Teaching critical thinking skills through project based learning

Posted by Tara Della Rocca

Mergendoller, J. (2012). Teaching critical thinking skills through project based learning. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/tools-and-resources/p21blog/1097-teaching-critical-thinking-skills-through-project-based-learning

The author describes how PBL can be a method for teaching critical thinking, if carried out properly. His theory is that the projects must include "Non-Googleable Driving Questions, deliberative cognitive tasks, support and scaffolding" combined "to create projects that help students become critical thinkers". PBL can fall flat in terms of developing critical thinkers, if not gone about with careful thought and planning.

"PBL is a powerful pedagogy that helps students to learn how to be critical thinkers - to make thoughtful decisions and exercise reasoned judgments. For this to occur, projects have to be planned around topics that lend themselves to thoughtful consideration, and students have to be provided with the tasks, supports and scaffolds needed to develop critical thinking tools and strategies."

The author differentiates between projects designed around Googleable questions (for which mere research is required to answer) and non-Googleable Driving Questions for which students must "define terms, consider whether information and concepts vary according to context, weigh multiple explanations, evaluate evidence, and compare alternative actions based on their probability of success. This is critical thinking - careful thinking, done reflectively, with attention to criteria." 

The author makes clear that Driving Questions are not enough. Project tasks must compel students to learn something by doing something. The cognitive tasks of projects must require students to make judgments, figure out the best ways to create something, weigh evidence, reconsider ideas, and create plans for problem-solving.

"Critical thinking projects not only require students to think carefully and deliberately, they provide models and scaffolding to show how such cognitive tasks are carried out."

Finally, Mergendoller quotes John Dewey from Experience and Education to defend his idea that "PBL is not synonymous with Critical Thinking":
"The believe that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative." - Dewey

"For critical thinking to occur, projects have to be structured to demand deliberate, reflective thought, and students have to be shown examples of what critical thinking looks like, in addition to being supported, assessed, encouraged, and given feedback as they try such thinking out with their peers and on their own."

Five Ideas for 21st Century Math Classrooms

Gasser, Kenneth W. "Five Ideas For 21st Century Math Classrooms." American Secondary Education 39.3 (2011): 108-16. Print.

I am reading this article because:

It is about problem-based mathematics in the classroom,

it is about mathematics instructions in a secondary school

it is a recent article,

it addresses 21 century skills

it is teacher written

Much of this article is motivated by ideas the author found in three places.

1.  "A Mathematician's Lament" - Paul Lockhart

2.  Various articles from and about the "Partnership for 21st century skills"

3.  "A Whole New Mind" - Daniel Pink

All three of these sources are worth looking at for my action research because they deal with progressive thinking about mathematics education, 21 century skills and or problem based mathematics.

Another article referenced in the References section is:

Coticˇ, M. & Zuljan, M. (2009). Problem-based instruction in mathematics and its

impact on the cognitive results of the students and on an affective-motivational

aspects. Educational Studies, 35(3), 297-310.

This looks like a relevant article for me, but I could not find it available in full text on WIlson Web so it will have to wait.

Gasser is a teacher of mathematics with six years experience.  In preparing the article he draws on his experiences as an educator, comparative studies of students across cultures and his knowledge of the literature surrounding the world our students will be facing.  With that in mind he addresses 5 changes to mathematics classrooms that he believes will help our students compete globally in the modern world.  These changes are:

1.  Incorporating problem based instruction

2.  Fostering student led solutions

3.  Encouraging risk taking

4.  Having fun

5.  Providing ample collaborations time

Incorporating problem based instruction

His ideas about what problem based learning matches my experience with the problem sets used by Exeter and at the conference I attended on problem based learning.  His description of PBL is not as expansive as the descriptions I've read in other articles specifically relating to PBL.  For instance, his second, fourth and fifth suggestion for change are already an integral part of the problem based learning approach as defined in articles like:  Hmelo-Silver, C. E. , & Barrows, H. S. (2006). Goals and Strategies of a Problem-based Learning Facilitator.  This difference is important to me right now because I am starting to feel like there are two separate paradigms that go by the same name.  Or perhaps PBL, from a mathematics education perspective, has branched off and has become less broadly defined.  I need to come to an understanding of what is meant when other refer to PBL and what is meant when I refer to it.

