Darryl Toerien
Active 1 day, 15 hours agoRole: Head of Inquiry-Based Learning
Town/City: Guernsey
Country: United Kingdom
Forum Replies Created
-
Thanks for separating the topics, Jannath – I was going to suggest that.
Thoughts on your initial post:
- Even if you are going to focus on Construct, I think there would still be value in starting with an overview of the Cycle for two main reasons and stepping them briefly through Connect, Wonder and Investigate. Firstly, as you pointed out in your Year 10 Context in Chosen Literature topic, the importance of establishing intellectual and emotional engagement during Connect cannot be overstated. Secondly, Construct is a logical stage in a learning process, so helping students to locate themselves in that learning process is important.
- The graphic organisers that we have developed for stages/ skill sets, which are freely available in Resources, as well as those that are freely available for individual skills through the Empire State Information Fluency Continuum (by Standard or Grade), serve as tools for instruction and/ or assessment. So, any graphic organiser(s) that you adopt and/ or adapt, for Construct could count towards assessment (see below). However, if they have already been taught/ learnt what they need to know – which would be unfortunate if learning important content remained divorced from the inquiry – then perhaps the focus should be on a culminating product in Express, which would include, more or less briefly, Connect, Wonder Investigate, and Construct.
- We have used inquiry journals very effectively to support students in Primary through all the stages in the process.
This leads to thoughts on your second post:
- The number and complexity of the skills that your RE teacher is looking for is ambitious for Year 7 (perhaps not unreasonably so, because it’s not clear how much time you have – number of lesson, length of lessons, and homework, or not).
- Most of these skills fall into Investigate skill sets (see below), with Referencing in Express/ Academic Integrity (although recording the bibliographic details is necessary in Investigate). So, from the skills it looks like the focus is Investigate, and there are graphic organisers to instruct/ assess those skills. However, the ‘talk’ about their chosen religion sounds like a culminating product, which is Express, and to get there they would need to meaningfully go through Construct.
- Given that it seems like they will need to progress through more than one stage, agreed clarity on the focus of the assessment will be vital.
Perhaps the most versatile graphic organiser, given the points above, will be some form of the Investigative Journal, which we have adapted for use in primary and secondary (both versions available in Resources), and I include an example below from our Year 9 Signature Work inquiry:
This could be easily simplified and, clearly, there are a range of skills implicit in this example, such as having been able to find the information that I am now working with.
We have chosen APA to base our referencing style on, mainly because at a school level it is essentially the same as Harvard (which is very common), it is simpler than MLA, it is available in Word (which we use in school), and it is the standard style we use for HPQ (Year 10) and EPQ (Year 12/13). This is how it is currently worded in our draft Academic Integrity Policy (which is adapted from the Framework of Skills):
- By the end of Year 2: With help, makes a list of the source(s) used with title and author
- By the end of Year 6: Provides a bibliography of all sources used according to the primary school style format {details to be finalised in conjunction with Heads of Inquiry-Based Learning, ICT and Juniors as part of the Year 6 Signature Work}
- By the end of Year 9: Cites all sources used according to the secondary school style format {in our case this is the fundamentals of the APA standard style format, with details to be finalised in conjunction with the Heads of Inquiry-Based Learning, ICT and English as part of the Year 9 Signature Work}
- Over Years 10 and 11: Cites all sources used according to the secondary school style format {details to be finalised following the above}
- Over Years 12 and 13: Cites all sources used according to the APA standard style format {details to be finalised following the above}
I hope that this help you somewhat in moving this exciting and important project forwards.
Our induction session raised a point of clarification and a question, which I share here from the perspective of building a community of inquiry.
Clearly, not all learning needs to happen through an inquiry involving all six stages in the process. However, it is difficult to imagine any learning that does not involve one or more of the stages. Having said that, students will not fully develop as engaged and empowered inquirers if they never experience a full inquiry involving all six stages of the process in each of our disciplines. The reason for this is that inquiry is a fundamental human response to reality – What! Why? I have been thinking about this in Whitehead’s* terms of there being only one subject-matter for education, which is life in all its manifestations (p. 10), which our students encounter in school primarily as subjects/ academic disciplines. Elsewhere, he says:
“From the very beginning of their education, the child should experience the joy of discovery. The discovery which they have to make, is that general [conceptual] ideas give an understanding of that stream of events which pours through their life, which is their life.” (p. 3)
This is why we pursue disciplinary knowledge from a stance of wonder and puzzlement, and in an interdisciplinary way, because the manifestations of life/ reality ought to cohere meaningfully, and we have an important opportunity/ responsibility to facilitate this.
X’s question about making Rosenshine and FOSIL-based inquiry explicit in our planning – with important distinctions between medium term planning and individual lesson plans – was in part addressed by Y’s observation on the similarities between quality direct teaching as formulated by Rosenshine and a guided inquiry approach. This is the reason why Tytler’s article is so important, because his table expresses Rosenshine’s principles in terms of an inquiry stance and process, so any explicit occurrence of one or more of Rosenshine’s principles is also potentially a meaningful occurrence of its inquiry equivalent, and vice versa. While these ‘principles’ can’t be neatly assigned to stages in the inquiry process, they may indicate which stage(s) is involved. For example, while Tap into students current/prior knowledge including from previous learning will always be a feature of Connect [and the start of an inquiry], it would likely also be the starting point for a lesson/ series of lessons just focusing on the Construct stage of the inquiry process [because students can’t build knowledge and understanding from nothing in Construct, which is why it follows on from Investigate].
