| To encourage rethinking pedagogical practices from a dialectical, deliberative perspective, this study is an educative exploration of dialogical practice in two professional education sites--landscape architectural design studio and strategic leadership class--to examine and compare the epistemology of practice and the pedagogical assumptions on which each curriculum is based. Placing a focus on the developing relationships of teachers and students in pursuit of knowledge/reflection-in-action, this study looks into what/and how knowledge is constructed and disseminated, how social relations are structured, and how students and teachers come to see their roles in curricular events.; Based on the notion of "research as praxis" and the promises of "practice-centered inquiry," this study applies a co-operative action inquiry approach to increase quality and improve communication about pedagogic reality between the researcher and the researched. In order to know more about the rhetoric of words and images, this study implements a photographic discourse approach to gain a different perspective on classroom life and to establish validity in qualitative educational research. Viewing photography as a paradigmatic case of data analysis in the crisis of representation, in a deliberative process of invention, by way of metaphor and imagery, this study has presented a textual artifact to help grasp a thematic understanding of indeterminant zones of pedagogical practice in professional education.; In a situated, emerging, and "thinkingful" practice of co-operative inquiry as practical art, this study has addressed some tentative findings regarding (1) how to encourage an inquiry community in which teachers and students have equal access to defining what should be known in classroom social and cognitive text events; (2) which evaluative/reflective approach provides students with better feedback and fosters student creativity and competence in the pursuit of knowledge-in-action; and (3) what linguistic understanding of peer talk help capture the classroom ecology for the improvement of teaching and learning. In terms of validity, this study challenges the rather formulaic approaches in the qualitative research through a synthesis of symbolic validity, catalytic validity, and pragmatic validity. |
