Amaze-inquiry - Entering the maze...

Tuning In: Entering the maze...

I personally love the possibilities inherent in inquiry learning. For students, I sometimes think of it like a maze, with multiple potential pathways through, which involves strategy, problem solving, collaborating, back-tracking, experimentation, and embraces a little 'getting lost' on the way to discovery of new destinations. As a teacher I love that it shifts the role of the teacher from passing on acquired knowledge - showing the way or leading students through the maze directly - to guiding students through the skills and processes of learning: how to plan, validate, reflect on and interrogate learning, ask for help, research, analyse sources, ask good questions and consider multiple answers. For a generation that has access to more information than any humans in history, this critical engagement with knowledge and knowledge acquisition is especially important. 

Image: 'Inquiry Maze', sketch by Briana Chapple

What I'm wondering is, how do we ensure we are doing inquiry effectively? How do we ensure students have a meaningful experience, purposefully finding their way, rather than wandering lost and eventually stumbling out the other side, or feeling like they've been mentally and metaphorically shoved backwards through a hedge, with no real understanding of the path they took? Or why it mattered?

For many teachers, myself included at times, it can be or feel too time consuming to let students find their own way through the maze. And then you worry, what if they haven't collected all the right clues or tokens along the way? 

Which begs the question, how do teachers balance content knowledge and skills acquisition to ensure students meet the intended learning outcomes? 
For myself, I see inquiry as skills driven, where an emphasis on processes, reflection and critical thinking are at the heart of inquiry. But how do I create a maze that builds these skills whilst also helping students gather the important information along the way, without taking away the freedom to explore new pathways?

Sadly, an inability to reconcile the two can lead teachers to overlook inquiry, or 'prune' it back so much that you can see over or through the hedge (to continue the metaphor), and it ceases to be inquiry in all but name.

This leads me to another question, which really allows me to explore these questions in my own context, teaching the MYP and concept-based learning this year:

What does effective inquiry learning look like in the Middle Years Program?

I look forward to exploring this maze myself and hopefully acquiring some new knowledge and skills to share along the way...

Download Kath Murdoch's 'Phases of Inquiry' Model here