Instructors’ Decisions That Integrate Inquiry Teaching Into Undergraduate Courses: How Do I Make This Fit? (original) (raw)
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This article describes the development of the Teaching and Learning Inquiry Framework (TLIF) and applications forits use. For decades teacher preparation and support has been dictated by a narrow mindset in which academicdisciplines have been taught in isolation. This landscape, however, is evolving to align with the view that the world israrely experienced in disciplinary silos. Interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning can enable students tomake more holistic connections to the world around them and be better prepared for college and career. With the recentpublication in the USA of four related standards-based reform documents across each of the core subject areas, teacherpreparation and professional development programs are evolving to offer teachers opportunities to examine theimplications of the new standards. To address these complexities, a guiding conceptual framework is needed thatfocuses in on how inquiry can serve as an entry point to frame the integration of ...
With/In the Stream: Student-Teachers Navigating the Waters of Inquiry
In recent years, inquiry has become ubiquitous within educational circles and the research literature. With widespread focus in education, current research and policy documents on inquiry reflected this emphasis. For example, in Alberta, a spotlight on inquiry arose with the inception of the Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI) in 1999. As well, Focus on Inquiry: A Teacher’s Guide to Implementing Inquiry Based Learning came out in 2004 from Alberta Learning, supporting classroom teachers in embracing inquiry. With the importance placed on inquiry, it seems plausible student-teachers would be well-versed in understanding and enacting inquiry. However, little research focusing on the ways student-teachers might understand, experience, interpret or enact inquiry after a field placement at an inquiry-based school, exists. The philosophical frame for this study uses the learning theory of Alfred North Whitehead. Specifically, Whitehead’s focus on the “stream of life,” encompassing each individual’s concrete learning experiences (1929a) informs this research inquiry. In contrast to opportunities for students and student-teachers engaging in alive and contextual learning, much of the schooling happening today remains standardized and created for a “one size fits all” model. Whitehead’s work offers openings and potentialities for deep and meaningful learning crafted within a living educational ecosystem. The purpose of this interpretive research lies in understanding the ways five student- teachers, experienced, understood, and enacted inquiry after an eight-week field placement at an inquiry-based middle school. Experience and understanding of inquiry require practice in living with it to become knowledgeable. Journeying, attunement, and wayfinding are critical in student- teachers’ understanding and becoming experienced with/in inquiry-based teaching-and-learning. The student-teachers’ whose experience with/in inquiry arise during our conversations discuss ii the importance of venturing with others—the students they taught, their mentor-teachers, other student-teachers in their cohort, as well as their university supervisor. Each and every facet of the educational ecosystem inheres responsibility for supporting student-teachers throughout their journeying with/in the stream of inquiry-based teaching-and-learning. Student-teachers, journeying with others, must be courageous and willing to enter the dark, cavernous lair because the scary, challenging, adverse conditions of teaching-and-learning allow one to become experienced with/in inquiry. Several student-teachers describe the difficult and uncomfortable moments requiring discipline as some of the most meaningful in their field placement. However, we should heed Whitehead’s (1929a) emphasis that; along with discipline, freedom, and romance—cultivating joy, adventure and teaching-and-learning teeming with life is of import. Insights emerging from this study reveal that inquiry-based teaching and learning means different things for different student-teachers and a lot remains at play in student-teachers experiencing, understanding, and enacting inquiry. Student-teachers seeing, feeling, experiencing, and enacting inquiry throughout all aspects of their program—as an educational ecosystem appears critical. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on inquiry, while also offering needed research concerning the ways in which student-teachers understand, navigate, and enact inquiry, within an inquiry-based environment. The significance of this study lies in its potential to help inform teacher preparation programs and field placements through student-teachers’ understanding of inquiry, as well as aiding practitioners in the field. Theoretical and practical insights gleaned from this study may provide important contributions to future student-teacher field placements at an inquiry-based site.
Learning through inquiry is a widely advocated pedagogical approach. However, there is currently little systematic knowledge about the practice of inquiry-based learning (IBL) in higher education. This study examined descriptions of learning tasks that were put forward as examples of IBL by 224 university teachers from various disciplines in three Australian universities. Data analysis uncovered the principal forms of IBL, the features of each form, their characteristic educational objectives, and possible disciplinary variations. The findings show that underlying the diversity of language and tasks regarded as IBL there is a limited number of distinct task forms and a broad conception of inquiry that is shared by university teachers. The findings also indicate that IBL is practiced in a wide range of disciplines, in both undergraduate and postgraduate coursework programs, in smaller and larger classes, and in universities which are more and less research intensive.
Inquiry in Teacher Education: Competing Agendas
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School-based practitioners and university-based teacher educators do not necessarily agree about what is important in pre-service teacher education. The perennial tensions between what prospective teachers learn in the academic environment and what they learn in field placements have been studied by Dewey (1904), Wehlage (1981) and Cannella and Reiff (1994). Controversies continue about the extent to which theories are useful in preparing students for the complexities of classroom life. To address the lack of connection between theory and practice, a number of recent reforms in teacher education have included inquiry-based programs and/or new types of education courses (Darling-Hammond, 1994), which encourage student teachers to be reflective problem solvers and change agents. Additionally, student teachers have been encouraged to be critical consumers of professional research (Zumwalt, 1982) as well as generators of their own knowledge (Cochran-Smith, 1991). Pre-service teachers need to connect and expand their professional knowledge by examining their own understandings of teaching and learning (Olson, 2002). Wodlinger (1996) argues that these experiences increase teachers' sense of autonomy and control of educational priorities and