The culture of the school and the community in which inquiry happens as well as the mindsets of its learners are important.
Ruth Deakin Crick, in a British study (2009), set aside pre-packaged curriculum and used her local community to offer students a journey of inquiry and personal growth; she offered them a curriculum of “local choice” based on their interests and experience. Crick’s study explores the impact of the information age, of globalization, and of emerging technologies; the ways people experience the world have been forever changed. Technology mediates learning, doling out life in pre-formatted ‘helpings,’ she suggests. Old ways of knowing, linear and bounded, are being challenged, and people are “at the mercy of a software developer or video editor, mouse button or remote control.” Information itself is no longer enough: Know-how or “the ability to relate and harness information to identify and purpose, by personalising, adding value and meaning, redesigning, and re-presenting what is ‘known’ in new contexts” are the requisite skills for navigating and interacting with the Knowledge Society (76). Implicit in her argument is a sharp critique of the “factory system” of education where students lack agency and passively receive or consume information, a 20th century model that Crick links to the “command and control” economy.
Of the inquiry-based approach to community implemented in the study, Crick concludes that:
… personalised pedagogy challenges the traditional parameters of the lesson and subject-based curriculum, but rewards are found in terms of personalisation, that is, a pedagogy which takes the person who is learning as seriously as the learning outcome. It is anchored in personal interest, rather than didactic intent, and it begins with experiential knowing, rather than propositional knowledge, opinion, or theory. It may appear on the surface to be a return to the child-centred pedagogies of the 1960s, in reaction to the overly prescribed knowledge-centred pedagogies of the 1990s. The centre of balance, however, is nether the ‘child’ nor the ‘knowledge’: the focus is on the process of knowledge co-construction — and as such it is learner centred, rather … [it] integrates and reconciles the two. (88-90)
Acknowledging that there are major challenges in conceptualizing and enacting a personalized “inquiry-based” curriculum of this nature, Crick points to the expanded role of teachers as both content specialists and learning mentors with strong real-world connections, to the organization of schools in lessons, content areas, assessment, bricks-and-mortar, and times of year, and to the implications for leadership. Yet the study reveals:
… invaluable principles and practice that illuminate what is known about how learners can learn how to learn, and how that learning can be integral to their emerging life-narratives and the meta-narratives of society, thus creating a more sustainable form of pedagogy that stimulates personal and social transformation. (89)
Crick looked at inquiry and its capacity to make a difference to adolescents ranging from gifted to disenfranchised. Her research team identified “seven dimensions of learning power”:
These dimensions, each comprising values, attitudes and dispositions are: changing and learning (a sense of oneself as someone who learns and changes over time); critical curiosity (an orientation to want to get beneath the surface’); meaning-making (making connections and seeing that learning ‘matters to me’); creativity (risk-taking, playfulness, imagination, and intuition); interdependence (learning with and from others and also being able to learn alone); strategic awareness (being aware of one’s thoughts, feelings and actions as a learner and able to use that awareness to manage learning processes); and resilience (the orientation to persevere in the development of one’s own learning power). (74)
Other researchers have described the characteristics of the community, school culture, and mindset for inquiry to be meaningful, successful, and worthwhile. So is it agreed that it is time for transforming the learning experiences of students, moving away from “covering curriculum” and testing, and consciously creating communities of inquiry?
Source: Crick, R.D. (2009). Inquiry-based learning:
Reconciling the personal with the public in a democratic and archaeological pedagogy.
Curriculum Journal 20(1): 73-92.
Readings and Viewings
As you read, consider the culture of your own school, your own personal learning strengths, and the nature of your community. How can teachers transform the learning experiences? What matters for learning? What qualities of mind, aspects of community, and dimensions of the school community do you think best prepare students for learning in our changed world?
Conference Board of Canada. (2015). Employability Skills 2000+ and Innovation Skills Profile. Education and Skills Products. Ottawa, ON: Conference Board of Canada. [See/download pdf brochures]
Fontichiaro, K. (2009). Nudging toward inquiry – Re-envisioning existing research projects. School Library Monthly 26(1): 17-19.
Fontichiaro, K. (2011). Nudging toward inquiry – Let it rest: Reflecting on instructional practice. School Library Monthly 27(8): 8-10.
Gainer, J. (2012) Critical thinking: Foundational for digital literacies and democracy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 56(1): 14-17.
Hamilton, B.J. (2011). Creating conversations for learning: School libraries as sites of participatory culture. School Library Monthly 27(8): 41-43.
Jenkins, J., K. Clinton, R. Purushotma, J.J. Robison & M. Weigel. (2006). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. (New Media Literacies White paper). Chicago, IL: MacArthur Foundation.
Lankes, R.D. (2013). Plenary session: The Inspiration Summit, December 6-7. Wall Centre, Vancouver, BC. In M. Ekdahl. TL Special Weekly Blog (Jan 18, 2013).
Moreillon, J., M. Lluhtala & C.T. Russo. (2001). Learning that sticks: Engaged educators + engaged learners. School Library Monthly 28(1): 17-20.
O’Keefe, P.A. (2014 Sept. 12). Liking work really matters. The New York Times 12.
Rheingold, H. (2005). The new power of collaboration. TEDTalks.
Robinson, K. (2013). How to escape education’s Death Valley. TEDTalks. YouTube.
Robinson, K. (2016). How Schools Kill Creativity. TEDTalks. YouTube.
Zhao, Y. (2008). What knowledge has the most worth? The School Administrator.