This week's reading in ECI 535 delved into the topic of inquiry-based teaching methods. The articles brought to light the benefits of using such a pedagogy, provided insight on what classroom practices created the most beneficial environment conducive to student inquiry, the conditions necessary along with the limitations and challenges, and how goals and authoritative structures can lead to a loss in enabling and fostering curiosity in our students.
Connect with Oral History
One research in the classroom study by Ching Yang (2009) focused on how technology can be used to bridge the gap from the present to the past by using various forms of technology to investigate, learn about, and capture the past. He described a research study performed in Taiwan that gave students the opportunity to perform an oral history project with the elders of the community. Yang discussed the benefits of such a study along with the the drawbacks. Overall, allowing student's to take a hold and learn history through community service and exploration gives students what I like to call "skin in the game." Provide emphatic experiences and learning through curiosity will never be an issue.
Authority Decreases Student Inquiry
Engel and Randall (2008) focused on student inquiry but performed a study concerning the teachers. This study found that while most of the educators involved in the study were deemed "encouraging," the goals and restrictions by authority disabled student inquiry at some level. These results call out standardized testing and the role that teachers feel they have to play as they teach to the test. Teachers can be held by the confines of the goals and objectives set out by their leaders within the school, the district, and the state and national level. I can definitely see how adherence to strict guidelines and teaching specific content facts and figures would enable a loss in the category of student inquiry. It seems the two are antithetical to one another. We can only hope that teachers can find a happy medium in order to facilitate both kinds of learning, ephemeral to keep our jobs, and analytical to broaden our student's horizons.
Best Practices
Roser and Keehn (2002) created a project within the classroom context that focused on finding out what the best methods for student inquiry were based on linking texts, groups, and discussions. Their findings produced two tables that I copied and pasted to my teaching tool bag. They established that there were certain "moves and mediators" that prompted and facilitated deeper analytical thought than merely the ask and reply situation that occurs within the typical classroom. For example, teacher "moves" such as focusing, questioning, probing and "mediators" such as book club tasks, Big Idea journal (I really liked that one), and multiple texts all created an atmosphere that promoted student inquiry rather than deflate it.
Knowing the Process is Critical
Tower (2000) wrote a great article explaining her own process in teaching student inquiry. She described how she fell into the pitfall of expecting the students to know certain things, how to do these items, and immediately grab the bull by the horns and immediately grasp the inquiry process. Then, as her efforts were becoming stagnated in student confusion and teacher dismay, she realized she needed to change the whole process. Essentially, Tower realized she needed to get back to the basics. That is, she needed to teach students how to read nonfiction texts and learn how to draw information out of them before lavishing them with primary source documents and readings that required knowing how to look at something and begin the process of inquiry.
Reflections
I think this last article was the most important piece I have nearly read this year focusing on education. While the article focuses on teaching student inquiry, as a new teacher and recent college grad, I can relate this to basically everything I am learning about teaching. As I make lesson plans that are catered specifically to middle school students, I realize I have to KISS. Don't inflate words, over-examine something, create generalities, or spit out ambiguous phrases that make sense to college-level students but would be gibberish to young minds. I realize my lessons, activities, and units need to be concrete and I need to spell out my expectations and directions as clearly as transcribing the lesson itself.
Ching Yang, S. (2009). A case study of technology-enhanced historical inquiry., 46, 237-248.
Engel, S., & Randall, K. (2008). How Teachers Respond to Children’s Inquiry. American Educational Research Journal, 46, 183-202.
Roser, N. L., & Keehn, S. (2002). Fostering Thought, Talk, and Inquiry: Linking Literature and Social Studies. The Reading Teacher, 55(5), 416-426.
Tower, C. (2000). Questions That Matter: Preparing Elementary Students for the Inquiry Process. The Reading Teacher, 53(7), 550-557.
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