Inquiry as “wag the dog” pedagogy.

I have spent the past couple of days learning about Dr Ruby Payne’s Framework for Understanding Poverty with a cluster of South Auckland Primary Schools. I have never been to a course that has seemed more credible to the teachers in the audience. Everyone seemed to have gone home on the first night and taught what they had learned to partners, flatmates, children and the dog.  Cynical and change weary teachers were so captured by the practical strategies and insight offered that they were even buzzing about what they were planning to implement on Monday as they queued to get a pay and display ticket in the Telstra Clear Centre car park on the second day. 

I am still thinking about the workshop and the recent critique of Payne’s work.  But I enjoyed the overview she provided of the research background to the Feuerstein mediation approach used in the interventions, and the concerns raised over constructivist approaches. - “part of the ability to be educated is the ability to have shared understanding … it is not enough to make meaning in your own head, …it is important to be able to communicate in a way other people can understand.” 

I found it refreshing to hear an alternative and reasoned critique of an approach strongly valorised in New Zealand.  Schools see inquiry as an alternative to didactic instructional approaches; as a substitute for approaches that teach and test for inert knowledge.

When I ask teachers “Why inquiry?” many 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.

Teachers 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 motivated for real life learning.
• Protect us from “Formica Learning” – the learning that results in a veneer of inert knowledge that coexists alongside deeper naïve beliefs.

They never stop to ask if inquiry is a wag the dog pedagogy, they never ask if we have misidentified what "matters most" and what "matters least" in learning, and they never ask about face validity versus construct validity wrt learning

Do students who experience  inquiry based learning environments have an understanding that is deeper, more integrated, more coherent and at a higher level of abstraction than  students who learn in “one size fits all” environments?

I’ve noted before that schools looking for research evidence on the efficacy of an inquiry based pedagogical intervention are poorly served by the research literature.  There is an evaluative reliance upon anecdotal reactions to inquiry based pedagogical interventions.  Too often the research methodology and sample sizes used means much of it is not repeatable, or able to be generalised to other settings. We have only superficial accounts of what was done, or anecdotal reporting on participants initial enjoyment of  the inquiry based learning experience, the “I have never been so excited about my teaching” and  “my brain was stretched” teacher and student responses.

More worrying is a growing suspicion that pedagogies of “inquiry” can all too easily create inert content knowledge, the very outcomes the pedagogies are adopted to prevent. 

And even more worrying to schools heavily committed to inquiry is a recent research paper by Clark, Kirschner and Sweller. Titled "Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching" Their arguments that inquiry learning approaches, 

…ignore both the structures that constitute human cognitive architecture and evidence from empirical studies over the past half century that consistently indicate that minimally-guided instruction is less effective and less efficient than instructional approaches that place a strong emphasis on guidance of the student learning process. (Kirschner et al (2006).

interest me and need to be carefully critiqued in New Zealand schools.

Comments

[nix]

Hey Artichoke, I heard Ruby Payne speak in Melbourne last year and was impressed by both her passion and her accent.

Moving right along to Inquiry. Have you noticed that Inquiry often has a capital 'I' now?

Regards from one blighted by blogger's block

[ailsa]

I only read it cause i was curious, I guess thats coz i like to be provoked to think rather than told what to think.
Bruno Latour writes of how critique may have run out of steam, If we always cut away instead of adding to...a focus on matters of fact rather than matters of concern. Perhaps it is a problem of critical thinking that it has become inherently critical - rather than adding to a fuller picture it cuts away, in the process it oversimplifies instead of enriching? The article seems to over simplify, and based on a false premise that constructivist approaches do not consider the workings of memory as integral. (in my humble opinion).

[Artichoke]

Don't know Bruno Latour - I see "cutting away" as "adding to" - trying to tease out the essence of the idea - but I am also constantly surprised by how profoundly ignorant I turn out to be - am always revising my restless thinking -do you have a reference I can read?

Is funny you should pick out misrepresentations of memory Ailsa, I am currently suffering from a “cereal brain sog” where my ability to think resembles that of a bowl of weetbix left soaking in a bowl of warm milk for 20 minutes -

I am struggling to sequence ideas, to connect, to compare, to classify, to generalise, I can no longer hold more than one conversation with myself at one time, and instead of reading five books concurrently I am having to become a cereal/serial reader.

