TakingYourselfSeriouslyTLRP

=Teaching/Learning for Reflective Practice=

This book is written for not only students, but for anyone who wants to integrate "head, heart, hands, and human connections" in their research and writing. At the same time, a pedagogical current is obvious—the book's origins lie in Peter's research and writing courses, and many aspects of Parts I and II can be translated readily into assignments, classes, and stages of semester-long student projects. In Part III, therefore, we say more about the pedagogical challenges. This takes the form of snapshots from Peter's journey teaching research and other courses for the Critical and Creative Thinking (CCT) Graduate Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. CCT, despite the "thinking" in its name, is about changing practice. The Program aims to provide its mid-career or career-changing students with "knowledge, tools, experience, and support so they can become constructive, reflective agents of change in education, work, social movements, science, and creative arts" (CCT 2008). In this vein, it seems less important for us to describe the detail of the classroom mechanics and course requirements, than to stimulate reflection and dialogue about the challenge of supporting students (and others) to develop as reflective practitioners.

We cannot recreate for readers the experience of participating in classroom activities or the semester-long process. We appreciate that some readers might want us to explicate our line of thinking more and relate it to what others have written and done, but the snapshots are offered in a different spirit, one of opening up questions and pointing to a complexity of relevant considerations, not of pinning down answers with tight evidence. We encourage readers to participate in the web-based forum that accompanies this book so as to engage the authors and each other in ongoing conversation and sharing of resources, struggles, and accomplishments. *	*	*

1. Goals of research and engagement; goals of developing as a reflective practitioner
Each of the phases of research and engagement in Part I is defined by a goal. I (Peter) made the phases and goals explicit after my first semester teaching research and writing to CCT's mid-career graduate students. One student, an experienced teacher, had dutifully submitted assignments, such as the annotated bibliography, all the time expressing skepticism that this work was teaching her anything new: "I have already taken research courses and know how to do research papers." Indeed, most of her submissions did not help move her project forward because the form was there but not the substance. In asking her to "revise and resubmit," I had to emphasize that the point was not to complete, for example, an annotated bibliography because I, the instructor, deemed this an essential part of a research project. The point was for her to do the annotated bibliography in a way that brought her closer to saying, for Phase B (Background Information), "I know what others have done before, either in the form of writing or action, that informs and connects with my project, and I know what others are doing now."

The resistance of this student had given me an invaluable push that resulted in the phases and goals becoming an explicit organizing structure for the course and other research projects. The goals of research and engagement represented, however, only half of what was going on in the research and writing course. I identified ten other goals related to the process of pursuing a major research and writing project. Over the next year, helped by some teacher research (snapshot 2), I refined these goals of "developing as a reflective practitioner." I have since incorporated both sets of goals into a plus-delta self-assessment that students complete at the end of the research and writing course (see Phase J) and at the end of the program as well. (See note 1 on Assessment and Grading consistent with the two sets of goals, and note 2 on a required Personal and Professional Development Workbook and other expectations for Research Organization.) 

2. Making space for taking initiative in and through relationships
I want students to see dialogue around written work as an important part of defining and refining research direction and questions. However, the system they are familiar with is produce a product, receive a grade, check that assignment off the to-do list, and move on to the next one. They have to expose their submissions to the instructor, but most of them are uncomfortable about subjecting it to dialogue. The challenge, then, has been to get students into the swing of an unfamiliar system as quickly as possible so they can begin to experience its benefits.

I chose to focus on this challenge when I participated in a faculty seminar on "Becoming a teacher-researcher" during my second year teaching the CCT students (Taylor 1999). My teacher research began a month into the research and writing course with students completing a survey about their expectations and concerns in working under what they called the "revise and resubmit" process. The participants in the faculty seminar then digested all the students' responses and brainstormed about qualities of an improved system and experience. We wrote suggestions on large post-its, which we grouped and gave names to, ending up with five categories: "negotiate power/standards," "horizontal community," "develop autonomy," "acknowledge afftect," and "be here now" (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Five themes about improving the experience of dialogue around written work.

