My engagement with inquiry learning led me to investigate the potential challenges that those connected to learning might experience when inquiry became the method of teaching; this was later refined to specify students and teachers. There were many diversions on route that took me in directions I had not expected. At various times my questions were refined, a generally for two reasons: (1) results needed to be narrowed (‘stakeholders’ to ‘students’ and ‘teachers’); (2) a resource prompted a directional change (‘engagement with a learning topic’ to ‘social engagement with peers’). Whilst I successfully collated, evaluated and extract evidence from my re-search to answer my focus question, I also got a better understanding of inquiry through the additional re-search that I read and discarded. As a teacher, this was a vital discovery to help cement the idea that inquiry can and does create a deeper understanding of content for students.
Throughout the re-search process, I have discovered many things about inquiry, including the many varying names that the process goes by. I can see how many varying interpretations about this learning and teaching method could cause confusion, distrust and avoidance in staff and schools. Whilst my inquiry knowledge has developed, I would like to further my understanding with explicit re-search into creating a definition, as one of my identified challenges for teachers was not having a good enough understanding. I want to be able to explain the process, the purpose and the positives to learning without relying on other people’s definitions.
Like my re-search findings, I also have limited practice inquiry experience, and I believe this affected my ability to engage with the process at the initiation stage, with procrastination a big player. When introducing my students to the process, I will utilise my personal feelings of disorientation and confusion to better support my students and their engagement.
The Information Search Process (ISP) describes a six-stage approach (initiation, selection, exploration, formulation, collection and presentation) to inquiry learning, which incorporates common feelings, thoughts and actions to each stage. Throughout my journey I experienced all stages, but not always in the intended linear motion. I went back and forth between initiation, selection and exploration until I decided on my formulation focus. I fell into the trap of wanting to “select a topic quickly and dive right into collecting” (Kuhlthau, Maniotes and Caspari, 2012). Because my lack of initial direction caused issues later, I am more aware of how important it is to provide students with sufficient background knowledge and support their question development before moving through the stages of initiation, selection and exploration; students need time to process, question and immerse themselves in the topic.
Kuhlthau, Maniotes & Caspari (2012) suggest that upon reaching the end of the exploration stage, learners should be ready to identify their intended re-search question. This went against my preconceptions of inquiry and that a question should be posed and investigated from the start. I believe my preconceptions here also impacted on my ability to formulate my focus. In future, I will take comfort in knowing that nothing is set in stone from the get-go, and that my thoughts, directions and question(s) can change as a result.
During my exploration, I did get side-tracked by the searching process, another tangent of learning and experimentation that I underwent in this process. I got overwhelmed by the construction of strings that I might not have found as many articles as I thought I would. Despite these complex search strings, I also discovered that less can be more, with simple strings returning better results in some cases. Teaching students expert searching techniques is useful, but knowing how to do a successful simple search with filters is just as good.
Another challenge I faced within exploration, as discussed in Information Service Process, was how my question appeared to not be finding appropriate results. Initially I believed that was due to my question being badly worded or too broad. What I came to realise was that perhaps my question was a good inquiry-based question, as the answer could not be simply Googled, but required some effort and skill on my part as the learning to uncover these mysteries.
Reaching the final stage of the ISP – presentation – I felt more confident than in previous project-based investigations and was able to produce my infographic with little effort. I found I knew all the information because the process involved in-depth learning, even though I was not conscious of this at the time. When collecting my information, however, I feel I could have improved by making notes sooner and arrange the discarding and keeping of useful re-search sooner. When information is collected and analysed throughout the process, students can be better prepared for the presentation stage (Kuhlthau, Maniotes and Caspari, 2012). This is something I would like to impress on my students when implementing inquiry in the classroom.
Whilst collecting information for the challenges facing teachers, I did come across some challenges for students, and would like to further explore this. Additionally, having now identified some of the challenges, I would like to investigate exactly how these challenges could be addressed through research and practice examples. I am excited to put into motion another round of inquiry to answer these questions, this inclination to choose to re-search other connecting areas a sign of good inquiry and engagement, according to Kuhlthau, Maniotes and Caspar (2012).
References
Kuhlthau, C., Maniotes, L., & Caspari, A. (2012). Guided inquiry design: a framework for inquiry in your school. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.