Blanchelande 2023 | No Mo FOFO: Developing Inquiry Through Research Homework

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

We presented two versions of this INSET on 4 January 2023, one for our secondary teachers and one for our primary teachers. Although the presentations are essentially the same, the primary version is sufficiently different for me to include both here:

• No Mo FOFO: Developing Inquiry Through Thoughtful Research Homework (Secondary) may be downloaded from here.
• No Mo FOFO: Developing Inquiry Through Thoughtful Research Homework (Primary) may be downloaded from here.

A number of interesting and important – and seemingly disparate – ideas begin to connect in this presentation.

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

I produced the following for the presentation, which is the main point of the presentation, and I hope fairly self-explanatory. It is based on the ESIFC REACTS Taxonomy, by Barbara Stripling, and Brainstorms and Blueprints: Teaching Research as a Thinking Process, by Barbara Stripling & Judy Pitts.

It may be downloaded from here as a PDF, and I will make this available in Resources as a PDF and in Word once I have finalised it with Barbara.

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

Research is integral to inquiry – mainly in, but not limited to, the Investigate stage of the inquiry process – and aims at “generating evidence for [answering] the chosen/ given question through empirical investigations of various kinds and/ or from consulting relevant [and reliable] sources” (Wells, 2001, Learning & Teaching Through Inquiry, p. 191). By definition, then, all research is thoughtful, but only thoughtful research tasks actually develop researchers. And in turn, inquirers.

The following may help to visualise this.

FOSIL Inquiry | Developing Researcher REACTionS (click image to enlarge or download as PNG or A4 PDF)

FOSIL Inquiry | Developing Researcher REACTionS plus Sample Assignments (click image to enlarge or download as PNG or A3 PDF)

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

I will return to this later, but it is appropriate here for the time being:

Research is formalised curiosity.

Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Chapter: 10 (Research) page: 143. From <https://www.askideas.com/research-is-formalized-curiosity-it-is-poking-and-prying-with-a-purpose-2/>

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