Some of my students benefit from inquiry and some benefit from explicit instruction, so my classroom incorporates both. I suppose that makes things harder to study and quantify, but I gotta do what is good for my students!
This was a terrific interview. Perhaps I have a unique perspective. I taught earth science to middle schoolers, for six years, back in the 1970s. I desired for every student to be curious about his environment; where we came from, where are we going. Of course, for many students, science was just another class. I made it as interesting and as relevant as I could.
I like the idea of discovery from inquiry. But very little material can be learned, considering the time it takes to do such inquiry. So, I did mostly explicit teaching. Still, I didn't just drone out data. I made the instruction as relevant as I could to students' experience. I encouraged questions and speculative observations (hypothesis).
Perhaps my best instruction to them was that few things are totally absolute. Theories evolve, and I would give examples. Science is a continual endeavor, not something that is settled. And I taught that it's hazardous to presume to be correct without absolute proof; and there is very little absolute proof. As much as anything, science is about having an open mind, and I think most of my students learned that from me, if they didn't already know.
Thanks for the comment. I actually learned a lot from talking with her, I didn't know about "program study" research, for example, and her work to kind of isolate some features of inquiry teaching and explicit teaching to measure them. As in your former science class, it makes sense to help students connect a lot of this information to the real world. I can't help but think about others' observations that how we think we learn best, when studied and measured, is often wrong!
To your last point, we learn best when we see the relevance to our own lives. I tried to show the students the relevance. Almost anything that Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Keplar, etc discovered relates to how we live our everyday lives. You just have to show them.
As a HS chemistry/physics teacher who has taught from all sides, this was a terrific article. We’re told, non-stop how to do our jobs in the trenches, by folks who’ve never or ran away from the classroom the minute the door opened. We’re also ignored when we offer input on how we’re teaching, and we’re ignored HARD if we DARE to speak against inquiry-based learning.
There are so many parts that have to work *perfectly* for inquiry-based to work, and most often, we’re gaslit to think they are working, and then the resultant not-ideal grades are our fault, and ours alone.
Thanks so much for reading, and for your observation about everything having to work perfectly for some inquiry teaching to succeed (I've heard similar things from other teachers). My son spent 4 years of high school in a heavily inquiry-based STEM class, where they did tons of experiments, learned how to read data, designed experiments, etc. He loved it, and is now a STEM major in college, but only the most knowledgeable, highly motivated students succeeded in the class—it started with more than 40 students freshman year, and by senior year it was only 7 students.
I heard Chris Kessler on a podcast talking about the TEKS in Texas, and how he liked them because they stepped back the hard-core inquiry in NGSS. TEKS, he said, doesn't depend on students being able to "magic" themselves up to a place where they can ask an informed question that will open the material to them.
It's amazingly frustrating, as we're told/pushed/forced to differentiate to students' different levels, and scaffold to make up for their prior knowledge and deficiencies (which can be substantial), but the message pushed into us is that they ALL need to be taught via inquiry-based.
Largely, I would say that your veteran teachers know how to do the dance and show the Important People what they want to see, but as soon as the door closes, we do what we know works for the kids. Our toolboxes are broad and deep.
Yes, there are a lot of parallels! One of the reasons I wanted to do this newsletter was to try to understand if, like the science of reading, we are ignoring, underplaying or otherwise ignoring similar research in other areas of learning. What I'm learning is that we are!
Some of my students benefit from inquiry and some benefit from explicit instruction, so my classroom incorporates both. I suppose that makes things harder to study and quantify, but I gotta do what is good for my students!
This was a terrific interview. Perhaps I have a unique perspective. I taught earth science to middle schoolers, for six years, back in the 1970s. I desired for every student to be curious about his environment; where we came from, where are we going. Of course, for many students, science was just another class. I made it as interesting and as relevant as I could.
I like the idea of discovery from inquiry. But very little material can be learned, considering the time it takes to do such inquiry. So, I did mostly explicit teaching. Still, I didn't just drone out data. I made the instruction as relevant as I could to students' experience. I encouraged questions and speculative observations (hypothesis).
Perhaps my best instruction to them was that few things are totally absolute. Theories evolve, and I would give examples. Science is a continual endeavor, not something that is settled. And I taught that it's hazardous to presume to be correct without absolute proof; and there is very little absolute proof. As much as anything, science is about having an open mind, and I think most of my students learned that from me, if they didn't already know.
Thanks for the comment. I actually learned a lot from talking with her, I didn't know about "program study" research, for example, and her work to kind of isolate some features of inquiry teaching and explicit teaching to measure them. As in your former science class, it makes sense to help students connect a lot of this information to the real world. I can't help but think about others' observations that how we think we learn best, when studied and measured, is often wrong!
To your last point, we learn best when we see the relevance to our own lives. I tried to show the students the relevance. Almost anything that Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Keplar, etc discovered relates to how we live our everyday lives. You just have to show them.
As a HS chemistry/physics teacher who has taught from all sides, this was a terrific article. We’re told, non-stop how to do our jobs in the trenches, by folks who’ve never or ran away from the classroom the minute the door opened. We’re also ignored when we offer input on how we’re teaching, and we’re ignored HARD if we DARE to speak against inquiry-based learning.
There are so many parts that have to work *perfectly* for inquiry-based to work, and most often, we’re gaslit to think they are working, and then the resultant not-ideal grades are our fault, and ours alone.
Again, great interview!
Thanks so much for reading, and for your observation about everything having to work perfectly for some inquiry teaching to succeed (I've heard similar things from other teachers). My son spent 4 years of high school in a heavily inquiry-based STEM class, where they did tons of experiments, learned how to read data, designed experiments, etc. He loved it, and is now a STEM major in college, but only the most knowledgeable, highly motivated students succeeded in the class—it started with more than 40 students freshman year, and by senior year it was only 7 students.
I heard Chris Kessler on a podcast talking about the TEKS in Texas, and how he liked them because they stepped back the hard-core inquiry in NGSS. TEKS, he said, doesn't depend on students being able to "magic" themselves up to a place where they can ask an informed question that will open the material to them.
It's amazingly frustrating, as we're told/pushed/forced to differentiate to students' different levels, and scaffold to make up for their prior knowledge and deficiencies (which can be substantial), but the message pushed into us is that they ALL need to be taught via inquiry-based.
Largely, I would say that your veteran teachers know how to do the dance and show the Important People what they want to see, but as soon as the door closes, we do what we know works for the kids. Our toolboxes are broad and deep.
Would you say Zhang's experience runs parallel to your recent debate?
In that debate, you tried to move the arena to RCT evidence. Your debate partner... evaded.
Zhang wants good RCTs to be the referee. Again, evasion.
Yes, there are a lot of parallels! One of the reasons I wanted to do this newsletter was to try to understand if, like the science of reading, we are ignoring, underplaying or otherwise ignoring similar research in other areas of learning. What I'm learning is that we are!