Like most teachers, I worry about engaging my students in their learning. While it may not be the be all to end all solution, inquiry-based learning is a top contender – it is “a teaching method that places students’ questions, ideas and observations at the centre of the education experience” (Oxford Learning, 2015). In Engaging Young Learners Through Inquiry-Based Learning, they encourage the educator to step back from the lecturer role and let the students be “active contributors to their own learning experience” (Oxford Learning, 2015). They look at the research in the Ontario Ministry of Education’s report Inquiry-based Learning: On Transforming Wonder into Knowledge, which focuses on the the components that are needed to make inquiry successful in a classroom:
A culture of inquiry: if students are able to express their thoughts freely, and challenge on another’s ideas in a respectful manner, they will be encouraged and comfortable with participating in classroom discussions which are important to inquiry.
External support (for teachers): with our new curriculum, teachers need time to interpret and reconfigure their ways of teaching so that the big ideas and core competencies within the classroom are coherent and applicable to the learning environment. (Those of us graduating in 2016 are lucky enough to have gone through the BEd program with the new curriculum as a major component of our work.)
Educator guidance and support (for students): while the idea behind inquiry-based learning is to be learner-centric, there still needs to be the right amount of scaffolding around them so that they are successful in their endeavors. We, as educators, must teach them how to develop an inquiry project. This does not discredit the idea that students can learn from each other – we are merely another source for them to work with.
Understanding of the audience: educators will always teach them the base knowledge of a subject – there is no inquiry if there is no prior knowledge to work from. Before a student can embark on an inquiry project, the teacher must check that they have that base knowledge so that they have a solid foundation for their work.
Open-mindedness and spontaneity: while it is traditionally the teacher that creates the critical thinking questions for a lesson, the inquiry approach asks that it be left open-ended and allow for spontaneity so that the class is encouraged to think beyond the basic knowledge and discuss what they should explore.
Engaging Young Learners Through Inquiry-Based Learning. Oxford Learning, September 2015. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordlearning.com/engaging-young-learners-through-inquiry-based-learning/