As Z pointed out, this all gives us great flexibility in how together we go about enabling our individual students to develop as engaged and empowered inquirers within our disciplinary communities of interdisciplinary knowledge – a journey of heroic inquiry that we are always making with them.
—
*”Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) was a British mathematician and philosopher best known for his work in mathematical logic and the philosophy of science. … Although there are important continuities throughout his career, Whitehead’s intellectual life is often divided into three main periods. The first corresponds roughly to his time at Cambridge from 1884 to 1910. It was during these years that he worked primarily on issues in mathematics and logic. It was also during this time that he collaborated with Russell [notably on the Principia Mathematica]. The second main period, from 1910 to 1924, corresponds roughly to his time at London. During these years Whitehead concentrated mainly on issues in physics, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of education. The third main period corresponds roughly to his time at Harvard from 1924 onward. It was during this time that he worked primarily on issues in metaphysics.”
From <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whitehead/>
Whitehead reference: Whitehead, A. N. (1929). The Aims of Education and Other Essays. New York, NY: Macmillan.
On 11 November, Elizabeth Hutchinson and I met for the fifth in our ongoing monthly discussion about education, school libraries and FOSIL-based inquiry.
The recording of this discussion is freely available here on Elizabeth’s site.
I have only just realised that I have not explained what a Signature Work is, or where the idea comes from, which I will do at greater length when time permits.
In the meantime, this is essentially how we present it our students:
I have revised the Investigative Journal that students will be using this half term as they now read for information and meaning.
The main change is the inclusion of an example (p. 2 below), which I might tweak slightly for greater clarity. I ended with the poster template from last year’s Signature Work Inquiry Celebration (p. 16), because I may tweak that slightly this year.
I will make this Investigative Journal available here once finalized next week.
I had hoped to reflect here on changes to this year’s inquiry before the start of our academic year in September, but time did not permit.
A major change was that the inquiry started in September – which is the start of our academic year, rather than mid-October – in both Computing and English, which meant that for the first half-term each class had three 35-minute lessons, two in Computing and one in English. This presented an opportunity, but also a challenge. The opportunity lay in more purposefully integrating the digital inquiry component in Computing with the informational reading component in English from the outset of the inquiry. This was also the challenge.
Last year, students were able to choose any topic that interested them, provided that their topic presented them with a problem or question that they would explore and discuss as part of their Signature Work inquiry. This degree of openness was appropriate for the culminating product, which was their GCSE English Language speaking and listening Non-Examined Assessment (NEA) on a topic of their choice (see posts above). This created two practical problems. Firstly, a number of students struggled to arrive at a problem or question related to their topic, which made it difficult for them to fully satisfy the requirements of a Signature Work, or the NEA. Secondly, the wide variety of choice, while eventually a useful way to develop the collection, made it difficult to resource the inquiry with interesting and accessible texts, whether in print or online, in a timely way.
Given that a focus of the digital inquiry component is finding and working with online information, both in databases and on the web, one of our databases remained the most logical place to start. However, all students would need to start with the same article if they were to learn how to access the article virtually [by finding it in the database] and then physically [by printing it] in order to begin accessing it intellectually [by reading it] in their first English lesson.
Having attended a very interesting presentation on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the IASL Annual Conference, the SDGs allowed me to solve both practical problems. Firstly, the Britannica School Intermediate article on the SDGs provided all students with the same starting point, although the SDGs are varied enough for all students to identify with one or more SDGs in a very personal way. Secondly, the SDGs by their very nature inescapably confront students with problems and/ or questions that they will increasingly give personal shape to.
At the same time, following our own presentation at IASL – Recovering the Educational Promise of Inquiry – I had been thinking long and hard about Neil Postman’s abiding commitment to “non-trivial schooling,” which “can provide a point of view from which what is [reality] can be seen clearly, what was as a living present, and what will be as filled with possibility” (1996, p. x). Inquiry, done properly, is non-trivial schooling, and in orienting students towards a problem or question framed within an SDG, the Signature Work inquiry had to do so in such a way that students could see what will be as filled with possibility, and would be empowered to begin fashioning reality from that possibility. Out of this, the theme of the Signature Work inquiry emerged:
The Future Needs You: Living Well in a World Worth Living in
I will reflect on lessons learned from this half term in due course, but end here with an overview the inquiry:
Thanks for this, Mary-Rose.
Some quick thoughts.
