Inquiry Article: Beyond the Basics

Classroom inquiry moves beyond the standard teaching methodologies, expanding the horizons of teachers and students. Using inquiry-based teaching, teachers and students examine and issues and ideas in a self-directed study and then present their findings and conclusions through writing and oral presentations. Inquiry yields authentic assessment, which is imperative in a standards-driven society. However, inquiry is a non-exact science, and it is particularly difficult for teachers who were most comfortable in a very controlled environment. Success often comes through the act of exploration; the result may be teaching students a process rather than a fact or skill. Learning is tied to exploration and the excitement of discovery.

According to Maxine Greene, by “refusing externally provided multiple-choice tests and being willing to see things big when they encounter students, teachers can devise the modes of teaching that are appropriate for these persons, that can leach them in diverse ways into what we now understand as inquiry” (1995). In conducting their studies, teachers learned that the answer to one inquiry question often led to other questions and opened the door for student discussion and introspection. This type of classroom debate takes patience. While the discussions and individual research can be viewed as a chaotic process, the power of student debate and individualized study of an as understood as an energized democratic process where many ideas are represented.

Teacher quality and inquiry has become a focus of the University of South Carolina’s (USC) College of Education in an effort to improve the training and clinical experience for pre-service teachers. USC’s Teacher Quality Partners Project (TQP) focuses on Professional Development Schools in Richland Districts One and Two, helping to create new methods of collaboration between PreK-12 schools and universities to collaborate. USC’s College of Education has teamed up with seven Professional Development Schools. The four elementary schools involved are Bradley Elementary School, Horrell Hill Elementary School, Hyatt Park Elementary School, and Meadowfield Elementary School. Summit Parkway Middle School, Crayton Middle School and Dreher High School are the three secondary schools in this project. Inquiry is important in these schools where over sixty percent of the students are high needs because it is respectful of diverse backgrounds, ideas and cultures in our classrooms.

Under the direction of Dr. Jane Zenger, each school created a leadership team or “Context Teams”, which works with the University of South Carolina Arts and Sciences faculty to conduct surveys and research and to encourage the use of inquiry strategies. Using grant support, the partnership provides direct funding for needed projects and programs related to the professional development of teachers and strategies for improving student achievement. These mini-grants fall into three categories: inquiry projects, service learning projects, and support projects for the South Carolina Reading Initiatives.

One of the main functions of the context team is to establish and maintain inquiry projects. Inquiry projects are one of the best methods to involve teachers in practical professional development and meaningful research. In The Moral Dimensions of Teaching, Kenneth A. Sirotnik explains “To inquire is to be thoughtful, reflective, and informed: to seek and use information; to describe, explain, interpret, and evaluate new and existing knowledge” (1990). Charles B. Myers and Douglas J. Simpson, experts in inquiry, explain in Re-Creating Schools: Places Where Everyone Learns and Likes It that “this way of looking at teachers as inquirers combines the teaching of students and the learning of teachers and it places teachers in charge of improving their own practices” (1998). Inquiry projects are based on the philosophy that teachers should be supported in their efforts to investigate educational strategies that will meet the needs of children in their particular environment. This strategy also enables teachers to expand and update their content knowledge base.

The work undertaken in the inquiry projects varies in content. The research projects may last one or two weeks; others are year-long studies that incorporate teams of teachers and an interdisciplinary effort across many subject areas. Some projects focus content-based projects, such as David Chadwell’s (Summit Parkway Middle School) study of ancient civilizations or Francie Markham’s (Dreher High School) inquiry of literary genre and gender. Other projects involve technology. For example, during Year Three several Hyatt Park teachers explored the link between computer software and students’ test scores. Teachers’ mini-grants also focused on community issues such as fire safety and homelessness, as well as fine art studies, including bookmaking and art projects.

Initially, teachers apply for a mini-grant by presenting a four-part proposal and a budget for resources or consultants. Specifically, the proposal should include an inquiry-based question, a rationale for inquiry, a method of documentation, a budget including a materials list. In order to facilitate the writing process, USC professors visited the schools and helped teachers prepare their proposals.

Inquiry projects are based on the needs and cultures of the particular school, as opposed to isolated research-based research projects based. For the first time, the teachers develop authentic studies that are connected to the standards and impact students’ academic status. Teachers are asked a series of questions by project staff to help them pinpoint ideas for an inquiry study based on the teacher’s talents and skills. Typical question may include: What will make you a better teacher? What are your talents? What are your strengths and what are your weaknesses? What are you doing in your class to assure a democratic society? What are your students’ needs? What are their talents? What are your community resources? How much additional funding will it take to complete this type of work and can you create a proposal and budget?