In the following class I initiated discussion of the students' responses, clarifying the meaning of the themes and exploring the tensions between them (conveyed by the connecting lines in Figure 1). For example, "develop autonomy" stood for digesting comments and making something for oneself—neither treating comments as dictates nor insulating oneself by keeping from the eyes of others. Yet, "negotiate power/standards" recognized that students made assumptions about my ultimate power over grades, which translated into their thinking that I expected them to take up my suggestions. Moreover, although these assumptions about the "vertical" relationship between instructor and student had to be aired and addressed, "horizontal community" captured the need for students to build additional kinds of relationship.

During the rest of the semester, discussions continued to refer to these themes and tensions. We applied them to the whole research and engagement process, not only to dialogue around written work. I looked for a substitute for "autonomy" because some students construed this word as going their own way and not responding to comments of others, including those of professors. When "taking initiative" was suggested by my wife, I realized that it applied to all five themes. I emailed my students: "[The challenge is to] take initiative in building horizontal relationships, in negotiating power/standards, in acknowledging that affect is involved in what you're doing and not doing (and in how others respond to that), in clearing away distractions from other sources (present and past) so you can be here now." Don't wait for the instructor to tell you how to solve an expository problem, what must be read and covered in a literature review, or what was meant by some comment you don't understand. Don't put off giving your writing to the instructor or to other readers and avoid talking to them because you're worried that they don't see things the same way as you do.

A longer phrase soon emerged: "Taking initiative in and through relationships." That is, don't expect to learn or change on one's own. Build relationships with others; interact with them. This doesn't mean bowing down to their views, but take them in and work them into your own reflective inquiry until you can convey more powerfully to them what you're about (which may or may not have changed as a result of the reflective inquiry).

Finally, as a student or as the instructor, don't expect learning or change to happen without jostling among the five themes-in-tension. Of course, saying this does not specify how to teach and support students to take progressively more initiative. Nevertheless, I believe that talking about the five points on the "mandala" helped the students in that course recognize themselves and take more initiative in their learning relationships. Since then I have presented the insights from the original group to new cohorts—sometimes adding "explore difference" as a sixth theme. (See note 3 on subsequent Teacher Research with the Students.) 

3. Opening wide and focusing in
A colleague in the faculty seminar on teacher research (snapshot 2) participated in the first class of the research and writing course as if he were a student. The class consisted mostly of an overview of the phases from me; a Q&A session with a student from the previous year's class (during which I left the room); and some freewriting, rough drafting, and peer sharing of an initial project description. The colleague, Emmett Schaeffer, commented afterwards on the oscillation the students faced between opening wide and focusing in and on the students being "dazed" about how much was opened up and put in play during this first session (Box 1). As my thank you email expressed (Box 2), having someone else see what was going on helped me articulate and "own" a tension that runs through my teaching.

> certainly, at first, and, if I understand correctly, throughout the process, > you think one engaged in research and engagement should remain open, > both to others and their opinions, but also to one's "divergent" (from one's > conscious, explicitly formulated path) thinking, feeling, etc. >> --sort of [1] opening wide, [2] focusing and formulating, >> [1] opening wide, [2] focusing and formulating circle >> [1] the "opening wide" could take the form of:  any less than fully formulated thinking free writing sharing (with a partner, teacher, group) one's formulations (written or oral)
 * Box 1. Comments from a colleague on the student experience at the start of the research and writing course**
 * → on "divergent" thinking

>>> then, >>> being fully attentive to what one has expressed >>>> (intended or otherwise), as well as to feedback >> [2] the focusing and formulating stage could take the form of: >>> oral/written formulations with an explicit purpose and >>> more (always simply comparative) fully formulated  → what about students being "dazed," "overwhelmed" and "confused"? >> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive">(and perhaps not only at the beginning) > <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive">My guess as to purpose: >> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive">(of course partly you don't choose this outcome, it's rather a >> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive">function of students' previous training >> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive">but to some extent I think it's inherent in your approach >> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive">and philosophy) > <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive">1. experiential learning – It'll become clear through doing it >> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive">(and reflecting on the doing that requires some doing). > <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive">2. everything up in the air (not settled, in place, foreclosed, etc.) to >> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive">maximize a. vision of possible outcomes >>> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive">b. their agency in influencing settling >>> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive">c. model of anxiety and confusion inherent (at first) >>> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive">in sharing and remaining open, while >>> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive">proceeding to try various ways to "sort things out" ||

