Mission Statement

Our mission is to advance the community of practice for those whose work aligns with the ideas, dispositions, and practices of the pedagogical approach Critical Exploration in the Classroom.

In CEC, teachers develop rich, complex learning environments anchored by curricular materials that challenge learners to explore on their own terms and to construct increasingly sensitive understandings in collaboration with their peers. In the process, learners come to rely on their own increasingly competent and informed judgement rather than exclusively on the authority of others.

The teacher works to investigate the developing understandings of the learners and to position those understandings into relationship with each other and with shared materials. Additional materials are often introduced in response to questions and issues that have arisen through learners’ explorations.

The working members of CEPress research, document, and support the practice of CEC and related practices in the following ways:

  • Create and disseminate mission-related curriculum materials;
  • Undertake and disseminate mission-related research;
  • Develop professional workshops on the ground and online;
  • Observe, document, and reflect upon educational practice;
  • Theorize connections and distinctions between CEC and other pedagogical forms;
  • Represent and advocate for the work of CEC and related practices within diverse settings;
  • Connect community members with each other through social media and publications;
  • Publish the related work of community members both online and in print form;
  • Archive mission-related historic resources and make them available to others.

The experience of CEC creates a learning community within which both teacher and students are encouraged to attend, respect, and seek to learn from the unfolding ideas and questions of others.

The most recent discussions of this pedagogical approach can be found in the third edition of Eleanor Duckworth’s text The Having of Wonderful Ideas and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning (2006) and In Search of Wonderful Ideas: Critical Exploration in Teacher Education (April 8, 2021, Teachers College Press).

(This practice was formerly known as Extended Clinical Interviewing and Teaching/Learning Research.)