Progress: Balancing Standards-Based Reforms with Aesthetic Inquiry

Abstract

The meaning of "progress" in U.S. educational institutions has undergone much debate (Tyack & Cuban, 1995). Standards-driven practices have often promoted a search for "right" answers in place of critical and diverse thinking. Globalization and its impacts compel us to continue revising and articulating the meaning of progress for 21st century students, educators, and researchers (Ball & Tyson, 2011). This aesthetic empirical inquiry (Pinar, 2004; Ranciere, 2004) contributes to this process by creatively re-presenting teacher voice via bricolage (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003; Kincheloe, 2001), specifically poetic bricolage (Trueit, 2004). The pursuit of aesthetic approaches to research have the potential for re-shaping national notions of progress to emphasize the cultivation of creativity, understanding, and empathy across lines of difference, and thereby support 21st century global communities in collaborating to address inequity.