#AEE412 Weekly Investment: Inquiry-Based Instruction

This week I had the opportunity to attend the National Agriscience Pre-service Teacher Workshop at the National FFA Convention in Indianapolis. The workshop was focused on inquiry-based instruction, which fits in perfectly with this week’s readings! Here are my main takeaways from the workshop and the readings:

We filled up these interactive notebooks with lots of great info during the workshop!

Inquiry-based instruction does not mean you take away all structure and guidance.

You’ve probably seen it before – the "Essential Features of Classroom Inquiry and Their Variations" chart chart which helps you plan and determine how inquiry-based your lessons are. There are four columns, A through D, with A being teacher directed and D being student centered. There is a common misconception that for a lesson to be IBI every category needs to be in the D column. Well, that is simply not true! As the leader of the workshop said, “if your classroom is completely in the D column, you aren’t doing your job as an educator!” For example, your students will need background information to complete an inquiry-based lab, effective questioning techniques to help students work through their own questions, and oftentimes starting off the class with a problem to be solved.

A. Warner and B. Myers state that during inquiry-based lessons teachers are responsible for:

1. Starting the inquiry process;
2. Promoting student dialog;
3. Transitioning between small groups and classroom discussions;
4. Intervening to clear misconceptions or develop students’ understanding of content material;
5. Modeling scientific procedures and attitudes; and,
6. Utilizing student experiences to create new content knowledge

Planning is key to successful IBI.

According to Alberta Learning (2004), “the planning phase of inquiry is the key to success for teachers and students”. There is a 7-step planning cycle that includes:

1. Where do I begin to plan?
2. Who will work with me?
3. How can we engage our students?
4. What will be the scope of our inquiry?
5. Which resources will work best?
6. When should we introduce the inquiry?
7. Which inquiry and ICT Skills will we use?
8. How will we monitor and assess inquiry activity?
9. How will we begin the inquiry?
10. How will we determine what worked?

I think a neat part of this point is that while planning may be more intensive; the actual facilitation of the lesson is less strenuous than teaching a teacher-centered lesson. I experienced that at the workshop. By the end of the day, all of us attendees were exhausted because we had been doing inquiry all day, while our instructor could have kept going if we had more time! That really speaks volumes to the difference in the amount students learn when they are taught with inquiry-based instruction compared to a more teacher-centered instructional method.

I’m really looking forward to learning more about inquiry-based instruction on our visit to Greenwood HS and trying my hand at inquiry-based instruction at our next lab! I’d love to hear about your experiences using IBI and/or advice you have regarding planning/facilitating IBI!

References:

Warner, A.J. & Myers, B.E. (2011) What inquiry-based instruction? 

Warner, A.J. & Myers, B.E. (2014). Implementing inquiry-based teaching methods.

Alberta Learning. (2004) Focus on inquiry: a teacher’s guide to implementing inquiry-based learning.

Thoron, A.C., Myers, B.E., & Abrams, K. (2011). Inquiry-based instruction: How is it utilized accepted, and assessed in schools with national agriscience teacher ambassadors? Journal of Agriculture Education, 52(1), 96-106. DOI: 10.5032/jae.2011.01096 Retrieved online from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ955679.pdf