Chris raises an important caution to "students as reseachers" approaches in education.
Re the kids as researchers point. I think the key is access to expertise, i.e. not to simply do "pretend" or "soft" research that actually can't cut it beyond the classroom. For me the real issue is about the status of the work. If it is "schooled" work then it will be treated the way most schooled work is, with cynicism, disdain etc. If it is work that matters, is serious, other people are relying on then, in my experience, you get professionalism, huge commitment and so on. The challenge is to provide kids with the expertise they need so that their work can "cut it".
I think Chris is right, and I want to look at what one of the challenges of providing expertise might look like
Try this loose collection of thoughts
“….we found many cases where men could solve the most complicated problems about lenses, yet when given a lens and asked to find the image of a candle flame, would not know on which side of the flame to look for the image.”J.J. Thompson 1937 Nobel Prizewinner Physics Discovery of the Electron
Inquiry learning is currently enjoying a “good thing” status in New Zealand schools. We see it as an alternative to the didactic instructional approaches in schools, those approaches that teach and test for inert knowledge - that “school world” knowledge that sits comfortably dislocated from the knowledge that actually informs student “real world” thought and behavior.
A current affection for child centered approaches, for “Inquiry learning”, “Rich tasks” and/or “Problem based learning”, pervades our educational consciousness.
At your next edu_conference or ict_pd cluster meeting, do a tally count of the number of times you hear claims for “inquiry classrooms” and “authentic learning” linked with a sharp intake of righteousness through every orifice.
[I know I have recklessly conflated Inquiry with PBL and Rich tasks, but I'd ask for a little edu_bloggers licence here]
If you ask New Zealand teachers “why inquiry?” they will suggest that in adopting inquiry based learning, the pedagogy of student centered exploration will (in some ill defined way) introduce an “authenticity” to the “sequestered/isolated in some age sorted institutional space for 6 hours a day” classroom experience.
Inquiry learning is an attempt to get students involved in Chris' "work that matters" or "work that cuts it".
Teachers variously claim that the inquiry classroom will;
- rescue us from the dislocation between classroom learning and real life learning.
- disconnect us from “learning for the test and then forgetting learning”, and reconnect us with real life learning.
- protect us from “Formica Learning” – the learning that results in a veneer of inert knowledge that coexists alongside deeper naïve beliefs.
However when I get to visit classrooms and talk to students who are immersed in this new inquiry and problem based learning I too often stagger out with the impression that the most pressing issue in our schools is no longer “Attention please a child has been lost in a tunnel of goats” but rather “Attention please ALL the children have been lost in a tunnel of goats”
In inquiry learning we mix together didactic and child centered pedagogies with a vibrational efficiency reminiscent of a paint tinting machine at the Mt Roskill Mitre10 hardware store. And then, and then we wonder why when the paint dries on the walls it is clearly duck turd green rather than muted wetlands green.
Think Scardamalia and Bereiter are hot when they claim
“The use of inquiry methods in schools has been based on a frequently disappointed confidence in the power of children's natural curiosity.” Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1994). Computer support for knowledge-building communities. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3(3), 265-283.
But think Gentner, Loewenstein, and Thompson are hotter.
When investigating the educational effectiveness of problem oriented learning, Gentner et al showed that when studying a problem in isolation, students continued to compartmentalise and create inert knowledge. Gentner, D. Loewenstein, J., and Thompson, L. (2003) Learning and transfer: A general role for analogical encoding. Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 95, pp.393 - 408
Students may as well have learned the new concepts in a didactic way in terms of any difference problem oriented learning made to student learning outcomes.
It was only when the problem oriented learning activity required students to compare and contrast quite different cases; to look for similarities and differences across dissimilar and apparently unrelated problems that students showed transfer of knowledge and dramatic learning gains resulting from the activity.
What do I take from Gentner et al.? – If we want to reduce the number of children who get lost in the tunnel of goats in our inquiry based classrooms this year we are going to have to introduce relational and extended abstract type challenge into the students inquiry tasks.
Recent Comments