Fostering Student Lead Solutions

This section strikes a chord with me because it hits on some of the reasons I am looking to implement PBL more comprehensively in my own classroom.  Specifically having students analyze, organize and present information, seems to me to be one of the keys goals of a good mathematics classroom.  Getting them to look for their own paths to find solutions rather than waiting for the 'recipe' and then applying that recipe to problems that are only superficially different seems wrong headed, boring and not quite learning.  Gasser cites studies that show that the student lead solution approach has the potential to make students better thinkers.  In light of the 21st century dilemma of how to develop global citizens that can accomplish jobs that cannot be outsourced or done better by a computer it seems that  turning out better thinkers ought to be a necessity.

Risk Taking

This section, touched on the importance of fostering students who are not afraid to take risks and who see failure as a necessary step in the path to success.  It reminded me of all the things that I like about Judo Math and its emphasis on not being afraid to fail.  Decoupling failure and shame is a necessary component of risk taking.  In a PBL environment this means creating a culture where questions are as important as answers and that evidence of thought when presenting problems and solutions is as important (and probably more important than) as correct solutions.  It is not about what the right answer is it is about what was learned in the process of finding it.

Having Fun

This suggestion is not an explicit component of PBL as I have seen it defined previously but it makes perfect sense.  Fun in the sense that  problems and experiences are compelling and worth solving to those charged with solving them.  Gasser cites evidence that effective learning does not take place in environments that are not motivating.  His ideas for instilling fun onto his lessons are a bit different than mine because they seem untied to the problems.  But I do plenty of the things he touches on in and ad hoc fashion.

Collaboration Time

Gasser talks about the importance of collaboration time both for students and for teachers.  He notes the ability to collaborate effectively as a 21st century skill.  He also notes that there is a benefit to allowing students to share their strengths, solutions and questions with others.

---

I didn't get much in the way of tactics or techniques from this article but I do think the author does a great job of encapsulating what I want to mean when I say Problem Based Learning.  There are additional ideas that he doesn't include but these are good broad stroked to start from.  I wonder if there is enough detail to sufficiently distinguish this from Project Based Learning.

The Case for Authentic Assessment

Wiggins, Grant (1990). The case for authentic assessment. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 2(2).

I read this article because one of the questions I am struggling with for my action research is how much time I want to spend prepping students to do well on standardized mathematics tests next.  Especially when 'doing well' means covering an ever increasing breadth of knowledge rather than increasing the depth of their knowledge in a smaller subset of data.  Currently the standardized tsp we take at the 8th grade level can include any of the literally hundred of standards covered in 6th and 7th graded including things like box  and whisker plots.  There is a lot of hope that the new common core standards will cover fewer topics with more depth and that the new standardized test will assess not only breadth but depth.  Even the name "smarter balanced tests" hints at a different approach.

Part of my question relates to how to assess in my own classroom.  The problem based approached, which I plan on using next year, requires students to let go of a 'cram' style of learning.  It attempts to cultivate a desire for and an appreciation of mathematical concepts and not just the procedures derived from them.

Wiggin's article addresses what authentic assessment is and why we need to invest in it.  The article is focusing primarily on state and federal assessments, but these assessments clearly impact how and what we assess on in our own classrooms so it is relevant to my own research as well.  In fact one of Wiggin's arguments against a purely multiple chic type of assessment is not that the content is harmful or invalid but that the form is invalid.  That it promotes an idea of learning that deemphasizes content and does not discriminate between superficial understanding/plug and chug understandings and deeper ones.

I found the educational questions and imperatives more relevant to me that the financial,and feasibility pieces and have not given them much thought.

One questions that the article raised for me what how do authentic assessment address the issue of students who are not fluent with the basic skills let alone the ability to apply the concepts of these skills to more complicated tasks?

