Focussing on the work of Parker J Palmer this third session will consider the integration of soul and role. How many educators leave themselves at the classroom door, only to rely on technique and policy initiatives to shape how they work with students. Often we ask what is to be taught, and occasionally how to teach. Rarely are teachers encouraged to consider why they teach and fewer to consider who it is that shows up to teach. Re-connecting with an early sense of vocation, clarifying core values and living out who we are in relationship with students, is new territory for many contemporary educators.

Education is always taking place in context which in turn shapes how individuals make sense of themselves as intelligent, capable, competent and worthwhile, or not.

Our experience of being schooled can be profoundly important in terms of shaping personal script and which reverberates into adult life and career.

We began the series with the concept of natality – birth. Invariably overlooked by its more familiar partner – mortality – the importance of natality is most present in the process of education. Natality is all about renewal and what more obvious a way does a society engage in renewal but through how it educates the next generation.

We looked at the features of natality, the principal writers and its link with education. We also focused on the Cycle of Development as a powerful educational model. Based on the early work of Pam Levin, extended by Jean Illsley Clarke and Connie Dawson, we considered how development is essentially cycle of renewal spanning a lifetime.