“The
ability to pose questions to understand ourselves and our world is
at the heart of what it means to be human. Unfortunately, this essential
human trait is distorted in many schools by an answering pedagogy:
When questions arise, knowledgeable teachers ask the ignorant students
questions primarily in the form of an examination.”
Yoram Harpaz and Adam Lefstein: Communities of Thinking
http://www.ascd.org/publications/ed_lead/200011/abstracts.html#harpaz
Stage
5/6: The research/synthesis process involves
active research using a wide range to "resources" including
everything from primary sources of information through to web resources,
conversations, historical material, quotations, statistical and scientific
research . . . The key skill here is the capacity to synthesise all
the different media formats into one concise conceptual framework.
This can only be achieved through thorough manipulation and interrogation
of the resources being driven by good questioning and good research
skills.
Stage
7: What
type of resources that are used will depend on the nature of the audience
and should be audience appropriate.
Presentation
formats should be fully interactive, using a range of different format
styles. For different presentations styles go here
Step
8: In
some cases it will relevant to add the action stage. Learners are
often very passionate about their inquiry and should be given the
opportunity to develop that passion by taking a particular action
either by writing to a newspaper, campaigning about a cause or promoting
a cause of idea via the media.
Reflecting,
Reviewing & Iterating
Critical
to the Inquiry process is the the constant reflection, review and
iteration of ideas, direction and knowledge. The result of this is
that the process of Inquiry is never linear and learners may not complete
the entire inquiry process and while this may seem "incomplete"
it should not compromise any grade associated with the process as
long as the learners have been actively involved and have chronicled/diarised
their progress through the inquiry process.
The
other issue we need to acknowledge that inquiry teams do make mistakes
and it is important that the educator does not "interfere"
and always stop this happening. Mistakes and dead ends are a natural
part of the inquiry process and learners will need experience this
and learn to deal with it.
