Of Books, Barns, and Boardrooms

Of Books, Barns, and Boardrooms: Exploring Praxis through Reflexive Inquiry is at once scholarly and deeply personal. A rich weave of learning moments across multiple contexts— formal education, workplace learning, relationships with horses—this text explores the various ways that pedagogy and practice emerge with and through our lived experiences. Centring the metaphor of join-up, a relational approach to starting new horses, the book intertwines educational theory with storied experience to uncover opportunities for cultivating collaborative spaces born of trust, deep communication, agency, and relationality. A highly readable text, Of Books, Barns, and Boardrooms models reflexive inquiry as a way of being while inviting us to imagine possibilities for re/humanizing teaching and learning.

“Ellyn Lyle models reflexive inquiry as a deeply personal textual practice. Her prose is crisply succinct, speaking directly to educators in a refreshingly resonant voice. One hears a scholar who understands the challenges of student engagement that teachers face in schools and university classrooms. Answers are not necessarily to be found in curriculum plans and instructional designs but in the capacity of educators to know themselves more fully and bring their best selves to class each day. Of Books, Barns, and Boardrooms will inspire teachers to dig deeply into their own stories of teacher formation. The reflexivity shining through this text is narratively evocative of the very manner in which educators at all levels may cultivate supple resiliency while responding to the call to re/centre our humanness in teaching and learning.” – Stephen Smith, Ph.D., Professor, Simon Fraser University

Ellyn Lyle, Ph.D. (2011), is Dean in the Faculty of Education at Yorkville University. The use of critical and reflexive methodologies shape explorations within the following areas: teacher and learner identity; praxis and practitioner development; and lived and living curriculum. This is her 12th book.