Inquiry Learning: Attention please ALL the children have been lost in a tunnel of goats

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.

Comments

[Doug]

Inquiry hasn't received much attention in the skills-based land I work in, so this is not familiar territory for me.

If I apply the SOLO Taxonomy to my possible responses to your post I come up with:
1. Teaching is like herding goats. (prestructural)
2. Classroom inquiry appears chaotic and doesn't necessarily result in meaningful learning. (unistructural)
3. Advocates of inquiry claim that students will engage authentically and connect with the real world. Their education will therefore be relevant to their personal needs. Students, however, may not understand what they are doing. (multistructural)
4. Inquiry is an approach to teaching that is currently favored by progressive educational thinking, which is as prone to error as any other kind of thinking. Teachers might believe that inquiry is an improvement over traditional educational models, but what is our basis of comparison? (relational)
5. A theoretical framework that informs educational decision-making is necessary if we are not going to be forever chasing the latest big idea, which may simply be a reaction to the previous big idea. We need to provide learning opportunities that require students to use complex levels of thinking, and to apply their thinking to a variety of situations. (extended abstract)

My responses might not quite fit the SOLO Taxonomy model but I think I generally understand - except for a nagging question that was addressed at the end of "Using the SOLO Taxonomy."

"Can higher level responding be taught? This is an issue hardly yet investigated....High level responding is not just a matter of strategy...The extended abstract response...would not have been possible without a great deal of background knowledge...The teaching problem is thus twofold: to teach content progressively...and to teach strategies...appropriate to handling the content at the...level you are aiming at."

And now I wonder about "aiming at levels" because the problem of limited background knowledge is significant. The recommendation to teach content progressively and to teach appropriate strategies sounds a lot like what we've presumably already been doing with conventional curriculum models.

To get anyone to transfer information, prompting the "what if..." questions that initiate inquiry is key. My brain aches from the undermining.

[Artichoke]

Hi Doug,
Am still fighting my way through a writing task, takes a disciplined mind to stay on track, so I am rewarding myself with searching for unnecessary blog bling everytime I complete another milestone.

Your analysis develops the original post so well – I just loved reading it.

I have been mute all summer, indulging in many conversations with myself – which has been entirely satisfactory.

Unlike what my colleagues will tell you, (unsettling, barking mad, troubled, extremely aggravating), I find myself quite agreeable in conversation, and I often discover intriguing and unexpected commonalities of thought if I talk to myself for long enough.

I guard the membership of these solitary conversations of the mind quite closely, but I realise that you have snuck in as an imaginary friend - on the strength of your Borderland blog posts and your comments on the Artichoke blog.

You sit there as a “how would Doug see this” kind of conversational catalyst.

Thanks

[nix]

Several years ago, I sat in a lecture theatre with one of the venerable old men of NZ education.

While listening to his interminable monlogues about professional practice and educational ethics, some less than respectful students decided to count his repeated movements and mannerisms in a traditional
tally chart. Hurray for a real life stats moment.

I propose a similar activity through the forthcoming conference.

[Artichoke]

Ahh Nix,

I am hoping that you will assist in collecting responses for the Calvin Klein g-string Index of Educational Wellbeing podcasts and help me man (or should it be woman) the “Pan sector E-Fortunes and T@rot card” Booth I am setting up alongside the MOE’s stand at Learning@School in Rotorua.

I have collected a fishbowl, black velvet cloth, lace shawl, and old card table from the inorganic. Have painted up an old science fair board with signs of the e_cult and symbols of ICT insight. Am currently writing a pool of starter questions – things like “Will I get to be an e-fellow in 2007?” Must not forget the half ton of black eyeliner and patchouli

Reckon I will have about 45 minutes before the waft of patchouli and anxious murmuring from the gathering crowds of teachers, (ever eager to be betrayed by ict), alerts them that wear the jackets” that all is not as planned- But I am prepared - I have been studying maps of the layout of the convention centre. And I have been in training for abandoning the upturned fish bowl and making rapid sprint exits from a seated position.

I will need somewhere to hide out afterwards – an anonymous shelter in a place where they would never think to search - here is where I will be counting on imaginary friends to provide a bunker.

Will be collecting a copy of your room key at registration.

Arti

[nix]

I shall station myself at your shoulder ready to check the integrity of any forthcoming silver with my teeth.

If a hideaway is called for then I know of a local space with fumes so corrosive that asinine edu_speak won't survive.