Hello and welcome back to another edition of the IROSS blog! Today will be talking about inquiry and education!
As you may already know inquiry is an incredibly engaging form education that almost requires a student to have a passion about they are learning. It is a student centered and student choice lead style of learning.
I really enjoy inquiry learning in theory but when it came time to do my own free inquiry projects I struggled and often saw them as a chore. I initially thought it was the topic I chose, or maybe that I was feeling pre-occupied with my other assignments. I just couldn’t quite figure out why it wasn’t necessarily working for me until Trevor Mackenzie showed up as a guest lecturer in 336. He showed the class one infographic that made all my problems with free inquiry come crashing into my head! This is that infographic:
Now I realized that I had never done Inquiry learning in school and initially I thought that shouldn’t be a problem. After completing university I always liked to believe I am semi-capable learner and I still like to believe that. What this infographic had showed me though was I was thrown directly into the DEEP END! No water wings, no life jacket, no kiddy pool, no swim lessons, no belly boards, no practice, no training! I was a just a young learner thrown into the deep end of the pool by an older sibling on sweltering hot day! At first I was ecstatic and happy as I flying through the air thinking about how great learning about something new and at my own pace. Then I hit the water! It was sweltering hot day so the immediately the water felt refreshing and all my friends are in the pool too! And that’s when I realized I had forgotten how to swim properly, sure I was capable of swimming but I wasn’t going any where fast and everything seemed like a struggle and a little bit scary. I realized that I had skipped all the other stages of inquiry learning and started in the deep end. Inquiry learning just like most styles of learning requires sequence and structure and if you try to bite off more than you can chew, choking is a possibility. I think the struggle I had with Free Inquiry was that I didn’t go through the motions.
That’s my reflection on inquiry based education, when you skip steps you might stumble.
Till next time,
IROSS
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