Abstract
The purpose of this qualitative study was to use an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approach to discover generative instructional and assessment practices of teachers in the language arts classroom at a 5th and 6th grade low socioeconomic public school campus in Texas that earned five distinctions for three consecutive years. The study sought to design a framework for promoting generative teaching and instructional practices which enhance student learning and engagement utilizing the first three phases of the AI 4D Model: Discovery, Dream, and Design. Through a systematic process of discovering the best of what is, dreaming about what could be, designing a plan for what should be, and creating collective commitments about what will be, data was collected through an iterative process of (a) journaling and observations, (b) semi-structured participant interviews, and (c) participant-created documents. Five salient themes emerged from which five pillars of collective commitment were co-created by the study participants as an alternative to highstakes testing and prescriptive learning. A proposed solution was espoused through the following generative learning processes of (a) generative relationships, (b) generative meaning, (c) generative thinking, (d) generative conversation, and (e) generative empowerment. These five new generative learning processes form the basis for future development of a framework that produces generative learning outcomes that empower teachers and students as independent learners who construct meaning through discovery, discourse, and dialogue.