I also wonder about Wiggin's argument that multiple choice tests can be valid indicators of academic performance, but mislead teachers and students about what should be mastered.   Does this hold even when the tests show that the basic skills are not being mastered?  I agree that that may not be an adequate indicator of mastery but are they a preliminary indicator of basic understanding?  

His point that it is the form of the test not the content that is harmful to learning is well taken.  It is true that a focus on the importance of doing well on standardized tests leads, or can lead, to certain beliefs about what learning is.  This is especially true when the financial health of the academic institution rests upon the success of these scores.  How do you  balance what you want kids to learn along with the need to perform better on standardized tests this year than we did last year is a difficult and robust problem.  Especially when performing well means she very basic proficiency on a very wide variety of standards.  Balancing the needs of your institutions financial health and it's pedagogical/philosophical health is a difficult and robust problem.  What kinds of decisions are educators making because of the test?  Ben Daley's stance on standardized tests seems to be, do well enough so that we will be left alone.  But that gets complicated too because of the pressure for school's not only to do well each year but also to improve each year.  That requirement, is particularly troubling to me, especially when doing better requires greater breadth and not greater depth.

The biggest takeaway that I have from the article was a parenthetical point that Wiggin's makes early in the article. "(Note, therefore, that the debate is not "either-or": there may well be virtue in an array of local and state assessment instruments as befits the purposes of the measurement.)"  I interpret that to mean that there is a place for standardized tests which test procedural fluency, but also more authentic assessments that test the ability of testers to  apply those procedures in an applied an ill structured   and real world-ish context.  There are multiple levels at which we want to assess understanding.  Standardized tests, currently still fail to do this, higher scores generally indicate greater breadth of knowledge, rarely greater depth of knowledge.  Let's make these multiple test portions of the test pass or fail, and once basic proficiency has been reached let us accept that the usefulness of those types of tests has also been reached.

From my perspective as a teacher of mathematics, this 'both' approach seems to make so much sense - at least from an educational standpoint.  I am not concerned right now with the feasibility, reliability or cost of that approach.  My lay opinion is that if it is the right thing to do then we need to make it happen regardless the cost, let success or failure determine feasibility and reliability over time.  

In my own classroom there is certainly room for a both approach, one that increases in depth but also assesses basic procedural fluency.

Goals and Strategies of a Problem-based Learning Facilitator

Hmelo-Silver, C. E. , & Barrows, H. S. (2006). Goals and Strategies of a Problem-based Learning Facilitator. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 1(1).

Overview
This article addresses specific strategies used by an expert problem based educator to facilitate his classroom.  The class is a med school class where students are attempting to diagnose and illness based on the information they have been given.

My goal in reading the article was to identify useful strategies I might want to incorporate into my own classroom when running a problem-based session.  Additionally I wanted more information about problem-based learning and what it looks like in practice.

Additionally,  the article had information about how what educators want out of their classroom influences the model the use in their classroom.  Also, the article touched upon what a student-centered classroom is and it’s importance in a problem-based classroom.

An Explanation of Problem Based Learning
According to Silver and Barrows, problem-based learning is an active learning method based on the use of ill-structured problems as a stimulus for learning (Barrows, 2000). Ill-structured problems are complex problems that cannot be solved by a simple algorithm. Such problems do not necessarily have a single correct answer but require learners to consider alternatives and to provide are reasoned argument to support the solution that they generate.   (p22)

This definition of pbl is similar to ones I have seen, but I am not sure that the goal is always to have problems that cannot be solved using simple algorithms.  In Mathematics I have seen PBL used to establish and understand algorithms that can be used and applied easily afterwards.  So in a sense, simple algorithms can be used once they have been introduced and understood through the use of an introductory problem.

One key element to establishing a pbl classroom is a student-centered approach.  The authors contrasted this approach with a teacher-centered approach.  Characteristics of a student-centered approach include:

• The pursuit of ideas
• Getting students to think about how they thing - metacognitive
• Analyzing theories and deriving formulas
• Student driven discussion
• Teacher as facilitator and scaffolder

Characteristics of a teacher centered approach include

• Acquisition of facts
• Teacher lead, teacher dominates the discussion
• Questions which have short correct answers for which the teacher already knows the answer.

