Kath Murdoch is an experienced teacher, author, university lecturer and popular consultant who has worked for many years in schools throughout Australia, New Zealand, Asia, America and Europe. She is widely respected for her work in the field of inquiry based learning and integrative curriculum in which she has taught, researched and published for well over 25 years.
Kath began her professional life as a classroom teacher in Melbourne, Australia. Her fascination in how students' constructed their understandings - and her interest in the way questions and big ideas could drive curriculum soon lead to a passion for integrative and inquiry based methodologies. This passion has become a career-long focus for teaching, research and writing and the methodologies in which Kath specialises are now central to curriculum frameworks in many parts of the world - including the popular International Baccalaureate, PYP program.
Critical to Kath's success is her continued involvement in classroom teaching. Whether it is to demonstrate techniques, coach teachers or build her own repertoire of practices, Kath is committed to regular and ongoing work with students. Her classroom work and research feeds a dynamic and ever-evolving expertise in the area of integrative and inquiry-based learning.
Kath's professional development offerings are diverse. They range from intensive partnerships with schools to develop inquiry programs and practices over several years through to one-day workshops for beginning or experienced inquiry teachers. Whether in her home town of Melbourne or on the other side of the world, working with a team or speaking to a packed auditorium Kath's style is refreshingly practical, inclusive and always connected to the real world of teaching.
Venue:
International School of Luxembourg
36 Boulevard Pierre Dupong,
L-1430 Luxembourg
8:30 am to 4:00 pm
Registration at 7.30 am
on the 23rd November 2019.
Children in the early and primary years of schooling are natural inquirers. The art of the inquiry teacher is to cultivate and nurture the agency these learners bring to the classroom. Teachers who understand the power of inquiry in the primary school know that there is indeed an art to the pedagogy that drives it. Inquiry is a dynamic and interactive process involving questioning, designing, investigating, experimenting, analysing, reflecting and acting. Like an artist, the inquiry teacher draws on a rich palette of powerful practices to facilitate learning across the day.
In this workshop we will explore ten key practices the inquiry-based teacher can use across the curriculum to enhance learning through inquiry in the primary classroom. These practices are not simply a handy tool-kit of strategies nor are they confined to being applied only to a ‘unit of inquiry’. Together, they capture a way of being as a teacher and as a learner. Inquiry is a stance, not a subject or a program. It is about what we value and how we behave as teachers. These practices inform the way we design learning tasks, our classroom and staff-room discourse, the way we curate learning spaces, the questions we ask, our use of resources and the way we choose to use our time. In time, the practices become the habits of an inquiry teacher. This workshop is This workshop is designed to build the teaching repertoire for generalist and specialist teachers alike – and to deepen our collective understanding of inquiry as a stance.
