Teachers supporting teachers: Series 2, episode 6 - inquiry learning and fostering curiosity
Teachers supporting teachers: Series 2, episode 6
Inquiry learning and fostering curiosity
Nadine Crane joins me in this episode of Teachers Supporting Teachers as a part of series 2. Nadine is an educator and teacher educator at The University of Melbourne with a background in inquiry learning. She’s currently undertaking her PhD to investigate further the notion of “curriculuming”, specifically looking at how teachers and students co-curate curriculum and position voice. Nadine and I have known each other for a thousand years, both having a love cycling and the green energy that is nature. In a past life we shared an office together when we were both studying at the same time and as you can imagine have had some pretty cool conversation over the years about education. In this episode we talk learning and teaching, specifically focused on inquiry learning.
Nadine shares her background into ongoing professional development and learning. She underpins this by asking the questions: How can I do this better? How can I introduce the student voice even further? How do I foster curiosity? How do we co-learn?
Throughout a career of primary school teaching, consulting and working within the university sector she has been able to craft her teaching but also gain some in depth insights into how to construct and facilitate inquiry learning and integrated curriculum in schools to help teachers and schools thrive with this approach. In this episode we focus on the questions of:
• What is inquiry learning?
• Why should we know about it as pre-service teachers (PSTs)?
• What does it look like in practice?
• What we need to be careful of in our assumptions of what inquiry learning is?
• What student voice can look like in the classroom?
We talk about the time it takes for teachers to develop their pedagogy and philosophy to learning and approach of inquiry learning; noting that we need to invest in our professional growth. Key moments of inquiry learning for us to consider throughout this episode includes:
• Student engagement is critical
• Inquiry learning is purposeful learning - how do we connect students to the world and interests? How do we support the students to take interests from "what I like to do” to "deep engagement in the world and what is around them”?
• Your stance as a teacher is just as important as the students - how we learn and how we teach? There is constantly reflective practice throughout the process for the teacher.
• Inquiry learning is structured not about a fluidity where the teacher is not present.
• Shift beyond a stage and what is expected, it is not linear, it is a fluid process.
• Stages represent phases, and allows us to label it explicitly with students.
• Explore and discover with the students, so they are the active creators of the process.
• Finding out and sorting out pair together.
• Reflection occurs throughout; it is ongoing.
• Taking action (what you are learning) is not always at the end, and shouldn’t always be at the end.
• Adjust your planning accordingly as the students explore the topic and dig deeper.
• Action can be personal action or changing your thinking.
• Create the space for student voice.
• Integrated curriculum and inquiry partner together, offering opportunity for explicit teaching that moves beyond blocks of time or “Fun Friday” afternoon block of integrated curriculum.
Follow up to people we talk about:
Marilyn Woolley research papers.
Kath Murdoch’s work and blog.
Busting some myths about inquiry learning with Kath Murdoch and Marilyn Woolley.
Sally Godinho - amazing work on questioning in the classroom and research papers available.