Educational and Performance Goals For PBL
In this case study the facilitator identified five educational and three performance goals:

Educational Goals:
1. explain disease processes responsible for a patient’s symptoms and signs and describe what interventions can be undertaken,
2. employ an effective reasoning process,
3. be aware of knowledge limitations,
4. meet knowledge needs through self-directed learning and social knowledge construction,
5. evaluate their learning and performance. The facilitator’s performance goals were to
(p27)

Performance Goals:
1. keep all students active in the learning process,
2. keep the learning process on track,
3. make the students’ thoughts and their depth of understanding apparent, and
4. encourage students to become self-reliant for direction and information.
(p27)

The educational goals refer objectives to be learned, performance goals support behaviors that lead to the learning goals.    With the exception of the first educational goal, all of these goals could be used in my classroom.

Strategies used by the expert facilitators
1.  Pushing For Explanations:
This is a strategy of asking for students to be explicit about their thoughts.  In this example it involved pushing a student to elaborate upon multiple sclerosis as a diagnosis.  But I see wide application for it in my classroom.  So often student give operations as answer “multiply” or “divide” or “KFC”.  Sometimes this is students playing the odds but other times students believe this is the correct response and might be right but they have never articulated or even really pushed themselves to think about why.  This is exactly the thing that excites me about pbl, getting students to think more deeply about ideas rather than just applying procedures.  The stated goals for this approach were to construct causal models and to help students realize limits of their knowledge. (p28)

2.  Revoicing:
Taking the ideas put fourth by a student and restating them.  This can be done to clarify what is being said for others. legitimize the ideas of low status students, help to keep important ideas alive and subtly influence the direction of the conversation.  This is a technique I use already in the classroom but have also noticed that I can misuse it to put ideas or explanations that I am searching for into the mouths of students.

3.  Summarizing:
Having a student summarize the discussion is a strategy suggested to keep a conversation from stalling.  It can also be used as a check on quiet students to make sure they are staying involved even if they are not being especially vocal.  It also provides students with practice in articulating the process.  In the article this was the medical diagnostic process but this applies to mathematics problems as well.  It also allows facilitator to see what information was deemed important or relevant by the students in order to solve the problem.

I wonder what types of strategies I can use besides summarization to achieve understanding check-ins and also how to get students to to speed who have not been paying attention.  Reflecting on some of my students this year a couple of them have some difficulties talking aloud in class and also sometimes “zone out” during discussion.  Some of those students have IEPs but no all of them do.

4.  Generating Hypotheses:
The articles suggest that asking students to generate a hypothesis can help students become aware of the limits of their knowledge.  Additionally it can help the focus they’re data gathering and problem solving approach.  The authors suggest that this strategy might be useful in getting students to identify concepts and areas that they are not sure about and provide a list of topics for self directed learning.

Self directed learning will need to be one of the cornerstones of my program, especially because the classroom is untracked and so many of the students tend to be a different levels.

Other strategies listed in table by the authors, but not directly given their own topic heading by the authors included
Use of open ended and metacognitive questions
Map between symptoms and hypothesis
Check for consensus that the white board reflect discussion:  the use of a specific type of board setup is discussed briefly in this article but is talked about in more detail in other PBL articles.  IT will be useful to read more about this and look at using that setup next year.
Cleaning up the board
Creating learning issues
Encouraging constructions of visual representations: There are entire articles dedicated to the use of mind mapping and graphic organizers for PBL, I think these will be very useful for me next year especially when trying to get my 8th graders to express their thoughts in journals.

Questions
A question that I still have after reading this article is whether the type of PBL discussed in this article is the same type I have witnessed at Exeter and the type that I am thinking about implementing in my own classroom.  My question remains because the type of questions in this case study differs in its depth from the type that I have seen in mathematics classrooms.  The Exeter problems sets are not always given in the context of a real life application, there are usually several assigned per night and lack the depth of the problem given to the class in this article.

