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SUMMER 2026
SUMMER 2026
Institute on Descriptive Inquiry
July 19-30, 2026
Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts
Registration opening mid-November, 2026
New York State CTLE credit
available for participants
The "Institute on Descriptive Inquiry Inc." is an approved vendor for New York City Public Schools. The relevant vendor code is INS414215.
The Summer Institute on Descriptive Inquiry has a theme developed collaboratively in the months preceding the Institute. Below you can see what our focus was last summer:
Summer 2025 Institute on Descriptive Inquiry
Poetry As a Tool of Resistance:
Envisioning Our Futures Together
What insight and power do poetry and poetic knowledge offer us in these times? What does it mean as a way of thinking about and understanding our lives, our learning, and our politics? How does it help us connect with the full humanity of ourselves and others? How is poetry a vehicle for resistance and self-care, expression and democracy, to “think in beautiful” and to illuminate our work and lives?
Description and poetry both connect with the expressive elements of people and the world. Both evoke rather than analyze, drawing on the particular and on recognition of the place of feeling and of expression. In seeking to create more human and just educational and political worlds, both offer us visions of what could be and enable us to dream together. Both offer the possibility of bringing hearts and minds together and of making connections across differences. The poetry of long-time IDI member Charles Ragland distilled and clarified our collective experiences and reflected them to us in ways that brought us together.
This year’s Summer Institute on Descriptive Inquiry will examine and draw on the use of description and modes of poetic thought and expression as ways of understanding our students and our work as educators and as guides for creative action and resistance.
Mow 504 a.k.a Mouhamadou Moustapha Souaré, Yëg Soka Neg (2021), located in the dining hall at Hampshire College. Yëg soka neg is a Wolof expression which describes “a state of mind where you need to feel your higher self before becoming or realizing it” (Hamsphire College dining hall mural label).
ABOUT THE INSTITUTE
This residential Institute is a gathering for teacher, parents, school leaders, and other educators who wish to examine issues of teaching and learning through the perspective of Descriptive Inquiry. At the Summer Institute we come together with others who share our commitment to creating classrooms and schools where all children—and all people— are valued. In joining our experiences, ideas, and questions with those of educators and others who share a vision that starts and builds from students’ and teachers’ strengths, we reinvigorate our own practice and our sense of what is possible.
The Institute on Descriptive Inquiry (Institute 2) is appropriate for people who have had experience with the Descriptive processes. If you have not engaged with the processes previously, the Institute on Descriptive Processes (Institute 1) would be more appropriate. If you have any questions, please contact our Registrar, Alexis, at alexis@idiprocess.org
Past Summer Institute Themes
2001 Taking Care of Childhood, Play, Spirit, and Imagination
2002 Locations of Relationship: Ourselves, Others' Classrooms, Culture
2003 Sustaining Possibility Through Story, Memory, and Imagination
2004 Everyday Life and Our Wildest Dreams: Working Inside Contradictions
2005 The Multiplicities of Democracy
2006 Locating, Designing, Maintaining Spaces for Democratic Community
2007 What Does It Mean to Teach in These Times?
2008 What Do We Hold Dear in Teaching?
2009 Descriptive Inquiry: Coming to Action
2010 Expanding Our Sense of the Possible
2011 Using Descriptive Process to Navigate the New and Difficult Terrain
2012 Using Descriptive Inquiry to Resist and Re-imagine Our Educational Terrain
2013 The Capacity of the Person Within Culture
2014 Supporting the Capacity of the Person Through Community
2015 Expanding Horizons, Combining Perspectives
2016 The Generous Community
2017 How Does Descriptive Inquiry Help Us Move Between the Particular and Politics?
2018 Just[ice] Relations: Knowing Self and Other
2019 Perceiving and Expressing Self, Other, and the World: Capacity, Vulnerability and Voice
2020 Forming and Reforming Identity in a Time of Rebellion Against Racial Injustice
2021 Staying with Trouble: Provisioning for Meaningful Engagement In a Time of Crisis
2022 Description For Connection and Healing: How Do We (Re)Center Education on Our Human, Democratic Values?
2023 Practicing Description to Open Pathways for Creative Resistance
2024 Freedom Dreaming: Transforming Ourselves, Our Work, and Our World(s)
2025 Poetry As a Tool of Resistance: Envisioning Our Futures Together
CONTACT US
For information about the Institute on Descriptive Inquiry or to be added to our mailing list for future announcements, please email Stephane Barile or Andy Doan.
COVID PRECAUTIONS POLICY
We have outlined these precautions to do our best to keep our community safe while still gathering in person.
Photos taken at Hampshire College by Stephane Barile (2022, 2023).
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