Sharing Good Practice
ESTABLISHING AN INQUIRY LEARNING MINDSET IN MATHEMATICS CLASSROOMS
BY MEGEL BARKER
Despite having secure content knowledge and vast teaching experience , many teachers still struggle with designing learning experiences for students that truly qualify as mathematical inquiry . Even if teachers successfully achieve the goal of introducing inquiry sporadically in their lessons , the enduring effectiveness of the methodology is undermined by inconsistent employment of this proven approach to learning . Inquiry learning is considered to be integral to deep learning and is reliably supported in scientific research that explores how the brain learns . In his book , How the Brain Learns , Sousa focuses on the information that can help teachers turn neurological research on how the brain actually works into ideas for practical classroom activities and lessons . Along with Erik Jensen , who wrote the seminal tome , Teaching with the Brain in Mind , he advocated pedagogy that was brain-compatible . This pedagogy is informed by a deeper understanding of how the brain creates memories and a mindset to design classroom experiences that establishes the primacy of inquiry learning .
Inquiry- Based Learning
Dewey played a prominent role in educational reform in the first half of the 20th century and was credited with raising the awareness
of the effectiveness of inquirybased learning approaches . Dewey proposed that instead of emphasizing the memorization of facts , students should be taught to think and act scientifically , his philosophy of learning underpins this approach . Recent researchers have suggested that it is “ an organic way to make students active agents in their own learning process ”. The deliberate choice of the word “ organic ” reveals the nuances that separates inquiry learning from other forms of instruction . The conscious involvement of students in the learning process was seen as a pathway to better understanding and the development of student agency . The notion that learning is organic , rather than scripted is the essence of an inquiry based classroom experience .
David Perkins , Professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education , proposes the idea of “ playing the whole game ” in his book Making Learning Whole . The central thrust being that learning should be provided in a whole form , rather than in topics as is more normal . This is particularly intriguing for mathematics instruction . His metaphor of a baseball game being a different experience compared to learning different skills in a training setting is curiously poignant . For many teachers , this “ inquiry method ” is just another name for the Guided Discovery approach . Guided discovery is an inquiry approach but its limitations impact on successful conceptual understanding in Mathematics learning .
One pitfall of guided discovery teaching in Mathematics is the lack of transfer in weaker learners . While they logically follow through the process , they struggle to connect it to the Mathematics they need in order to solve problems effectively . A popular topic is the sum of interior angles in a triangle . The logical process of drawing a triangle , cutting out the ends , joining them and voila a straight line , relies almost totally on the teacher guiding – telling perhaps – the learners . Despite the process being well supported by logic and the outcome undisputed many learners still do not remember the simple fact . Transfer is lacking . Or at least independent transfer .
Student Agency through Inquiry
Inquiry teaching takes another route to learning , as it is largely inductive and demands questions from the learners for it to thrive . Questions are met with further questions , one answer by a learner is followed by another question probing understanding , questions are focused on concept formation and
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Sep - Oct 2018
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