Fire & Ice

Book excerpt: Fire & Ice presents the educational inquiry process to school practitioners and aspiring leaders. The context for this study is unusual because it addresses inquiry learning at both the master's and doctoral level and within group settings. The picture that emerges illustrates ways for mentors to engage graduate students in learning, writing, and research through collaborative structures, with an emphasis on learning communities as the primary vehicle for growth and success. In the book, graduate students have served as research participants, focus group members, and survey respondents in their dual role as peer mentor. Because graduate education is being challenged to meet the changing needs of the twenty-first century, the influence of the professions on academic degrees has meant that students must develop as scholar practitioners instead of strictly intellectual academics. Metaphorically, the fire (possibility, desire, and content) and ice (restraint, structure, and form) of scholarly inquiry is used as a literary device to capture what it might mean for students to perform inquiry.