I cannot tell if this is a side effect of being cracked on the head with the hammer, too much laughter and wine with siblings staying over for grandpa’s 90th birthday, too much brain stretch dealing with grandpa’s eccentric world view or simply cognitive overload brought on by the arrival of Weizenbaum’s book from Alibris and Ruby Payne’s workshop.

The idea that I might carefully critique anything at the moment is risible but like you – I am curious.

Think the trick in any of these celebrity death match edu_ arguments between academics, is that they seldom address what the teachers are understanding and implementing with the ideas they theorise about.

They seldom look at the practical face of the ideas/strategies to accurately translate these ideas into classroom pedagogies –

And if the ideas are never communicated to teachers it is all a little like academia playing rock paper scissors by themselves.

It is what interested me in Ruby Payne’s workshop – how the practical face of the research base she was using - [mediated learning experiences and interventions that help students make sense of the world all around them – all children can learn how to learn – and special interaction between learner and mediator] was communicated to and clarified for teachers – it was superbly done.

So even if I can resolve Kirschner, Sweller and Clark’s ideas intellectually, my experience of teacher’s implementation of constructivism and inquiry learning may mean I am still made uncomfortable with what I resolve.

In the words of the ever influential Johnny Gomez and Nick Diamond – I am going to have to tilt at gore, violence and some juicy edu_celebrity casualties in the next post --but don't worry, I’m just going to be claying around in my mind.

[Jedd Bartlett]

Thanks for pointing me to this article. Got me all fired-up.

You ask; "Do students who experience inquiry based learning environments have an understanding that is deeper, more integrated, more coherent and at a higher level of abstraction than students who learn in “one size fits all” environments?"

As someone who has spent a great deal of time over the last 15 years with teachers struggling with understanding effective inquiry and the development of independent learners I reckon from my experience they don’t if teachers have a low level understanding of the learning theory that underpins effective inquiry (in its various manifestations). I guess we’ve all seen the pointlessness of schools/teachers taking up a formulaic inquiry process or series of steps and stages and “applying” them; the “we do inquiry” approach.

But they do if the school/teacher has included and implemented the full range of other essential elements. For an obvious example - if there is clear, regular, and appropriate guidance from teachers (Clark, Kirschner and Swelle are talking about minimal-guidance or none).

Again - if inquiry takes place in a context in which children already have high level of knowledge. Clark, Kirschner and Swelle say "The advantage of guidance begins to recede only when learners have sufficiently high prior knowledge to provide ‘internal’ guidance." Well of course.

[Artichoke]

Ahh Jedd, I agree that this is an article that is certainly worthy of some “learning circle critique” in New Zealand staffrooms,

My interest is not in the article argument itself so much as the way teachers` interpret what the academics represent as constructivism and inquiry learning.

I can believe many of the claims made because I have been nudged by all of the following Kirshner et al thinking when working with schools on constructivist pedagogies in New Zealand.

• Surprisingly Extensive Scaffolding: Because students learn so little from a constructivist approach most teachers who attempt to implement classroom based constructivist instruction end up providing students with considerable guidance aka scaffolding

• Subsequent Tests: Learners required to solve problems perform worse on subsequent test problems than learners who study the equivalent worked examples – fits with cognitive load theory

• Worked examples: Novices studying worked examples – are invariably superior to novices discovering or constructing a solution to a problem

• Learning nothing: Learners can engage in problem solving activities for extended periods of time and learn almost nothing

• Expertise reversal effects: issues for how we teach gifted students in inclusive classrooms

• Process work sheets add value to learning

• 100 million blow flies can’t be wrong effects: Despite knowing less after instruction – less able learners liked the experience of inquiry

The extensive scaffolding is "a case in point" or "a point in case" – I can never figure out which creates more buy in ….the Magnet and I have developed a pedagogical framework for inquiry that addresses some of the concerns identified by Kirschner et al, and we have been using it in the schools we work with over the past year.

