Header image: From book cover
Sargent, M. (2023). More ways of learning: Foundations of practice for (inquiry) teachers. Collections Canada. [Amazon]
There are more ways of learning than I know how to teach
– Anon
- Pacific School for Innovation and Inquiry (PSII), an independent high school in downtown Victoria, BC on the unceded territory of the Lekwungen people.
- I find Inquiry Education to be more than just a “better option” to Traditional Education. It is a model that supports equity, agency, decolonization, creativity, and enterprise in ways that bring forward what many traditions have long known about education.
- Inquiry-based education offers a framework for learners to make personal choices about their learning.
- Teachers are not governed by outcomes that are universal, external, and arbitrary. Instead, teachers develop curriculum with learners, and assess their learning based on mutually agreed upon criteria.
∞
These four touchstones form the foundation of Inquiry teaching, regardless of institution, age, or subject matter.
- 1. Intention: This is about being clear in the what and why of both teaching and learning.
- 2. Consent: This is about learners and teachers being explicit in offering and accepting permission to engage in the learning process together.
- 3. Co-construction: This is about sharing in the creation of direction, scope, and pace of learning.
- 4. Assessment: This is about reflecting on, deepening, and iterating learning and the learning process.
1. INTENTION
To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin… (hooks, 1994)
Trust is contingent on the evidence which one party provides the others of his true, concrete intentions; it cannot exist if that party’s words do not coincide with their actions. To say one thing and do another – to take one’s own word lightly – cannot inspire trust. (Friere, 1972)
- As Inquiry Teachers, we need to form intentional relationships with the learners with whom we work. The purpose of this relationship is to hold space for the learning that will happen.
- If the relationship is formed because the teacher has forced it to be (control) then the interactions will always be driven by the teacher and the learner will always be responding to the control of the teacher rather than the teaching. However, if the relationship is formed because the teacher is there for the learner (help) then the interactions will always be about the learner. This fundamentally changes how learners can respond to both the teacher and the teaching.
- In our traditional system, “what students mostly do in class is guess what the teacher wants them to say. Constantly, they must try to supply the Right Answer” (Postman & Weingartner, 1969).
- No teacher even said: ‘Don’t value uncertainty and tentativeness. Don’t question questions. Above all, don’t think.’
- The message is communicated quietly, insidiously, relentlessly and effectively through the structure of the classroom: through the role of the teacher, the role of the student, the rules of their verbal game, the rights that are assigned, the arrangements made for communication, the ‘doings’ that are praised or censured. In other words, the medium is the message. (Postman & Weingartner, 1969)
- In a traditional classroom the teacher’s role is clear – control. It is the primary role that teachers are expected to fulfill: Keep the class under control; control the pace of learning; control the content; control the emotional expression; control the expectation; control the behaviour. If a teacher controls their classes well enough, then everyone will arrive at the same place
- ﻼF: “classroom management”
- HIERARCHY: This is why, in my first weeks as an Inquiry Teacher, I felt so lost and without landmarks – I had yet to replace the primary intention of control with anything else. It took many more weeks (months!) before I recognized that my primary intention needed to be radical. It needed to be a return to the roots of teaching: helping others to learn.
- ﻼF: ∞
- Replacing control with help means also replacing hierarchy with something. As appealing as the idea is, it is simply not viable to replace the hierarchical nature of the teacher-learner relationship with equality. Both legally and culturally, that would be naive. Even in the paradigm of Inquiry Education, the role of the teacher still carries certain duties and responsibilities that result in an unequal relationship.
- However, in seeking a non-hierarchical relationship, teachers are free to partner with learners in the learning process. Or mentor. Or guide, coach, collaborate, assist, or any number of other relationship structures that replace hierarchy with a personal relationship. Within these relationships the intention of the teacher to help can be received with trust and, hopefully, confidence.
- Therefore, when we engage with learners, we must communicate not only our intentions, but how those intentions support and enhance the learners’ intentions[5].
- For example, although we might help learners to cook, to develop balanced diet plans, and to understand the role of nutrition in their lives, we are not nutritionists or dietitians. Our intention, in this case, is to help learners deepen their understanding of food and nutrition, not to become healthy or healthier. Our intentions must be founded on our learners’ education, not their lifestyle choices. A learner may demonstrate a strong and deep understanding of food, food culture, balanced and nutritious meals, and even a creative flare for cooking without necessarily becoming healthier themselves.
- ﻼF: What of teacher education?
2. CONSENT
[Mea culpa]
Trauma and Mistrust
- In Traditional Education we are either pushing a student into learning that they are not ready for, holding back a student from learning they are ready for, or putting together students and teachers whose goals are mutually exclusive.
