A REFLECTION ON MY BED INQUIRY PROJECT

The inquiry project that I developed during my Inquiry courses at UBC, and that I implemented during my practicum, focused on Literature Circles (LCs) and small group learning. Specifically, I wanted to investigate how the introduction of LCs would affect my students’ own perception of their learning, and how I could use the small group setting to foster metacognition surrounding how we learn.

The implementation and results of my inquiry project were mixed, in large part owing to a shift in my own passions, and a re-assessment of the needs of my students. I found that many students had difficulty identifying and articulating, both verbally and in writing, connections and deeper meanings in the stories we read. So, I shifted the focus of our LCs to working on types of connections, asking deeper questions, and communicating our ideas within a group.

This shift in focus resulted, over my long practicum, in more engaging group discussions surrounding all reading material (not just limited to our LC texts). Also, many students revealed in several reflective writing pieces a growing sense of confidence in expressing their opinions.

I need to be honest: after one year in the Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) cohort, I have not wholly drunk the Kool-Aid. This is not to say I don’t see many very worthwhile applications of focusing on self-regulated learning strategies in the classroom – I do! But, I think our Inquiry classes very much focused on how to utilize SRL for academic success. For me, I think SRL works much better as a foundation for building Social Emotional Learning (SEL).

I attended several workshops throughout the course of this year focusing on SRL, and in each one, SRL strategies were used to foster SEL – the two terms were often used interchangeably. However, this connection was often not acknowledged in our Inquiry classes at UBC, and instead, we focused more on how to pair SRL with inquiry-based learning.