Week 3 - Thoughts and Reflection

I am now three weeks into this course, and with each week, I am learning more and more about inquiry-based learning, but I feel like I’m just skimming the surface and there is so much more to learn. My thoughts on inquiry-based learning have changed as I am learning more about inquiry. Coming into this course, I had the preconceived notion that inquiry learning is mostly student-centered and the role of the teacher is more of that as a facilitator. While that isn’t necessarily wrong, I’ve learning that inquiry-based learning is much more.

In week two, I learned the importance of developing community and how it is needed to make inquiry learning successful. In an inquiry-based classroom, students are going to be taking risks and stepping out of their comfort zones. They need to feel a sense of security and safety and that their opinions matter. If this isn’t established early on, it is going to be hard to implement inquiry learning. In addition, when developing community, it is important to establish expectations starting on day one.

Another topic in week two that I found very helpful in my understanding of inquiry learning was the process skills demonstrated in the abilities necessary to do inquiry and the understandings about inquiry. Analyzing a social studies unit in Discovery Education’s “techbook” (2020) really helped me to understand what the abilities and understandings of inquiry can look like and how this can be applied in a classroom setting.

Getting to read about the three classroom case studies (2006) in week three really helped me to reflect on the essential features of classroom inquiry and different types of inquiry-based learning. This helped me to see that inquiry learning isn’t just student-centered (open inquiry). It can also be teacher-centered (structured inquiry) and teacher-student shared (guided inquiry).

Going forward, here are some questions I still have about inquiry-based learning:

1.     What strategies are available to develop meaningful, content-driven questions?

2.     Are there Web 2.0 tools available to engage students in inquiry-based learning?

References

BSCS. (2006). Why does Inquiry Matter?. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company.

Geography of the United States and Canada. (2020). Retrieved March 9, 2020, from Discovery Education website: https://app.discoveryeducation.com/learn/techbook/units/3dbf2672-11f2-4b61-9c59-5be419bd4e83/concepts/dfe6ed52-1dd2-4ae5-ba9d-01d313649b1c/tabs/5a1b6f8b-c6bf-4208-87dd-7b3b66692147

Wilkes University (2020). Unit 2, Topic A: Developing Community in an Inquiry Based Classroom. In EDIM 513: Inquiry Based Learning: Spring 2020 [Course content]. Retrieved from https://live.wilkes.edu/d2l/le/content/266096/viewContent/2948295/View

Wilkes University (2020). Unit 2, Topic B: Abilities and Understandings of Inquiry. In EDIM 513: Inquiry Based Learning: Spring 2020 [Course content]. Retrieved from

https://live.wilkes.edu/d2l/le/content/266096/viewContent/2948296/View

Wilkes University (2020). Unit 3, Topic A: Abilities, Understandings, and Process Skills in the Classroom. In EDIM 513: Inquiry Based Learning: Spring 2020 [Course content]. Retrieved from https://live.wilkes.edu/d2l/le/content/266096/viewContent/2948301/View

Wilkes University (2020). Unit 3, Topic C: Types of Inquiry Based Learning. In EDIM 513: Inquiry Based Learning: Spring 2020 [Course content]. Retrieved from

https://live.wilkes.edu/d2l/le/content/266096/viewContent/2948303/View

My Thoughts on Inquiry-Based Learning

Before this class, I had very little knowledge of inquiry-based learning. This week’s readings and discussions have definitely aided in my understanding of inquiry learning, but I still have a lot to learn about the topic.

I really enjoyed the Edutopia article “What the Heck is Inquiry-Based Learning” as it did a nice job explaining what inquiry learning is. I like how the article described inquiry-based learning as triggering curiosity (Wolpert-Gawron, 2016). For teachers, this is no small feat. The good news is, I think educators have a naturally curiosity of their own, and hopefully our curiosity will transition into the classroom and be modeled for our students. This will help grow classrooms that are inquiry-based. Classrooms that are inquiry-based will look different in that learning responsibilities are now placed more on the students rather than on the teacher (Wolpert-Gawron, 2016). I think for inquiry learning to be successful, teachers need to spend time modeling exactly what inquiry-based learning looks like for their students.

The article also highlighted the four steps of inquiry-based learning (Wolpert-Gawron, 2016):
1.     Students develop questions that they are hungry to answer.
2.     Research the topic using time in class.
3.     Have students present what they’ve learned.
4.     Ask students to reflect on what worked about the process and what didn’t.
These steps give me a better idea of what inquiry-based learning may look like and what the students are doing during inquiry learning.

I’m going to guess that most classrooms are not inquiry-based. I co-teach a lot in my role as the librarian, and I can’t think of any classrooms that I’ve been in that are inquiry-based. Most classrooms I’m in are more traditional in that learning is taking place through direct instruction from the teacher. This leads me to one burning question:
How easy is it to transition students from direct instruction to more inquiry learning?

I’m looking forward to learning more about inquiry-based learning in the coming weeks.


References

Wolpert-Gawron, H. (2016, August 11). What the heck is inquiry-based learning? Retrieved March 4, 2020, from Edutopia website: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/what-heck-inquiry-based-learning-heather-wolpert-gawron