I really appreciate your keen observations and the work you did in synthesizing them into the notes. What we did together was rare and special -- I could only remember one other time I got a colleague's observations that affirmed but also helped me articulate and own what I was doing. That time was an ESL and Spanish teacher who had asked to visit a class of mine about biology and society. She noted my comfortable use of ambiguity. Much followed for me from her naming this. In fact, I suspect that the affirmation-articulation connection is a key to the observed person doing something productive with the observations. Thanks, Peter || 
 * Box 2. Thank you email about the affirmation-articulation connection**
 * <span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace">Emmett,

4. From Educational Evaluation to Constituency Building
The same observation about having to move between opening out and focusing in was made independently a few years later by a student, herself an experienced college teacher, when summarizing the experience of the research course on evaluation and action research. The previous snapshots have not mentioned that course, but it was evolving at the same time as the course on research and writing. When I first took over teaching it, the title and emphasis was educational evaluation. I soon had this changed to evaluation of educational change so as to clarify that it was not about assessment of students. Moreover, to meet the needs of the diverse, mid-career professionals and creative artists that enter CCT, "educational change" had to be construed broadly to include organizational change, training, and personal development, as well as curricular and school change. The revised title still missed the central motivation for the course in the CCT curriculum, namely: "If you have good ideas how do you get others to adopt and/or adapt them?" Put in other words: "How do you build a constituency around your idea?" This concern can lead researchers into evaluating how good the ideas actually are (with respect to some defined objectives) so they can demonstrate this to others. It can also lead researchers to work with others to develop the idea so it becomes theirs as well and thus something they are invested in. Taking as the starting point an individual wanting "to do something to change the current situation, that is, to take action," Action Research became the central thread and eventually made its way into the course title, and the "Cycles and Epicycles" model made room for group facilitation, participatory planning, and reflective practice, as well as for systematic evaluation. The next two snapshots touch on group processes; the one after links the research side of Action Research to Problem-Based Learning. 

5. Conditions for a Successful Workshop
My own research has focused on the complexity of ecological or environmental situations and of the social situations in which the environmental research is undertaken. Since the 1990s collaboration has become a dominant concern in environmental planning and management, and the need to organize collaborative environmental research can be traced back at least into the 1960s (Taylor et al. 2008). Collaboration is self-conciously organized through the frequent use of workshops and other "organized multi-person collaborative processes" (OMPCP).

I started to try to make more sense of the workshop form after participating during the first half of 2000 in four innovative, interdisciplinary workshops primarily in the environmental arena (Taylor 2001). Two ideals against which I assessed these workshops is that group processes can result in collaborators’ investment in the product of the processes and ensure that knowledge generated is greater than any single collaborator or sum of collaborators came in with (see earlier discussion of strategic participatory planning). As a postscript to my analysis of why a workshop (or OMPCP) might be needed to address the complexity of environmental issues, I assembled a list of guidelines or heuristics about making workshops in general work.

One member of the audience for my first presentation on this topic was a professional facilitator, Tom Flanagan, who offered to help me develop a more systematic set of principles for bringing about successful workshops. The process he led me through involved: > a. Defining my criteria for a successful workshop; > b. Rephrasing the heuristics as conditions that might contribute directly or indirectly to these criteria being fulfilled; > c. Answering a set of questions of the form: "Would addressing condition A significantly help in achieving condition B?" The results of steps a and b are given in Box 3. The questions in step c were generated by Cogni System software that analyzed my responses and then arranged the conditions in a "structural model" from "deep" to "top," where deeper conditions are helpful for the ones above them.

i) the outcome is larger and more durable than what any one participant came in with. Durable means > a) the participants are engaged in carrying out or carrying on the knowledge and plans they develop; and > b) the knowledge is applied and has significance. ii) participants' subsequent work enhances the capacity of others to flexibly engage, that is, to connect with people who are able to take initiative—or are almost able to—in forming communities of practice/change collaborations that provide their participants experiences that enhance their ability to flexibly engage.
 * Box 3. Criteria and Conditions for a Successful Workshop**
 * //A. Two criteria of success//