Learner Readiness: Addressing Trauma and Mistrust
- [Students] have internalized the pattern of dismissing their own curiosity. Our job as Inquiry Teachers at this point is to aid learners in (re)discovering and (re)connecting with, yes, their own curiosity but also, perhaps more importantly, with their own agency.
- This is perhaps the single most important difference between a student and a learner – a learner is expected to operate with agency; a student is expected to operate with obedience.
Teacher Readiness: Offering and Receiving Consent
- Teachers are hired to deliver a service, and students are compelled to submit to it.
- making the learner central to the conversation, precisely because it is the learner’s journey.
- In any learning environment, teachers develop reputations among the learners, and those reputations inform learners about which teacher they’d like to connect with to meet different needs.
- However, in the same way that learners are not universally ready to move forward with a teacher, not every teacher is universally ready to meet learners where they are at. A teacher may recognize that, for whatever reason, they are not ready to share this leg of the journey with a particular learner…
Establishing teacher consent as an integral part of our practice also encourages an ongoing conversation about the needs of teachers. If teachers are provided with an opportunity to share or withhold consent in their practice, rather than being interchangeably slotted into a factory process of Traditional Education, then there must be conversations about what teachers need in order to effectively do their jobs. Further, these conversations must recognize the personal nature of teaching in the same way that we recognize the personal nature of learning.
Relationship Readiness: Establishing goals
- When we start with strong and healthy learner-teacher relationships, it leads to a shared learning journey.
3. CO-CONSTRUCTION
The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. (Friere, 1972)
- By its very nature, co-construction demands that we be open to novel outcomes, be supportive of experimentation and false starts, and remain engaged in the process.
- Co-construction takes the focus from the product (essay, worksheet, report, presentation, etc.) and emphasizes the learning (competencies, skills, experimentation, theorization, etc.)
- Traditionally teaching is based on courses and curriculum. The (expected) answer to the question, “What do you teach?” is either a subject, a class, a grade level, or some combination of these things. This is based still in the “delivery” or “inoculation” paradigm of education (Postman & Weingartner, 1969).
- Because teaching in the traditional system is really synonymous with delivery of a course, it logically follows that a well-designed course mitigates any variance of delivery from teacher to teacher.
- In other words, a well-designed course should eliminate any need to consider the role of the teacher in the transaction.
- What, then, is the intention of teacher education? Based on the above premise, teacher education should largely be a matter of training people to deliver pre–designed courses, to control classrooms, and to set and mark tests and assignments
- MS: “With some variation, this is essentially what teacher education is presently.”
- The challenge with co-construction, at least in the context of Traditional Education, is that it violates one of the most important goals of the existing system: control.
- Teachers are provided with tools of punishment and reward to use on students in order to encourage the greatest number of students to comply.
- [T]he problem with the existing system is that it purports to be serving the needs of everyone, but is responsive to the needs of no one, and the students must carry the consequences of that failure.
- being asked to contribute to the conversation about what to learn and how to learn it is new to most people, and it can be intimidating.
Part of the challenge of being an Inquiry Teacher is helping learners rediscover their own agency in their learning.
What does the learner want to learn?
- Before learners and teachers can share agency in the learning process, learners must recognize their own agency. That process, like learning to walk, is a process of trial and error. And, like learning to walk, it involves trying a lot and falling down a lot.
- Being told how to walk is not particularly useful, and being told about how other people walk provides no useful information at all – ultimately we must all learn how to walk by trying to walk. Figuring out how to apply our own agency, especially in an educational context, is no different.
- epistemic agency: the capacity to take action for one’s own learning. {Britzman}
- ﻼF: Walk – cycle – drive {range}
Why does the learner want to learn this?
How does the learner want to engage in this learning?
4. ASSSESSMENT
- Assessment is the catch-all term referring to the measures, observations, and feedback about question formation, research strategies, learning activities, artifacts, and goals.
- We do not assess learners; we assess learning.
- More often than not, what we find being offered to students in traditional education is evaluation.
CONCLUSION – PUTTING IT ALL (BACK) TOGETHER
- As we develop our practice, we continue to learn and to develop more ways of communicating, sharing, and supporting the process of learning. When we apply the touchstones of our own practice to our learning, we model growth and lifelong-learning for learners and colleagues alike.
- it is my sincere hope that this document will help us all answer the question: “How are you doing?”
- pedagogy v andragogy
- compulsory v non-compulsory
- class/course v approach
- resources