Inquiry Learning: A Reflection

During my placement, my associate and I attempted an inquiry project that completely failed. The intention was for students to do research on a person they found inspiring, and then share the biography with the class. Then, each student would try to find connections between their inspiring person and other people’s. For example, one person did research on Malala Yousafzi who was heavily influenced by Gandhi, and someone else in the class was researching Gandhi so they would (in theory) discuss why they think Gandhi had an impact or how Gandhi had an impact. However, it was exceptionally challenging to facilitate. Each student was working at a different pace, and several would make statements like ‘no one has ever inspired me’. In addition, several would look up a few facts and then be done for the day and play on their devices (which was hard to police considering the general chaos in the room). As a result, I never felt like I could facilitate all the unique learning challenges, whether they were working slower, or getting bored because they were done, or students who weren’t asking HOT questions. However, I really like the approach discussed in the video below (part of a series on YouTube). It was less open-ended than what we were doing by having guiding tasks to work through each day and then sharing your results. I think this would facilitate more opportunities for feedback, such as ‘what else could you learn about this?’, ‘why is that happening?’, etc. As part of the inquiry we were attempting, I would meet with small groups throughout the week to discuss their progress and that was probably the most successful part since that’s when we started really making connections and thinking deeper, and since they weren’t being ‘marked’ it took the pressure off the student and they were able to take more risks with their thinking. 

In addition, I think having students work in groups would help keep them on task and generate deeper thinking. Although, putting students in groups is another hurtle on it’s own. During my block, I tried putting students in groups but there were so many personality clashes that there were always several people upset with their seat (it was a grade 7 class, so inter-personal relationship challenges were at an all-time high). That being said, I still think working in groups is important (if not critical) to a successful inquiry project.