Understanding Together Through Inquiry

What is worth understanding?

In uncertain times, what learning might be useful to our students as they confront a rapidly changing and ambiguous future? This question was posed by Dr. David Perkins (2014), Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Teaching for understanding has been the focus of many educators who are committed to an inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning. Although there is no single way to implement inquiry learning in schools, many agree that projects, rather than fragmented activities, ?entail teaching for big ideas, through contextualized exploration and? questioning, aiming at the development of generalizations that allow for new connections, transfer and application in the real world.

Designing projects for understanding

Grant Wiggins and Jay Mc Tighe, authors of a model for designing units (or projects) known as the Understanding by Design - UbD framework (2006), argue that educators often approach teaching from micro to macro. In other words, they plan for learning activities and later construct assessments based on these activities, hoping to make connections with the learning goals. In contrast, the authors believe that understanding is optimized when the learning goals are considered first, allowing for clear connections between outcomes, assessment and learning experiences. They call this process backward design.

Briefly, the three stages of backward design are:

1.???? Identify desired results (knowledge, skills and understandings)

2.???? Determine acceptable evidence (performance task or other forms of assessment)

3.???? Plan learning experiences and instruction (collective and/or individual learning plans)

A backward design template can help guide schools and teachers who are interested in planning for? projects through the UbD approach.

Authentic learning through inquiry

Inquiry-based learning is an approach that allows teachers and students to work alongside each other, designing and finding context for the development of new knowledge, skills and understandings. Inquiry, in this sense, is the space for agency and co-creation of learning.

Before exploring what inquiry looks like in the classroom, let’s discuss inquiry as a stance or a mindset. According to Trevor Mackenzie and Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt (2018), teachers should display the dispositions they wish to see in their learners. They should ask big questions and try new things. Children flourish when they know they are appreciated and that their teachers are passionate about learning. Having an inquiry mindset is about growth. It’s about asking questions, more than answering them. It’s about provoking, finding time to learn about each young person’s interests, curiosities and helping them see themselves as learners. When teachers reflect on their own assumptions in regard to what is worth understanding and how each child or young person learns best, new opportunities are created for authentic and meaningful learning experiences.

Moving on to the process of inquiry, many educators may be familiar with Kath Murdoch’s work on inquiry and the inquiry cycle, a model that supports teachers and learners throughout dynamic stages of exploration and discovery. Murdoch’s inquiry model (2019) includes:?

·????? Tune in: establish purpose, provoke curiosity and pose questions

·????? Find out: use a range or resources and methods to gather information

·????? Sort out: make sense of the information gathered

·????? Go further: pose new questions and make room for personal pathways

·????? Reflect and act: reflect on understandings and consider ways to apply, communicate or share learning.

According to Murdoch (2015), inquiry is an approach that consciously positions the learner as an active participant in a process of investigation, in which teacher and student initiated questions help drive the learning. ?

It is also important to say that there are different kinds of inquiry models, including: structured inquiry, guided inquiry and open inquiry.? These types of inquiry vary according to the level of independence given to students in choosing the “what” and the “how” of learning.

Inquiry as a collaborative experience

Finalizing this very brief overview of understanding through inquiry, I’d like to share a few reflections on the importance of collaboration. Designing authentic projects and learning experiences shouldn’t be viewed as an isolated or individual task. When educators plan together, they exchange their views on how to create meaningful learning opportunities. They investigate different contexts that might spark the students’ wonderings and curiosity. Teaching teams, coordinators and principals may debate on possible resources, interviews, talks, field trips, interdisciplinary connections or multimodal ways of making meaning. In doing so, they are also adopting an inquiry mindset. They move beyond the prescribed curriculum and become critical and creative participants of a learning ecology that opens spaces for agency and change.

References:

MACKENZIE, T; BATHURST-HUNT, R. Inquiry Mindset: Nurturing the Dreams, Wonders & Curiosities of our Youngest Learners. Elevate Books. 2018.

MURDOCH, K. The power of inquiry: teaching and learning with curiosity, creativity and purpose in the contemporary classroom. Seastar Education: Northcote, Victoria,?2015

PERKINS, D. Future Wise: Educating our Children for a Changing World. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA,?2014

WIGGINS, G.; MC TIGHE, J. Understanding by Design. Pearson Education, N.J.,?2006