Before we get started with this blog, I’d like to ask a favor of you. Please go over to this link filled with great resources on the topic we are about to explore and poke around for a while. I’ll wait here while you explore. Take your time.
Thanks! Great to have you back. The topic that we are about to explore, one that psychology research has shown to enhance curiosity, is Inquiry. There are many definitions and types of inquiry: Scientific Inquiry, Argument Driven Inquiry (ADI), Guided Inquiry, Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL), and many more. My experience as a science educator has shown me that Scientific Inquiry is somewhat different than the others which are all very similar.
Scientific Inquiry is a process of teaching in which the amount of involvement of the student and teacher in the science activity varies according to the chart below.
Level 0: Teacher provides the question, teacher provides the procedure, students already know how it will turn out. (Not inquiry-based, "cookbook" experiment)
Level 1: Teacher provides the question, teacher provides the procedure, students do NOT know how it will turn out. (Structured Inquiry)
Level 2: Teacher provides the question, student determines the procedure, students do NOT know how it will turn out. (Guided Inquiry)
Level 3: Student determines the question, student determines the procedure, students do NOT know how it will turn out. (Open Inquiry, typically science fair projects and the like)
The goal of a science teacher is to ask themselves how they might bump an activity up to the next level of Inquiry. Simply doing an activity before students have learned a concept bumps Level 0 up to Level 1. Teachers cannot and should not attempt to teach every concept via Open Inquiry (OI) for there is not enough time in a school year for that and not every concept lends itself to OI. But important topics that lend themselves well make good targets.
The other forms of Inquiry have several things in common. They all involve having students explore concepts before being formally introduced to them. In an English class, this might appear as having students tell a story to the group about what it might be like to get lost in fog before reading the chapter in Huckleberry Finn where Huck and Jim get separated in thick fog. In an economics class, students might do a simulation with fake products and money to discover that an abundance of product drives down prices and vice versa before learning about supply and demand.
The best template I have seen for creating an Inquiry lesson is the 7-E Lesson Plan listed below.
Elicit- Where teachers draw out students’ prior understandings and experiences
Engage- Where teachers generate enthusiasm for a topic through real-world examples, discussions, debates
Explore- Here, students begin a project, write an introduction to a paper, prepare for a presentation
Explain- This is the traditional lesson part of the plan
Elaborate- Here, students apply what they’ve learned to other situations and formative differentiation occurs
Evaluate- Teachers evaluate students’ understanding of the concepts
Extend- Students receive either enrichment or intervention activities
Notice that in a 7-E lesson plan, explaining the concept is the fourth step in the process. Students are experiencing the concept before they learn the formalities and the equations and definitions. For example, math teachers express that students often misapply calculations because they don’t remember when they are allowed to use an algorithm and when they are not. Before discussing the Pythagorean Theorem, a math teacher could give students a page with various triangles on it and ask them to verify whether the relationship a2 + b2 = c2 is always true. Students will discover on their own that it is only true for right triangles and they will remember that much longer than if they were just told that rule. Sometimes this practice is called “Activity Before Concept” (ABC) and that is a very apt name for it.
"Following directions conserves energy, but following one's unique direction expands energy."
- Ian Kashdan, Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life
- Ian Kashdan, Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life
Remember at the beginning of this blog post when I asked you to go out and explore on your own? Now, you’ll likely be able to explain the pedagogy behind that. Activity before concept...Inquiry...ignites curiosity and improves learning. Try to bump up the level of Inquiry in your classroom as well.
Think of a lesson that you have coming up. In the comments below or on Twitter (@mhortonleads), explain how you will add Inquiry to the lesson.