It identifies the role of both teacher and the role of the student, in determining the learning experiences for understanding, through Herron’s four levels of inquiry, (Herron, 1971).

The inquiry design framework we have developed celebrates the ponderous buttock by allowing fence sitting across all levels of “L” word understanding – and supports pedagogical approaches allowing:

• Teacher driven confirmation/verification approaches (behaviourist learning theory approach), [Problem, procedure and solution given]
  
• Teacher student driven guided inquiry (constructivist learning theory approach) [Problem and procedure given] or [Problem given]
  
• Student driven and constructed open inquiry (co-creator connectivist learning theory approach).[Students investigate their own topic related questions ]

Both teachers and students can use the same design template to detail the learning experiences and questions planned for the inquiry. Teachers often use Level 0 Inquiry (confirmation/verification), to plan immersion activities for students before they are challenged to develop their own questions for Level 3 student driven open inquiry. Gifted and talented students can do it alone right from the start.

Academics will loathe the eclectism but teachers have enjoyed the pedagogical clarity it gives to planning

[Jedd Bartlett]

Must discuss the inquiry design framework you describe some time - f2f. From what you say we are probably on the same side of the fence singing a similar tune.

[Bill Kerr]

I agree with Jedd. The sort of problems being described here with constructivism come about mainly with constructivism entering the mainstream, being foisted onto some unwilling teachers, by academic curriculum writers who ought to know better. Constructivism works fine for those who know what they are doing. The authors, Clark et al, have done a good job of avoiding research that has been successful.

The heading of the paper by Clark et al is provocative and dogmatic ("minimal guidance does not work") and the dogma of it is contradicted shortly thereafter in the abstract (to paraphrse - minimal guidance is OK provided the learner can provide internal guidance)

DOH. Let's just aspire to an education system in the next 100 years where the learners can't provide any internal guidance. Let's glorify one end of the educational spectrum and cast the other end into total darkness.

Some of the best constructivist studies are not cited in the references - only one Papert reference, the studies by Idit Harel and Cynthia Solomon not even mentioned

In constructivism the idea is to construct a learning environment in which the intended learning emerges naturally - the teacher mediates this process trying to minimise direct instruction. ie. the teacher creates an environment in which there are enough clues, guidelines, checks and balances available for the learners to go down the desired pathway. Internal guidance is built with the aid of such environments, which are well managed.

This can worker better than crude instructionism standing out the front of the room and talking - watch the eyes glaze over. The desire to be minimalist is well founded in reality.

I have taught constructivism in this way successfully, see ISDP and have also taught using behaviourist techniques successfully, see behaviourism

It just seems blindingly obvious to me that all good teachers use a variety of methods, ranging from constructivist / inquiry based at one end of the sprectrum to instructionist / behaviourist / didactic at the other end of the spectrum

Walk the walk. Wise up to the headline grabbing dogma of those who say "it does not work" padded up with irrelevant information about long term memory, short term memory etc.

[cj]

Let's not forget that the real driver for testing, assessment, curriculum fetish is not some abstruse theory that is either pro or con the mind. Much of educational theory reminds one of the pre-alchmemical, but be that is it may, the real driver is the $. What we test is what costs less. So when you take your car for a service - say no thanks just let the tea lady give it a glance and I'll settle for that - much less expensive than having someone who understands how a computer controlled internal combustion engine works.

Do you mean you want to spend THAT much on why this child is having trouble reading? Don't be silly you poor fool. Give yourself a payrise and administer v 2.95 of the reading test.

[Artichoke]

Check out
Random Access Mazar Blog thoughts on Inquiry Learning in tertiary - she raises some different challenges to the ones we have raised here -

Inquiry-based learning methods (as described to me thus far) appear to undervalue the resource that the instructor really is to the student. While I’ve spent lots of time talking about changing the structure of power in classrooms (taking some power away from the instructor in order to empower students), but if the structure of the course is based entirely on the questions of the students, there isn’t much room for the knowledge of the instructor.

and Joan Vinall Cox's thinking in response is worth looking at on the Elg Learning Landscape Blog

Vinall-Cox argues No theory is applicable in all situations in the classroom, and theories that undermine the personal practical knowledge of teachers, are destructive, IMHO.

