Reply To: Making Sense of and Constructing Meaning From Information

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

This is an excellent question, Alyssa, and one that I have been wrestling with since I first started working on FOSIL in 2010.

There is a tension here, which Jonathan Rauch (2021, p. 4) describes very well:

[while] acquiring knowledge [necessarily involves] personal struggles to find the right questions and assemble mosaic tiles of information to tell the tale coherently, [acquiring knowledge] is a conversation, not a destination…a journey we take together, not alone, [because] others are always involved [whether living or dead].

I have tended to err on side of personal struggles, mainly because I don’t think students have much space [or time] for the quiet stir of thoughts (John Ciardi), but also because enabling meaningful and productive conversation during an inquiry is challenging.

I am, however, wrestling with this more purposefully at the moment as I begin planning ahead for the next iteration of our Year 9 (Grade 8) Interdisciplinary Signature Work Inquiry @ Blanchelande College, particularly from this post onwards, and in the light of Paulo Freire‘s observation that:

reading the world precedes reading the word, and the subsequent reading of the word cannot dispense with continually reading the world.

I also recommend Action talk, and text: The case for dialogic inquiry (2001), by Gordon Wells (DICEP).

References

• Freire, P. (1983). The importance of the act of reading. Journal of education, 165(1), 5–11. tinyurl.com/38x8etpj.
• Rauch, J. (2021). The constitution of knowledge: A defense of truth. Brookings Institution Press.