Myers and Simpson point out, when teaching is thought of as investigative problem identification and problem solving, teachers base their efforts at improving their practice on close-up looks at what they are doing with their students and how well it is paying off. They do this not as isolated individuals but as members of a professional culture that values inquiry, collegial collaboration, and mutual learning. Their investigations are not simple efforts at trial and error (Barth, 1990, Myers, 1995a, 1996b; Sergviovanni, 1992, 1996). They are analyses that lead to theories generated from practice that can inform colleagues and the profession at large (1998).

With their students’ needs in mind, teachers are able to refine the strategies, creating more meaningful intellectual experiences from their students. Although teachers may or may not reuse their inquiry project, the outcome should contain evidence of what the teachers and interns learned and researched-based recommendations.

In the beginning, teachers were skeptical that the inquiry process would not ward the same quantitative results as other more standardized practices because the content is not delivered in the usual format, such as lecture. As anticipated in Learning Through Inquiry: From Columbus to Integrated Curriculum, teachers soon realized that “inquiry does not narrow [our] perspective; it gives more understandings, questions, and possibilities than when we started. Inquiry isn’t just asking and answering a question. It involves searching for significant questions and figuring out how to explore those questions from many perspectives” (Short, Schroeder, Laird, Kauffman, Ferguson, & Crawford, 1996). Teachers found that their students retained more information because they found the answers themselves. This outcome promoted teacher confidence in the inquiry instruction methodology.

Saudah Collins, a second grade teacher at Horrell Hill Elementary School, commented that in those early days that she was not the best teacher she could be because she had a fear of animals – especially insects and reptiles. Saudah’s inquiry project started as a teacher’s journey to feel more at ease with creatures in the natural world. And her inquiry has evolved into creation of an environmental nature lab, including snakes, geckos, insects, newts, and the menagerie is growing. She and her students raised crickets for the reptiles, maintained a classroom garden, and composted organic materials. She and her second graders are familiar and confident with the natural world. The successful project expanded into a service-learning project where her students take the animals to other schools, teaching what they have learned about animals and the environment.

David Chadwell, a sixth grade middle school teacher at Summit Parkway, has developed a side-by-side curriculum based on having the students spend the entire year defining civilization and creating their own country. In this project, students create a county with a government; a form of currency, and resources based on the geology and geography of the environment of the place. Students must write clearly and concisely about their country – they make routine presentations about their progress. David has found that when they are working on this program, their writing is more advanced and their use of vocabulary is expanded and more accurate. Moreover, when his students study “real cultures” such as ancient Egypt and the Incas their questions and answers are more critical, they seem to have an all around deeper understanding and interest in arts, government, economics and how they might be able to incorporate these things into their own developing cultures.

In just three years the support of inquiry research in the targeted schools has increased from nine reported projects to fifty-two completed or ongoing projects with some projects becoming a part of a school’s curriculum. On April 13, 2002, the University of South Carolina College of Education sponsored an Inquiry Showcase where Columbia area teachers and their USC student teaching interns presented over 30 classroom-based research projects that are transforming traditional classroom into “centers of inquiry”.

More significantly, the teacher/student researchers are discovering that the process often leads to unexpected results. Test scores seem to be going up in these groups. Teachers are becoming more interested in going for National Board Certification and winning district awards and recognition. Saudah Collin’s second grade class won Richland One’s Champions of the Environment Award in January 2002. Additionally, in April 2002 Nancy James and her fifth grade students from Hyatt Park Elementary School competed and won the Richland District One Visual Literacy Bookmaking award.

Inquiry, once integrated into the curriculum, is not a process that takes place in a day or as a six-week project. It becomes more of a way of thinking about learning – many teachers report that is has permeated every aspect of their teaching. Teachers also felt that the process is essential because inquiry provides opportunities for children to cooperate and experience the gratification of teamwork and it shows children that their ideas and gifts are important. Moreover, it reminds students that learning is a lifelong endeavor and that there are many ways to approach and solve problems.

References
GREENE, M. (1995). Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, the Arts, and Social Change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Inc.
MYERS, C., & SIMPSON, D. (1998). Re-Creating Schools: Places Where Everyone Learns and Likes it. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc.
SIROTNIK, K. (1990). Society, Schooling, Teaching and Preparing to Teach. In J. Goodland, R. Soder, & K. Sirotnik (Eds.), The Moral Dimensions of Teaching. (pp. 296-327). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Inc.
SHORT, K., SCHROEDER, J., LAIRD, J., KAUFFMAN, G., FERGUSON, M., & CRAWFORD, K.M. (1996). Learning Through Inquiry: From Columbus to Integrated Curriculum. Portland, ME, Stenhouse Publishers.

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