Welcome, the gates are open.

Have you ever googled images of gates? Once you get past “Bill Gates” you’ll find more than 550,000 images of gates! Some are monumental, grand and foreboding, designed more to keep us out than let us in. Others, like the gates in this issue, are welcoming and open.

I have a long-standing interest in architecture and the built environment. As I entered each of the gates to explore what lay beyond, this rather incongruous image of an old fashioned architect returned to my consciousness:

As I read the “papers” to which the three gates gave entry, I envisaged these teacher-researchers as architects, researching, innovating, planning and implementing well-designed and well-built curriculum. These are designer-teachers alert to contrast, harmony, rhythm and balance in their classrooms. They are conscious of and work in partnership with those who will “inhabit” their buildings. They design “with” rather than “for” and they are certainly not costumed like our beaux-arts architect above! These designers have gone beyond adding simple embellishment and decoration to re-envisage structures in new ways. They wear a variety of hats, and are costumed in many different ways. We invite you to consider the work of these new curricular architects, and, even to consider joining them as a “designer” in your own future architectural endeavors.

Graeme Chalmers

Director

Centre for Cross-Faculty Inquiry in Education