Intellectual character: What it is, why it matters, and how to get it

Posted by Tara Della Rocca

Ritchhart, R. (2002). Intellectual character: What it is, why it matters, and how to get it. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

The subtitle of this book basically says it all in terms of what the book is about. Ritchhart defines intellectual character, makes a case for teaching for the development of intellectual character in our schools and then describes, using real situations from actual classrooms, ways that this can be done.

What is intellectual character?
"an overarching term to describe a set of dispositions that not only shape but also motivate intellectual behavior" (p.31) 
"In contrast to viewing intelligence as a set of capacities or even skills, the concept of intellectual character recognizes the role of attitude and affect in our everyday cognition and the importance of developed patterns of behavior." (p.18)

The use of the word "disposition" is meant to "invoke the volitional, acquired, and overarching nature of patterns of behavior... we tend to understand a disposition as a tendency toward a general type of action." (p.20)

"Thinking dispositions represent characteristics that animate, motivate, and direct our abilities toward good and productive thinking and are recognized in the patterns of our frequently exhibited, voluntary behavior. Dispositions not only direct our strategic abilities but they help activate relevant content knowledge as well, bringing that knowledge to the forefront to better illuminate the situation at hand... collectively, the presence and force of these dispositions make up our intellectual character." (p.21)

Ritchhart discusses the various dispositions that different groups (schools or organizations) aim to develop and arrives at a list of six broad categories of dispositions (further grouped into three overarching categories) that he feels captures the most important ones:
1) Creative thinking: looking out, up, around and about
     Open-minded
     Curious
2) Reflective thinking: looking within
     Metacognitive
3) Critical thinking: looking at, through, and in between
     Seeking truth and understanding
     Strategic
     Skeptical (p. 27)

Dispositional behavior... is the marriage of inclination, awareness, motivation, and ability." (p.37) "Dispositions are about more than a desire or inclination to act. They consist of general inclination consisting of values, beliefs, and underlying temperaments; an awareness of occasions for appropriate action; motivation to carry out action; and the requisite abilities and skills needed to perform." (p.51)

Why it matters?
"When all is said and done, when the last test is taken, what will stay with a student from his or her education?... the knowledge and skills teachers have worked so hard to impart? Surprisingly, we don't have much evidence that these have a very long shelf life. so what sticks?... I contend that what stays with us from our education are patterns: patterns of behavior, patterns of thinking, patterns of interaction. These patterns make up our character, specifically our intellectual character. Through our patterns of behavior, thinking, and interaction, we show what we are made of as thinkers and learners... This is the kind of long-term vision we need for education: to be shapers of students' intellectual character." (p.9)

"Intelligent performance is not just an exercise of ability, It is more dispositional in nature in that we must activate our abilities and set them in motion. Dispositions concern not only what we can do, our abilities, but what we are actually likely to do, addressing the gap we often notice between our abilities and our actions. As John Dewey noted in his observations of the poor thinking of well-educated persons, "Knowledge of methods alone will not suffice; there must be the desire, the will to employ them. This desire is an affair of personal disposition."" (p.18)

"In my study of teaching, I have defined effective, good, and successful teaching as that which produces thoughtful environments and promotes students' thinking and development of intellectual character." (p. 218)

How to get it?

A) Create a culture of thinking in the classroom.
"Dispositions aren't so much taught as they are enculturated... acquiring the thinking dispositions that embody intellectual character depends on the presence of ongoing salient models of thinking, consistent expectations for thinking within the environment, explicit instruction in thinking to develop ability, and the opportunity for practice and reinforcement within meaningful contexts." (p.51)

"Thinking is largely an internal process. However, we reinforce and in some cases acquire patterns, approaches, styles, and types of thinking through social interaction and participation... Barbara Rogoff (1990) describes this process as an apprenticeship in thinking. The power of apprenticeships is that one learns in context. Thus, not only does one cultivate abilities but the expectations of the situation cultivate inclination, and through the authentic work, one becomes sensitive to occasions. In this way, patterns of thinking are enculturated." (p.74-75)

Ritchhart carefully selected teachers to use as examples for enculturating thinking. He describes specific situations in which each teacher develops the thinking or creates an expectation for thinking in the classroom.

