Week 8:What are the importance of inquiry and questioning in your discipline? How do/can you nurture student passion in your classroom?

I like how Thomas and Seely Brown back up in these two chapters and lay the foundation for the differences between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge, then tie these together with new ways of learning.  The Polanyi quote, "We know more than we can tell," is an apt way to phrase this difference.

There was one point where they were discussing the story about Thomas teaching the college honors seminar, and having the problem that his students could not express what they were passionate about, and had never been asked about this.  I see this often myself at the middle and high school level - kids are unable to express an idea about something they really care about.  Sometimes I will get tentative stabs at this, such as "I like dogs," but it's clearly something we do not spend enough time empowering kids with from a young age.  I think if we did, it might still be unnameable, but it would also be such an obvious part of their personality that we would be able to guess it easily. The point is, getting older students to tap into this as a source of learning and inquiry is difficult - they are out of practice, and since they have not been asked before, they no longer associate that passion in any way with school or academics.

In a story last year about Tony Wagner, author of The Global Achievement Gap, they quote him as saying, "The culture of schooling as we know it is radically at odds with the culture of learning that produces innovators." Seely Brown and Thomas also bring up this contradiction of culture of schooling vs. culture of learning.  It's unfortunate, but almost any educator can tell you exactly what that statement means.  We can tell you the kinds of environments where we know kids are excited, enthusiastic, and open to inquiry and discovery - it happens naturally for young children almost anytime they are given a little freedom to explore, experiment, and create.  However, the structures we set up in school (many ingrained in us from preservice texts, and even before (anticipatory set anyone?), often have schools doing things that take away those very opportunities.

A couple of years ago, I started to simply turn my social studies lessons upside down so we could practice inquiry. My 8th graders had not had much practice.  At the beginning of a lesson, I'd show them something - usually a picture, a piece of art, an article, a short video, an illustrated map - something.  I'd tell them what it was, as in naming it, and maybe giving it a little context, and then they had 5 minutes to write down all of the questions they had about it.  Initially, this was a difficult exercise for them - they would not have many questions.  When we talked about some of their questions, sometimes another student would shout an answer, even though none was obvious.  There was one boy who I knew was very sharp, but routinely would only write down about 3 questions.  After the 3rd time we did it, I asked him why he had so few questions in 5 minutes.  He said he didn't want to write down very many because he was just waiting for me to assign an essay paper on all of them if he had a bunch!  What an eye opener for me!  Apparently, without any ill-intent to squash inquiry, I had done just that!

I've continued to use this process ever since, and I have to say, by the end of the year - even mid-year - my students are extremely good at asking questions.  They also learn to categorize questions.  Level one questions are those to which it will be relatively easy to find an answer - a couple of Google searches. Level 2 questions are a little more complex - there is an answer, but it will require some further research in order to get more context and bring together a variety of sources.  Level 3 questions don't lend themselves to just one answer, or to easy answers.  They are questions that often people have opinions about, rather than answers.

By learning to get comfortable with questioning, and then with analyzing their inquiry, this makes approaching their discovery process a lot easier to tackle.

Have I quit assigning essays? No! However, instead of saying at the beginning that everyone will write one, I now wait and see where their inquiry goes.  If they are culminating in something that really lends itself to an essay, I'll suggest it, and they very often can see the sense in presenting their findings this way by that stage. But I'm also open to other ideas for presenting. Although we are only two months into school, this year my 8th graders have already each written one significant essay, and some have written two.  That does not count the many blog posts and web pages they have written.  I feel like the quality of writing I'm getting now is much better - but they are writing because it seems a natural next step in their process. Teaching this way has the added benefit of being much more interesting for me - it's common during an initial inquiry session that I get as much into the questioning and discussion as they do!

Resources:
Swallow, E. (2012, April 25). Creating Innovators: Why America's Education System Is Obsolete. Forbes. Retrieved October 24, 2013, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericaswallow/2012/04/25/creating-innovators/

Thomas, D., & SeelyBrown, J. (2011). A new culture of learning: cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, Ky.: CreateSpace?].

Wagner, T. (2008). The global achievement gap: why even our best schools don't teach the new survival skills our children need--and what we can do about it. New York: Basic Books.

Ways not to kill classroom creativity. (n.d.). Ways not to kill classroom creativity. Retrieved October 23, 2013, from http://www.goshen.edu/art/ed/creativitykillers.html?utm_content=bufferce375&utm_source=buff