ABSTRACT
In life, we’re invited to parties and special events; we’re invited to be members of organizations, clubs, learning communities, face-to-face and online forums, as well as participants in civic life. How we take up these invitations and what happens during and as a result of our participation varies depending on the ways in which the event is framed, who participates, and available resources. In classrooms, curricular invitations can share properties and practices that are often associated with the invitations we take up in our everyday lives. Curricular invitations take on real-life conditions and offer students opportunities to pursue issues of interest. As formal pieces of curriculum, invitations bring together initial resources around a focal issue and then ask that learners pave their own paths of inquiry depending on their lived experiences and interests. Inviting students to engage in inquiries that have no easy answers or a single right path calls for a complex perspective on the world in which we live as well as an understanding of the ways in which decisions about classroom activity shape the kinds of people students become.