Interesting lessons:

• When having students express their viewpoints in class, the challenge is "getting students to listen to and respond to each other's arguments" (p.98) The teacher encourages students to listen to one another, challenge each other, and build upon or contradict other's arguments.
• Use journal entries to develop thinking. "First, there is the need to communicate fully so that one's notes can be understood, to both oneself and others. Second, it is important to go beyond one's first thoughts and initial response to elaborate and add information." (p.103)
• "Thinking routines act as a major enculturating force by communicating expectations for thinking as well as providing students the tools they need to engage in thinking." (p.114)
• "Through practicing new ways of talking, students develop new ways of thinking... private thinking mirrors public argument"(p.122) "Students develop modes of thinking by internalizing classroom patterns for discussing ideas. Sometimes these patterns are explicit, as in reciprocal teaching, the leaderless discussion, or the public issue discussion. These structured interactions teach specific mental moves, such as asking clarifying questions or connecting ideas, that students can adapt for use in their own thinking." (p.143)

Use the language of thinking...

"When we tell students to think, I imagine that many of them are completely puzzled about what we are asking them to do. For many students, the word think seems to be interpreted as: Be quiet for about ten seconds, look downward in the general direction of the floor, then look up and nod when the teacher asks, "Well did you think about it?" If we want students to do more than fall silent at the word think, we need to be more directive and explicit in our use of language. We can use the language of thinking itself." (p.131)

Thinking language: words related to processes, products, states, and stances of thinking

(examples on p.136-137)

B) Create opportunities for thinking by focusing on big ideas, ensure that work demands thinking and active exploration and that thinking demanded of students is authentic in that it serves particular ends, and providing choice and independence to students (p.151)

Also: "1) teachers must provide adequate time for thinking to take place; and 2) thinking needs to be appropriately scaffolded to ensure student progress." (p.158)

C) Honor students' disposition toward thinking by "showing interest in their thinking, using it as a springboard for class discussions, or giving students the time an space to pursue their thinking." (p.165)

D) Teachers' thinking dispositions matter - teachers must attend to their own understanding of thinking and the processes involved; develop awareness of thinking opportunities and their own inclination to think

Inquiry in Education (Volume 1)

Aulls, M. W., & Shore, B. M. (2008) Inquiry in education: The conceptual foundations for research as a curricular imperative. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

This book is a very thorough overview of inquiry in classrooms, and quite frankly hard to digest.  The material is very technical and includes a bunch of education theory that is not, in reality, applicable.  The reason I wanted to include this book is a single chapter that discusses inquiry in the realm of project-based learning.  Being in a project-based school I thought it was an important resource to reference.

Chapter 9: Project-based inquiry

The following quote is early in the chapter and is showing a connection between inquiry and the social quality of project-based learning as laid down by Dewey:

“Unlike discovery learning, in which the focus is on the individual and experience, the social dynamics of the project may be hypothesized to have been the center of Dewey’s brand of project-based instruction. [. . .] Certainly, inquiry was viewed as inherently social by Dewey. For example, he stated that inquiry proceeded from doubt to resolution of doubt, and that we were doubtful because a situation was inherently doubtful. Thus, inquiry arises from an indeterminate situation. [. . .] Situations may either initiate inquiry or arise during inquiry. In some senses, a project might be considered a situation for inquiry.” (p. 170)

That final line is the connection I am looking for between projects and inquiry.  I am hoping to structure projects next year that call for inquiry, that takes asking questions and delving into evidence in order to complete.  I am also interested in creating projects that result from some form of inquiry.  I am interested in inquiry as a motivator and what better way to motivate students in a project than to have it come from their own wonderings.