Your observation underscores Neil Postman’s point – made with Charles Weingartner more than 50 years ago! – that “of all the ‘survival strategies’ education has to offer, none is more potent or in greater need of explication than the ‘inquiry environment'” (1971, p. 36, emphasis added). This remains the case, and realizing the educational promise of inquiry requires some understanding of the debilitating tendencies that rob inquiry of its potency, four of which we addressed most recently in our AASL presentation – Leading an Inquiry-Based School: Discovering the Promise – which are:
- Inquiry as a dynamic process and skills is divorced from learning important content.
- Inquiry is reduced to a mechanical process with no spirit of wonder and puzzlement.
- Without both a spirit of wonder and puzzlement and a dynamic process, inquiry is reduced to a thoughtless fact-finding activity.
- Increasing emphasis on the “engineering of learning” based on ‘hard evidence’ from the field of cognitive science endangers the possibility of inquiry.
What we have yet to address is the extent to which an individual school is, or isn’t, what John MacBeath (1993) termed an enabling environment, and discussed so perceptively.
In the context of inquiry, the work of the Developing Inquiring Communities in Education Project (DICEP) is extraordinary. DICEP started in 1991 as a collaboration between teachers in public schools (Grades 1-8) in metro Toronto and surrounding areas and university teacher educators at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto. Over 10 years, the Project saw a shift in focus from “a study of ‘Learning through Talk’ in elementary science classrooms [to] creating opportunities for inquiry-based learning and teaching at all levels and in all areas of the curriculum” (p. 2).*
Gordon Wells, who led the collaboration, concludes with the following observations:
- “In general terms…the force that drives the enacted curriculum must be a pervasive spirit of inquiry, and the dominant purpose of all activities must be an increase in understanding.” (p.7)
- “However…there is no straightforward, universal method of achieving these goals .” (p.7)
- “Each classroom is thus unique. And so, if teachers are to create communities that work collaboratively toward shared goals while valuing diversity of opinion…and, at the same time, are to foster individual initiative and creativity, they also must approach the task in a spirit of inquiry….In fact, teacher and students together must become a community of inquiry with respect to all aspects of the life of the classroom and all areas of the curriculum.” (p.7)
- “First, if classrooms were to become places where students were actively and enthusiastically attempting to construct answers to questions that were of real interest to them – rather than simply going through the routines of ‘doing school’ – more would be needed than the introduction of prepackaged inquiry activities, taken from teachers’ manuals or downloaded from the Internet.” (p.8)
- “Second…a great deal hinged on being able to change the habitual patterns of interaction in the classroom, with their built-in assumptions that it was teachers, not students, who were entitled to ask questions and that such questions should be the ones to which there were correct answers, already known by the teacher….really interesting questions rarely had simple answers.” (pp.8-9)
- “Not only do schools, as institutions, have established patterns of organization…that make it difficult to depart from traditional practices, but both teachers and students have been enculturated into roles and routines that are often hard to break.” (p.9)
- “Every classroom is unique in respect to the persons it brings together, the resources available to them, and the constraints under which they operate. This means that any theory of pedagogy or curriculum necessarily has to be adapted and modified according to local conditions. There is, however, a much more fundamental reason for the failure of top-down reform, namely, that the relationship between academic theory and the practice of teaching is much less direct than the implementation model implies.” (p.16)
- “In the long term…for change to become institutionalized it must be appropriated by those who are involved on a continuing basis, and enacted in the moment-by-moment decisions that make up daily classroom practice.” (p.15)
As for the misapprehension of inquiry in relation to research, we explored this in an INSET session at Blanchelande – Blanchelande 2023 | No Mo FOFO: Developing Inquiry Through Research Homework – from which I quote:
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, p. 191). By definition, then, all research is thoughtful, but only thoughtful research tasks actually develop researchers. And in turn, inquirers.
This misapprehension is what happens when inquiry is divorced from learning important content.
*The work of DICEPS was foundational for the Galileo Educational Network (GEN), which served as the professional learning arm of the School of Education at the University of Calgary from 1999-2022, whose defintion of inquiry ours is enlarged from:
Inquiry is a stance of wonder and puzzlement that gives rise to a dynamic process of coming to know and understand the world and ourselves in it as the basis for responsible participation in community.
References
- Postman, N., & Weingartner, C. (1971). Teaching as a Subversive Activity. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
- MacBeath, J. (1993). Learning for Your Self: Supported Study in Strathclyde Schools. Strathclyde : Strathclyde Regional Council.
- Wells, G. (2001). The Development of a Community of Inquirers. In G. Wells (Ed.), Action, Talk, & Text: Learning and Teaching Through Inquiry (pp. 1-23). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Edit (2023/10/30): I have added links to the revised graphic organisers and have also added PDF downloads.
—
I include below the next stage in the development of the Portrait of an Engaged and Empowered Inquirer at Years 3, 6, 9, and 13, which are the typical Portrait Attributes Developed Through Inquiry in Years 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, and 10-13.
I will elaborate in due course.
Portrait Attributes Developed Through Inquiry in Years 1-3 (PDF download).
Portrait Attributes Developed Through Inquiry in Years 4-6 (PDF download).
Portrait Attributes Developed Through Inquiry in Years 7-9 (PDF download).
Portrait Attributes Developed Through Inquiry in Years 10-13 (PDF download).
