How can we inspire inquiry-based learning in traditional school systems?

Questioning is a skill that humans start to acquire as soon as they start to talk. As annoying as it can be to adults, critical questioning skills can lead to innovation. In his book, A More Beautiful Question, Berger discusses the importance of questioning, its development stages, and how it leads to breakthrough ideas. Although children ask many questions, this skill starts to diminish as they climb the educational ladder (The Gallup Blog). This is no surprise when traditional schools seek answers, and not curious questions.

Although it is argued that age could be a factor for curiosity to tame down (Berger, 2014, p. 45), nevertheless, schools should encourage students to be curios. Particularly because students questions in the classroom gives an indication of their engagement level. Moreover, it is well noticed that classroom engagement level decline along with questioning (Berger, 2014, p. 44). As educators and teachers, we are in a position to redefine classes that help students thrive in ever-changing economic demands. Today‘s workplace demands self-learning individuals (Berger, 2014, p. 49), who are not afraid to ask questions that help them and their enterprise to grow.

Moving on from theory to action, as teachers we should start framing our lessons to allow and encourage student curiosity. While there are many ways to incorporate inquiry-based learning, it could differ for each subject, age, race, etc. There has been vast efforts done at this end. Right Question Institute has been working over the past twenty years to develop a rigorous process to help students formulate better questions. Lessons  could be learnt from schools which were entirely built on inquiry-based system, such as the legendary Montassori schools which alumni are the founders of today’s largest companies. You can check the list of “Montassori famous students” and their interesting stories here.

Example of inquiry-based learning in Mathematics class:

In Mathematics, we teach of Geometry in theory and rarely in practice. The new change that I plan to introduce is to let my students inquire. If I ask you right now: What’s the circumference of a circle? You might remember the formula if you were a Math geek. For an average student, 2πr might not be that intuitive. If you hate math so much, please do not exit the page and stop reading, I have a point to make. Math teachers aim to help their students build a “Number Sense”, and not only remember dry formulas. Therefore I will introduce the circle geometry lesson by an activity that motivate the students to inquire while having hands-on experience. The activity starts with a task to classify a set of cylinders “as in the image” to two categories: 1) cylinders with circumference base longer than its height, or 2) shorter. No measurements tools are allowed at this stage. Hence, the task is made extremely not unintuitive. The next step is the fun part when they are given a thread to check their classification. They could wrap the thread around the cylinder (to get circumference) and compare it with the height. That is when they correct themselves, and start questioning “Why so!” as they find some incorrect placements. At this moment, showing 2πr makes sense. 2r is essentially the diameter, so they can find it out easily. π is still a mystery, however, students are usually good at approximation, so we could replace π with 3. Knowing this information at this moment makes sense to the students, as they will be able to reflect it on the thread and actually compare it to the height. While they get to ask one question, it is key to bring the circle circumference formula to life.

I believe that if teachers and educators has the mindset to teach based on inquiry, they can create more innovative ways to create question driven classes. Some existing instructional models, for example, encourages questioning. Teachers could exploit the “Exploration” part of the 5E’s instructional model to allow students ask and experiment their own questions. Deborah Meier’s  “habits of mind” gives space to students to question their learning (Berger, 2014, p. 51). The popular TED Talk by Dan Meyer’s, where he explains how he drives his students curiosity and flips the table to let his students ask him questions (such as filling a tank with water). 

I recognize the constraints of time and material to cover, teachers still have the most powerful means: access to students. They are the ones “for the most part” who put up a lesson plan, which can be designed around students’ questions. Projects can also be designed in ways that require students to ask more than they do answer. The sky is the limit, and there will always be new ways to encourage students’ curiosity through questioning.

Resources

Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.