The heART of learning: Creating a loving culture of inquiry to enhance self-determined learning in a high school classroom

In this paper, I will describe how I created a loving culture of inquiry that enabled students to have transformative experiences as they unveil their voices to generate unique epistemologies and ontologies. I will share how responding to the four guiding questions: Who Am I? How do I Know? So What? and Now What? provided a framework that helped students to transcend the moral, creative, and intellectual constraints of traditional education. I will draw on data from the student action researchers in my classrooms and my own action research as I continue to refine my living-theory (both my methodology and theory) to demonstrate how I use self-study, living-theory, action research projects to create opportunities for self-determined learning.