LINCoq

3. Give students an audience.

5. Give students a place to lead.

6. Give students a digital space to learn.

“Give the learners a sandbox.”

If we are to make use of these important findings from the learning sciences, inquiry should be viewed as a highly-structured and thoughtfully designed-endeavour. As contrasted with ‘minimal-guided’ inquiry which has been shown to be marginally effective as a teaching technique, (Hattie) classroom tasks that are worthy of students time and attention, relevant, connected to the world and organized around the ‘big ideas’ of a subject can develop understanding and intellectual interest and engagement with students. For inquiry to be effective requires significant intellectual investment on the part of teachers to design learning tasks that are connected to the disciplines, to their students’ lives, and to the world, while focused toward clear and achievable learning targets. It requires that teachers see themselves as learners and researchers of both the subjects they teach and their professional practice as a whole.

Just as play requires rules to keep a game going, inquiry needs structure and boundaries to be effective. As compared with more traditional delivery models of teaching and learning that focus only on pre-existing knowledge or skills, inquiry remains open to the unknown, to the ‘not yet.’ As teachers are considering inquiry in a particular topic it becomes helpful to consider how students might ‘play’ within in topic, that is, maintain an emphasis on what is already known (the foundational concepts or key-ideas) while allowing for space for the unknown where students can create, design, interpret or participate.

“Liberating constraints describes the balance between freedom and constraint that creates conditions for learning and creativity.”

This is the act of structuring learning, not in the sense of a pre-determined, closed plan of action, but rather an organic, biological understanding of structure, where organisms respond and adapt to changing conditions

One exemplary organization who focuses on inquiry is the Galileo Educational Network from Calgary, Alberta. In addition to providing research, resources and professional development on teaching and learning from an inquiry stance, the Galileo Network has also created the Galileo Inquiry Rubric.