[Bill Kerr]

I'm revisiting the Kirschner et al critique of constructivism

The URL of the paper has changed, just tracked it down, the new URL is here(pdf)

also go here for gel papers :

gel = guided experiential learning.
there are quite a few papers that look interesting, including one on the role of deliberate practice in the role of acquiring expertise, which I agree with Ericsson

the contradiction b/w the Kirschner and Ericsson papers is resolved thus:
constructionism / constructivism does work provided it helps to motivate individuals in effortful study - constructionism can achieve this more readily than other methods, not for all, but does work for those who become motivated - the teacher needs to be expert and understand what is happening

constructionism as developed by Papert et al is a method of subtle (environmental) intervention, yes, there is scaffolding but it is relatively unobtrusive - with scaffolding being removed (the teacher getting out the way and letting students create) where appropriate - other approaches may not enable able students to flourish in this way, they may always keep students chained up

the point is that constructivism used in this way is a form of guided experiental learning, it is just that the method of guidance is much more sophisticated and can create more interesting / enjoyable classroom environments, for both students and teachers

this was certainly explained clearly by Harel and Papert - only Papert's 1980 book Mindstorms is cited in the references, a lot of very good research is ignored in this "authoritative" study

constructionism / discovery learning does not work as some sort of generalised "weeties for the brain" in traditional School environments - however, the claim that children often learn more (through play) before they come to school than they learn at school ought to be not forgotten in thinking these issues through

the bit in Kirschner et al about long term memory I think is refuted in this paper
The Expert Mind. Read the section on chunking, particularly the last couple of paragraphs:

"Ericsson also cites studies of physicians who clearly put information into long-term memory and take it out again in ways that enable them to make diagnoses. Perhaps Ericsson's most homely example, though, comes from reading. In a 1995 study he and Walter Kintsch of the University of Colorado found that interrupting highly proficient readers hardly slowed their reentry to a text; in the end, they lost only a few seconds. The researchers explained these findings by recourse to a structure they called long-term working memory, an almost oxymoronic coinage because it assigns to long-term memory the one thing that had always been defined as incompatible with it: thinking. But brain-imaging studies done in 2001 at the University of Konstanz in Germany provide support for the theory by showing that expert chess players activate long-term memory much more than novices do.

Fernand Gobet of Brunel University in London champions a rival theory, devised with Simon in the late 1990s. It extends the idea of chunks by invoking highly characteristic and very large patterns consisting of perhaps a dozen chess pieces. Such a template, as they call it, would have a number of slots into which the master could plug such variables as a pawn or a bishop. A template might exist, say, for the concept of "the isolated queen's-pawn position from the Nimzo-Indian Defense," and a master might change a slot by reclassifying it as the same position "minus the dark-squared bishops." To resort again to the poetic analogy, it would be a bit like memorizing a riff on "Mary had a little lamb" by substituting rhyming equivalents at certain slots, such as "Larry" for "Mary," "pool" for "school" and so on. Anyone who knows the original template should be able to fix the altered one in memory in a trice."

also I am disappointed in george siemens belated analysis of constructivism
http://connectivism.ca/blog/68#comments
He hasn't successfully integrated older learning theories (constructivism, behaviourism) with his new ideas (more on this, later)

[Bill Kerr]

I've added a critique of George Siemens critique of constructivism (with links) to my blog, the network is not god and also to my learningEvolves wiki

network gooooooood
construction baaaaaaaaad
not

[West Seattle Dan]

I think the key operative word is "minimally"
in the phrase "minimally" guided instruction. Like Bill Kerr, I have had excellent results with many "reform math" constuctivist activities but I have used more than Minimal guidance.

In October 2008, David C. Geary published a major study involving "Biologically Primary Knowledge" and "Biologically Secondary Knowledge", which sheds significant light into this sometimes dark hole. Explaining why "Explicit Instruction" is often necessary for efficient learning of "Biologically Secondary Knowledge".

http://mathunderground.blogspot.com/2009/07/biologically-secondary-knowledge-takes.html