Reconceptualising meaning-making and embracing disruptive inquiry

Teacher education courses are often criticised as having little relevance or application for the real world of teaching. Staying awake to the everyday experiences and ways of knowing of external professional communities, such as graduate and experienced teachers, is a challenge for academics and educational researchers. If academics and researchers are to advance understanding of learning, meaning-making and curriculum decisionmaking in real-world situations, then genuine and shared opportunities to explore their own and others' thinking, lmowledge and professional transitions are needed. This chapter presents the voices of experienced early childhood teachers whose practice and ideas stimulate fresh awareness about meaning, its characteristics and development. My voice as an academic and educational researcher is also present and describes how conversations and interactions with these teachers disrupted my thinking and assumptions about teaching, research and the co-construction of knowledge - serving to jolt, jar and challenge. Ongoing encounters have led to unintended insights and offer suggestions for reconceptualising meaning-making in teacher education and educational research. Dissonance, disruption and ambiguity are ongoing features of learning and professional practice and are important catalysts for knowledge generation and enduring reflection. Watchfulness in relation to dilemmas, imprecise ideas and experiences of uncertainty and disquiet are important, as these characterise educational worlds and signal rich reciprocal meaning-making opportunities for those working within these worlds.