//B. Conditions that might contribute directly or indirectly to these criteria being fulfilled//
 * it brings to the surface knowledge of the participants that they were not able, at first, to acknowledge.
 * participants get to know more about each others' not-yet-stable aspects.
 * quiet spaces that occur are not filled up.
 * participants recognize that there is insight in every response.
 * the facilitator invites participants to share the experience of being unsure, but excitable.
 * the facilitator provides participants with the image of a workshop as a journey into unknown areas or allowing them to see familiar areas in a fresh light. (A workshop/journey involves risk; requires support; creates more experiences than can be integrated at first sight; yields personal changes.)
 * participants gain insight into their present place and direction by hearing what they happen to mention and omit in telling their own stories.
 * participants are heard.
 * participants hear others and hear themselves better as a result of being heard.
 * this hearing of others leads participants to examine decisions made in advance about what the other people are like, what they are and are not capable of.
 * participants inquire further on the issues that arise in their own projects.
 * participants inquire further into how they support the work of others.
 * participants' energies are mobilized by the process.
 * there is a wide range of participants, not only technically expert participants.
 * the plans allow for individual participants to select and focus on a subset of the workshop-generated specific plans or knowlege in their subsequent work.
 * the process, as a learning community, enables participants to ask for help and support during the workshop.
 * the process, as a learning community, enables participants to develop relationships that will enable them keep getting help and support when the workshop is over.
 * participants find opportunities to affirm what is working well.
 * the reflection on each phase leads to one concrete product to take into next phase.
 * the experiences of the workshop enhance the ability of the participants to flexibly engage.||

Tom's intention was only to introduce me to the concept, not to lead me systematically through the full process, so I do not want to overinterpret the outcome of our computer-aided analysis. I include here only the deepest three layers and the top of the model to help readers picture a structural model (Figure 2). Let me draw attention, however, to the deepest condition, "quiet spaces that occur are not filled up." It is no small challenge for someone organizing or facilitating a workshop (or OMPCP) to ensure that this condition is met. Conversely, if it is not met, it should not be surprising that the criteria for a successful workshop are not achieved.

Figure 2. Extracts from the structural model 

6. Four R's of developing as a collaborator
Group processes not only need skillful and effective facilitators; they also need participants or collaborators who are skilled and effective in contributing to the desired outcomes. To develop skills and dispositions of collaboration requires researchers (and researchers-in-training) to make opportunities for practicing what they have been introduced to and to persist even when they encounter resistance. What moves them to pursue such development?

I have had an opportunity to address this issue since 2004 not in the arena of environmental research but through an annual series of experimental, interaction-intensive, interdisciplinary workshops "to foster collaboration among those who teach, study, and engage with the public about scientific developments and social change." The workshops are documented in detail on their websites (NewSSC08), but a thumbnail sketch would be: They are small, with international, interdisciplinary participants of mixed "rank" (i.e., from students, to professors). There is no delivery of papers; instead participants lead each other in activities, designed before or developed during the workshops, that can be adapted to college classrooms and other contexts and participate in group processes that are regular features of the workshops. The group processes are also offered as models or tools to be adapted or adopted in other contexts. The themes vary from year to year, but each workshop lasts four days and moves through four broad, overlapping phases—exposing diverse points of potential interaction; focusing on detailed case study; activities to engage participants in each other's projects; and taking stock. The informal and guided opportunities to reflect on hopes and experiences during the workshop produce feedback that shapes the days ahead as well as changes to the design of subsequent workshops.

The ongoing evolution of the workshops has been stimulated not only by written and spoken evaluations, but also by an extended debriefing immediately following each workshop and advisory group discussions, such as one in 2008 that addressed the question of what moves people develop themselves as collaborators. Our conjecture was that this development happens when participants see an experience or training as transformative. After reviewing the evaluations we identified four "R's"—respect, risk, revelation, and re-engagement—as conditions that make interactions among participants transformative (Box 4; see [|Taylor et al. 2008] for elaboration and supporting quotations from the evaluations). A larger set of R's for personal and professional development will be presented in snapshot 9 (indeed, the larger set pre-dated and had some influence on the formulation of these 4R's).