Aulls and Shore continue to connect inquiry to Dewey’s model of project based learning:

“Dewey defined the activity of inquiry as “the controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified whole” (Dewey, 1938/1991, p.108)” (p.171)

“By inquiry, Dewey probably had in mind a practical activity, embodied as a project, which over a lengthy period of time would transform a problematic situation, social or scientific, into one that was more clearly articulated, unified, coherent, and comprehensible, and that allowed the planning directions for future successful action.” (p.171)

I picture being in the middle of a project and having the students ask questions about the content, the process, and things they are curious about.  These questions could then lead into research to help develop a broader understanding of the connections in the project as well as connections to topics outside the realm of the project.

The following quote demonstrates the struggle I have had with connecting inquiry to statistics:

“Research on learning in subjects such as mathematics and literacy seldom adopts the project as the model upon which classroom instruction is based.” (p. 172)

Aulls and Shore shared some difficulties that arise when teaching inquiry in a project-based classroom:

“Students tended to decide too quickly on a question to investigate rather than considering its merits. They were attracted to the uniqueness of some aspect of the situation or phenomenon.” (p. 177)

“Students tended to use everyday life experiences to relate to the results they found. Students did not use their findings to justify their own conclusions or to suggest new inquiry questions. When presenting results, students focused on their procedures and conclusions but not on scientific interpretations of findings.” (p. 178)

I have to be careful when allowing students to pursue open-ended inquiry.  There still needs to be the right amount of support and scaffolding to ensure their success.

Aulls and Shore wrapped up the chapter with a nice outline of qualities of project-based inquiry:

“The defining, if not completely unique, qualities of project-based inquiry within the many forms of inquiry analyzed in this volume are that (a) it is a collaborative student activity typically conducted in what is called a community of learners, (b) it is built around questions that arise from deep disciplinary or broad worldly questions, and (c) there are important teacher roles at multiple levels that range from teaching learners to create meaningful problems, to sustaining dialogue that supports the inquiry process over extended time periods, to modeling knowledge-creation processes in the discipline, to anchoring student conclusions and extrapolations in the disciplinary canon.” (p. 183)

This has helped me picture what inquiry can look like in my own classroom and I realize that it can be integrate seamlessly without a great amount of shaking things up.  The role of the teacher in the above quote also helps me to see what I am going to need to focus on during these lessons.  These are things that I already experience (and struggle with) within our senior project structure.  I’m curious whether this can expand to senior project after my action research.

References:

Dewey, J. (1991). Logic: The theory of inquiry. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. (Original work published in 1938)

Education for Thinking

Kuhn, D. (2005). Education for thinking. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

This book takes the focus off of class content and focuses on two skills that Kuhn believes are critical for all learners;  inquiry and argument.  I was drawn to this book mainly due to the chapters on inquiry and will therefore forego expanding upon the argument chapters.  Throughout the book, Kuhn illustrates her points by referencing the inquiry habits at two schools; one struggling, the other a “best practices” school.  In general, she concludes that neither school is doing true inquiry although there are some bright spots that can be built upon.

Chapters 3-5: Inquiry (pp. 39-109)

Much of these chapters are techniques for teaching inquiry in the classroom.  As I develop inquiry lessons this book could be a great resource, but it is not currently the focus of my understandings or research. Below are some quotes and ideas that stood out to me from these chapters.

Two quotes emphasising the  value of inquiry learning over traditional methods:

“Inquiry learning, they claim, is superior to traditional instruction because it involves students in authentic investigation of real phenomena, in the process fostering intellectual skills like those that practiced by professional scientists in generating new knowledge.” (p. 39)

“Teachers would be unlikely to teach information included on state tests via an inquiry method. Instead, the primary goal of an inquiry curriculum is to teach students how to inquire and learn.  If achieved, the outcome appears to be a powerful one, well worth the effort invested.” (p. 39)

Interesting section on technology:

Kuhn takes a brief moment to talk about the use of software when teaching inquiry. Many software developers have created products that claim to assist with inquiry, but I have always been skeptical.  Kuhn also had reservations and references a study by Edelson, Gordin, and Pea (1999).  A few notable conclusions they made are:

• Students need more help to develop questions before seeking data;
• Students must be able to contextualize the data and develop their own expectations in order to understand it;
• Students need support for reading how data is displayed;
• Open-ended investigation must be preceded by more structured “staged” activities. (p. 56)

Kuhn goes on to say:

“If these are the results of inquiry curriculum development efforts, perhaps we should focus our attention not on the teaching tool [. . .] but rather on the capabilities that students bring to the tool.” (p. 56)

Framework for an inquiry lesson:

Kuhn suggests that any inquiry lesson should follow the process of inquiry, analysis, and inference. (p. 80)

• Inquiry is . . . developing questions and collecting data possibly relevant to that question.
• Analysis is . . . sort, filter, and organize data, compare data, find patterns.
• Inference is . . . justify claims, reject unjustified claims, acknowledge indeterminate claims.

Pages 92-109 then use actual examples of inquiry lessons to demonstrate techniques.  There is nothing that I want to focus on right now, but I may want to refer back at a later date.

Chapter 9: Becoming educated

The final chapter of the book focuses on what it means to be “educated”.  In general, Kuhn focuses on “Intellectual Skills” and “Intellectual Values”.   I got a lot from this final chapter that relates to my own interests and I have pulled several quotes from it.  In the vein of the rest of the book, she focuses on inquiry and argument and the following quote demonstrates that they connect very closely to my own purpose of developing lifelong learners:

“Education must prepare students for life beyond school, and inquiry and argument are broad and powerful skills that students take with them outside the classroom and well beyond their school years.  Their exercise leaves people enriched, individually and collectively.” (p. 178)

The below quote was the most striking for me from this text:

“[. . .] the value of inquiry and argument is intrinsic and revealed as the skills are engaged, practiced, and perfected. These are not skills someone acquires on faith because an external authority has deemed them a means to some unrelated end.  Inquiry and argument yield their own rewards. They are means to the end of knowing, and the educated person has come to value knowing as preferable to ignorance, and hence as capable of serving its own reward.” (p. 178)

This quote articulates how strong of a motivator curiosity can be.  But students cannot just be told that curiosity is a good thing, they have to experience it.  They then have to value the knowledge that they gain from the inquiry process, which means that they must be delving into topics of interest for them.  This is illustrated in the below quote:

“The question of learner’s dispositions brings us to the topic of intellectual values. Students decide what is worth their while to invest effort in. Educators ignore students’ intellectual values at their own risk.” (p. 182)

I think this shows that using statistics as the inquiry tool and not as the end goal will allow students to be curious about whatever they want, at least to start with.  My goal is to develop this sense of curiosity in students so that it spreads to areas that may not be of natural interest to them.  This is again articulated in the following quote about learning through reading (a metaphor I believe for inquiry in general):

“Every child must make the critical transition from learning to read to reading to learn. To truly make this transition and become a lifelong reader, the developing reader must come to appreciate the purpose of reading as one of finding out. Once they leave school and the reading demands it imposes, adults continue to read only if they have come to believe that there are worthwhile things to find out and that the printed word is an effective medium for finding them out.” (p. 178)

I think “reading” in the above example can also be replaced with statistics.  This emphasis on value is also noticeable in the following quote:

“Only through their own experience will students come to believe in inquiry and reasoned argument as offering the best means of evaluating competing claims, resolving conflicts, solving problems, and achieving goals. These are the intellectual values they need to develop. Developing these values is every bit as important for students as developing the skills required to implement them.” (p. 186)

Below is another quote that emphasises how the topic of inquiry does not need to be any specific content:

“Certainly, knowledge acquisition must be “situated” - any student learns about something in a certain context and for his or her particular purposes. [. . .] It does not follow, however, that intellectual skills cannot be identified outside of specific contexts, in their more general, content-independent form.” (p. 180)

A list of inquiry questions that can be applied to any situation or discipline:

“What can I claim and how do I know? What do I not know and need to find out? What are the claims and counterclaims at stake here, and what are the arguments for and against each?” (p. 179)