“Inquiry-based teaching is more effective when the students already have strong knowledge of the subject matter at hand. While this is true, I do not think it should stop teachers from using the inquiry method with those students who do not have prior knowledge or have not yet gained ‘internal guidance.’”

– Chelsea Hasenpflug

In an effort to find the disadvantages of inquiry-based learning, like any inquirer should when researching a topic, I stumbled upon this educator’s blog. While I’ve tried to keep my research to Canadian sources, or at least attempted to have the topic be looked at from a broad scope instead of location-specific information, it touches upon the restrictions on inquiry-based learning with the old curriculums. With the specifications on what needed to be covered in all the subjects (which was determined by the government), teachers had limited time to allow students to explore their own learning. This didn’t foster the “processes over product” mindset of inquiry-based learning.

Hasenpflug also touched on the misconceptions around the role of the teacher in inquiry-based learning (as a facilitator rather than a direct instructor). It’s a subject that I’ve been curious about for the past while, and one that I’ve been poking at randomly when given a chance to talk to parents who have school-aged children (not my practicum parents, though). I’ve wondered how our own expectations of what school is supposed to look like limits us to accepting different forms of learning. I’ve applied this idea to many of my cohorts’ presentations, trying to think from the perspective of a parent who is so used to having school look and work in a certain way. I can see how all this change can be hard to trust, but I feel that in the long run, they could see the benefits. It just might take a while.

C Hasenpflug. (2010, March 9). Inquiry-Based Learning: Teaching students to be better consumers of information [Web log comment]. Retrieved from https://chelsearoseh.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/inquiry-based-learning-teaching-students-to-be-better-consumers-of-information/

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/

With so much information at the fingertips of our students, we, as educators, need to find a way to help them navigate through it. Too many students will take the information they find at face value, without looking at the source in which they are discovering these “facts”. The Points of Inquiry put forward by the British Columbia Teacher-Librarian’s Association, like many other inquiry models, focuses on teaching the students how to research for reliable sources in the quest to find their appropriate answer while answering three important questions: what does it mean to be information literate in today’s world; what are the implications for teaching and learning; what is an effective framework to guide BC educators?

This article’s focus is to express the “importance of learners being able to think critically about information, about sources of information, and about constructing and answering their own questions” (BCTLA, 2011, p. 15). It gives instructions to do this by covering the 5 points of the inquiry model, splitting each point (connect & wonder, investigate, construct, express, and reflect) into tables for K-3, 4-7 and 8-12, and cover what students should be able to do by those grades in inquiry-based reading and inquiry-based learning. It wraps up by showing readers what the inquiry would look like for Grade 2, 6, and 11s. This is a good resource to better understand the purpose and motivations behind inquiry models.

The Points of Inquiry: A Framework for Information Literacy and the 21st Century Learner. British Columbia Teacher-Librarians’ Association, 2011. Retrieved from http://bctf.ca/bctla/pub/documents/Points%20of%20Inquiry/PointsofInquiry.pdf