2/5 Assignment Part B: Inquiry-Based Learning

I am not yet in a classroom, so I haven't yet had the opportunity to use inquiry-based learning as a teacher.

I am a parent, of three extraordinarily curious and engaged guinea pigs, widely spaced in age and very divergent in interests, so I have had the opportunity to observe them engage in learning by seeking to answer questions.  Often these explorations are self-initiated and self-led; other times I do considerable, effectively teacher-led, framing.

As well, between the three of them, the guinea pigs have spent a total of ten years thus far in schools devoted to child-led, inquiry based pedagogies (one Montessori; one Quaker).  So I've had considerable opportunity to see how they fare within that kind of framework.

My reactions are complicated.  The short answer to the assignment prompt is: Yes, absolutely.  I fully expect to utilize inquiry-based learning in my classroom.  I wholeheartedly believe that kids learn best when they are deeply engaged; and that deep engagement entails being vested in the subject, following their own curiosities, moving their bodies, learning from each other and not just from the teacher, having fun.  Every word of John Holt's classic How Children Learn: I believe it all.  Obviously I am deeply, passionately attracted to the vision.  (Why else spend the family fortune on tuitions?) 

Yet.

Much as I am drawn to the vision of the promise of inquiry-based learning -- much as the ideals expressed in that vision inform my parenting every day, drive my decisionmaking about next year's schools for the Pigs, compel me to go back to school myself and enter into teaching as a second career -- still.  

The school choices we've made on behalf of the Pigs have given me more exposure to what inquiry-based learning actually looks like in practice than most parents, and even most educators, have had.  And I have come, regretfully, to see real limitations in addition to the very real strengths to the model.

• Inquiry-based learning works better for content areas (history, science, literature) than for acquisition of discrete skills (learning to decode, mastering reading fluency, computational skills, spelling). 
  
• Inquiry-based learning works best for students who are already motivated, self-directed, and physically self-controlled; students who are (for whatever reason) suffering from motivational, attentional and/or behavioral issues can easily "hide" in the bustle and activity of collaborative inquiry-based classrooms.
• Inquiry-based learning, which by definition evolves around the unique interests and talents of the students in each learning project, does not lend itself to the inculcation of consistent time management and the development of other organizational skills.
• Inquiry-based management requires substantially more from teachers, in terms of preparation, classroom management, imagination and flexibility, and organized follow-through to synthesize and reinforce the learning.  Not all teachers are up to the task.
• Inquiry-based learning also requires a level of teacher autonomy, in both content and in time (true inquiry-based learning requires long blocks of time, for example) that is difficult to effect in large schools; and
• Inquiry-based learning is a very powerful tool for providing depth of learning -- for delving long and deep into one subject.  Public schools organized around standardized test-driven mandates necessarily have to focus on breadth of learning.  It's very hard, therefore, for them to find the time.