Engaging in Inquiry

One way to view any school subject--phonics, spelling, literature, addition, probability, the environment, biology, houses around the world, Columbus, or the Phoenicians--is as a domain for inquiry. Any subject can be a realm to explore, to conjecture about, to debate, or to understand. Of course, different areas have their own distinctive modes and phenomena of investigation. For example, mathematics, as mathematicians know it, is the science of patterns. The study of mathematics is the creation of or the discovery of beautiful relationships among numbers, structures, shapes, transformations, and other mathematical objects.

Being engaged in inquiry within some domain means that there is neither a pre-determined set of requisite knowledge and skills, nor a pre-defined end point to learning. Instead, it means that inquirers are constructing knowledge based on what they know already, what questions they are pursuing, and what emerges through investigation and interaction with others. This view contrasts sharply with the practice of dividing a subject into a list of simplified facts and delivering them efficiently to the learner (the transmitting knowledge approach).

Another important way to view any school subject is as a thinking tool or resource that can be applied in other areas of inquiry, or to practical problems of everyday life. Starting from the inquiry view in no way precludes developing skill in using new tools. To the contrary, by restoring a sense of ìaboutnessî, it can contextualize the learning of otherwise isolated and meaningless skills. Consider again the case of mathematics. It is a powerful tool that we all can use to learn in other subject areas, to solve problems, to communicate with others, and to enrich our lives.

Just as inquiry within a domain is antithetical to the idea of depositing facts in the learner's head, developing new resources for thinking cannot be done by the simple accumulation of isolated skills. If the emphasis is on decontextualized skills, such as learning to read simply for the sake of reading, to write without a sense of audience and purpose, to spell isolated words, to add columns of numbers, to follow a recipe for a science demonstration, and so on, students do not develop new resources or tools for learning, communicating, and problem solving. The knowledge one gains through inquiry is the basis for further inquiry. Thus, these two views of the curriculum complement, rather than compete, with each other.

And, true inquiry requires that the inquiry approach to teaching must itself be subject to critical analysis. It is unlikely that you will agree with everything in all the course textbooks or everything that is said in class. Whatís important is not to absorb everything that is said or to accept any one view, but to listen carefully to many diverse views, connect theory with practice, and use the ideas you hear as resources to refine your own theories of inquiry, teaching, and learning.