“The impression that educators must choose between ‘back to basics’ and ‘inquiry or discovery learning’ often propels the educational policy pendulum to oversimplify and overact.”

– Roland Case

This article by Roland Case outlines the criticisms against and the arguments for inquiry-based learning. It’s the first piece that I have found that actually outlines the criticisms in depth, and they bring up some good concerns. The first critique is that many critics will say “that students can’t possibly discover everything we want them to learn” (Case, 2015), which is true but not what the IBL model is asking for. Instead, Case proposes that you offer students some possible formulae to consider, to investigate, and not just accept as the answers. The second criticism speaks to the idea that there are basics that students need to know through memorization, like consonants and vowels, or subtraction and addition. And while the need for basics is true, memorization isn’t the only way that the students can learn it. As Case (2015) says, “[t]he more we help students comprehend what we want them to remember, the less students need to learn by memorization” (2015). In other words, give the students an example of how something works, and then let them discover one that works better for them.

In support of inquiry, Case looks to the experience of himself and his colleagues of over 20 years, working with over 125,000 educators all over the world. Their work with critical inquiry learning concluded with positive outcomes in any school, no matter the socio-economic status of the school’s community.

As I stated before, this is the first article I found that really explored the other side of my questions.

Case, R. (2015, December). The “basics” and inquiry teaching [Web Log Comment]. Retrieved from http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/%E2%80%9Cbasics%E2%80%9D-and-inquiry-teaching