__2. Risk.__   Respect creates a space with enough safety for participants to take risks of various kinds, such as, speaking personally during the autobiographical introductions, taking an interest in points of view distant in terms of discipline and experience, participating—sometimes quite playfully—during unfamiliar processes, and staying with the process as the workshop unfolds or "self-organizes" without an explicit agreement on where it is headed and without certainty about how to achieve desired outcomes. __3. Revelation.__  A space is created by respect and risk in which participants bring thoughts and feelings to the surface that articulate, clarify and complicate their ideas, relationships, and aspirations—in short, their identities. In the words of one participant: "The various activities do not simply build connections with others, but they necessitate the discovery of the identity of others through their own self-articulations. But since those articulations follow their own path, one sees them not as simple reports of some static truth but as new explorations of self, in each case. Then one discovers this has happened to oneself as much as to others-one discovers oneself anew in the surprising revelations that emerge in the process of self-revelation." __4. Re-engagement.__  Respect, risk, and revelation combine so that participants' "gears" engage allowing them to sustain quite a high level of energy during throughout the workshop. The participants engage actively with others, and, equally importantly, are reminded of their aspirations to work in supportive communities. Participants say they discover new possibilities for work with others on ideas they brought to the workshop. ||
 * Box 4. Four R's that make interactions among researchers transformative**
 * __1. Respect.__   The small number and mixed composition of the workshop participants means that participants have repeated exchanges with those who differ from them.  Many group processes promote listening to others and provide the experience of being listened to.  Participation in the activities emphasizes that each participant, regardless of background or previous experience has something valuable to contribute to the process and outcomes.  In these and other ways, respect is not simply stated as a ground rule, but is enacted.

7. Problem-Based Learning
In contrast to the step-by-step progression in most accounts of action research, the "cycles and epicycles" model allows for extensive reflection and dialogue. This is essential not only for constituency-building, but also for problem-finding, that is, for ongoing rethinking of the nature of the situation and the actions appropriate to improving it. In this sense action research mirrors Problem-Based Learning (PBL), at least the kind of PBL that begins from a scenario in which the problems are not well defined (Greenwald 2000). Stimulated by the work of my CCT colleague, Nina Greenwald, I began to introduce a PBL approach in the evaluation/action research course and other courses on science in its social context. The way I have come to teach with PBL is given in Box 5 (extracted from Taylor 2008a, which includes links to examples of PBL scenarios and student work):

> a) student engagement in self-invented inquiry; > b) content coverage by the class as a whole; and > c) increased motivation for subsequent, more-focused inquiry (see “inverted pedagogy” below). Four features of ths PBL are worth noting: __Interdisciplinary Coaching__: The instructors facilitate the brainstorming and student-to-student exchange and support, coach the students in their individual tasks, and serve as resource persons by providing contacts and reading suggestions drawn from their longstanding interdisciplinary work and experience. __Inverted pedagogy__: The experience of PBL is expected to motivate students to identify and pursue the disciplinary learning and disciplined inquiry they need to achieve the competency and impact they desire. (This inverts the conventional curriculum in which command of fundamentals is a prerequisite for application of our learning to real cases.) __KAQ framework for inquiry and exchange__ (see earlier description) __Internet facilitation__: The internet makes it easier to explore strands of inquiry beyond any well-packaged sequence of canonical readings, make rapid connections with experts and other informants, and develop evolving archives of materials and resources that can be built on by future classes and others.||
 * Box 5.  Problem-Based Learning, an Overview**
 * Students brainstorm so as to identify a range of problems related to an instructor-supplied scenario and choose which of these they want to investigate and report back on. The problem-definitions may evolve as students investigate and exchange findings with peers. If the scenario is written well, most of the problems defined and investigated by the students will relate to the subject being taught, but instructors have to accept some "curve balls" in return for

PBL was enthusiastically pursued by one CCT student and led to her transformation from community-college librarian with no science background to participant in campaigns around health disparities and employment as a research assistant in the biomedical area. Although I won't tell her story here, it moves me to recount some earlier reflections on students' development in the CCT Program as a whole, which make up the last two snapshots. 

