Thursday 9 May 2013

Is expecting students to learn through inquiry, asking too much?

My L3 Biologists appear to be swamped in learning and it's not a pretty sight! The research essay that they are currently working on asks them to do two things. Learn new, relatively unfamiliar, content knowledge and do this through the process of inquiry. They can't seem to juggle these two balls at the same time (not enough working memory!). It is very clear to me that they have no idea how to plan their research. Even after 4 weeks some are still struggling with identifying the focus question and I don't think this is down to my lack of guidance.
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4 comments:

  1. Mrs Ronald9 May 2013 at 14:18

    Hi Paul!

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  2. Mrs Ronald9 May 2013 at 14:38

    I don't think it's due to your lack of guidance either. I think that many students are in the habit of just being told what to think, and it takes them a few times doing inquiry before they realise that the ball is in their court. A certain student of yours tells me she can't come to the Colville Art festival with me this weekend because she has too much schoolwork to do - hopefully she is referring to her Bio inquiry!

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  3. Anonymous12 May 2013 at 15:25

    And while I'm on a roll....

    the process of inquiry needs to be taught, and modelled and scaffolded. I agree with Rebecca to an extent..developing students who can think for themselves is quite 'big' and becomes a hurdle for a lot of our learners.

    I did a Level 1 English inquiry this year, and have a number of scaffolding tools that might help. Will hunt them out. Sometimes I think allowing too much time with an inquiry becomes a hurdle in itself...breaking the process down into manageable stages and then being able to 'teach' the process at each stage seemed to make it more manageable. I also have a powerpoint (using my own inquiry model) that outlines the skills necessary at each stage - could maybe align this with where your class is it...tricky to include in your limited Bio teaching time though (I guess this will be the benefit of students being taught the inquiry process throughout their schooling).

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  4. Unknown12 May 2013 at 18:52

    Agree totally. The process of inquiry needs to be taught explicitly and then practised. And the sooner the better!

    If anyone could run a session "how to teach inquiry" that would be great! Suprisingly the ministry have not got around to this yet.

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