8. Journeying
One course I taught for the first time after I joined the CCT Program was "Critical Thinking." Mid-way through the first semester, when the topic was revising lesson plans, we revisited a demonstration I had done in the first class. The details are not important here, except to say that some students had interpreted the demonstration as a science lesson while the science aspect seemed unimportant to me. Discussion of the discrepancy led me to articulate my primary goal, namely, the students would puzzle over the general conundrum of how questions that retrospectively seem obvious ever occurred to them and to consider their susceptibility to recurrent reconceptualizations. The image that occurred to me was that development as a critical thinker is like undertaking a personal journey into unfamiliar or unknown areas. Both involve risk, open up questions, create more experiences than can be integrated at first sight, require support, yield personal change, and so on. This journeying metaphor differs markedly from the conventional philosophical view of critical thinking as scrutinizing the reasoning, assumptions, and evidence behind claims (Ennis 1987, Critical Thinking Across The Curriculum Project 1996). Instead of the usual connotations of "critical" with judgement and finding fault according to some standards (Williams 1983, 84ff), journeying draws attention to the inter- and intra-personal dimensions of people developing their thinking and practice. The image of critical thinking as journeying gave me a hook to make sense of my development as a teacher. In narrating my own journey, I attempted to expose conceptual and practical struggles in learning to decenter pedagogy even as I provided space and support for students’ development as critical thinkers (written circa 2000, published several years later as Taylor 2008b). The central challenge I identified was that of helping people make knowledge and practice from insights and experience that they are not prepared, at first, to acknowledge—something that seems relevant to teaching research and engagement as well as critical thinking. Several related challenges for the teacher or facilitator emerged, which I summarize in Box 6.

> a) Help students to generate questions about issues they were not aware they faced. > b) Acknowledge and mobilize the diversity inherent in any group, including the diversity of mental, emotional, situational, and relational factors that people identify as making re-seeing possible. > c) Help students clear mental space so that thoughts about an issue in question can emerge that had been below the surface of their attention. > d) Teach students to listen well. (Listening well seemed to help students tease out alternative views. Without alternatives in mind scrutiny of one's own evidence, assumptions and logic, or of those of others is difficult to motivate or carry out; see also point i, below. Being listened to, in turn, seems to help students access their intelligence—to bring to the surface, reevaluate, and articulate things they already know in some sense.) > e) Support students on their journeys into unfamiliar or unknown areas (see paragraph above). > f) Encourage students to take initiative in and through relationships (see snapshots 2 and 3 above). > g) Address fear felt by students and by oneself as their teacher. > h) Have confidence and patience that students will become more invested in the process and the outcomes when insights emerge from themselves. > i) Raise alternatives. (Critical thinking depends on inquiry being informed by a strong sense of how things could be otherwise. People understand things better when they have placed established facts, theories, and practices in tension with alternatives.) > j) Introduce and motivate "opening up themes," that is, propositions that are simple to convey, but always point to the greater complexity of particular cases and to further work needed to study those cases (Taylor 2005). > k) Be patient and persistent about students taking up the alternatives, themes, and other tools and applying them to open up questions in new areas. (Experiment and experience are needed for students—and for teachers—to build up a set of tools that work for them.) > l) Take seriously the creativity and capacity-building that seems to follow from well-facilitated participation (see snapshots 5 and 6), while still allowing space for researchers to insert the "translocal," that is, their analysis of changes that arise beyond the local region and span a larger scale than the local.|| 
 * Box 6.  Helping people make knowledge and practice from insights and experience that they are not prepared, at first, to acknowledge**
 * Teacher-facilitators should:

9. Many Rs
When the CCT graduate program was moved under a Department of Curriculum and Instruction, I decided to learn more about the theory that guided that field. I came across William Doll's account of postmodern curriculum design, which centers on another "4R's", in this case: richness, recursion, relation, and rigor (Doll 1993). My immediate response was that his R's do not capture a lot of what goes into CCT students' mid-career personal and professional development. I soon had twelve R's, and then more. Figure 3 took shape as I played with ways to convey that some R's will make limited sense until more basic Rs have been internalised and that periods of opening out alternate with periods of consolidating experiences to date.



I sometimes present this schema to students as a way to take stock of their own development. I suggest that, at the end of each semester for as many Rs as they are ready to, they give an example and articulate their current sense of the R's meaning(s). However, I mostly use the many R's to remind myself as a teacher to expect the flow of development to be windy and less than direct (see note 4 on the contrast with "backward design"). *	*	* The snapshots from Peter's journey suggest a windy and less-than-direct flow of development as a teacher and facilitator of research and engagement. Although we can imagine readers thinking they need to see more of the action and background behind the snapshots, we will not try to fill in more. Instead, we end with the hope that the account, together with the tools and frameworks of Parts I and II, help you move ahead in your own journeys of research and engagement—journeys in which you take risks, open up questions, create more experiences than can be integrated at first sight, require support, and generate personal and professional change.

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