Inquiry Page

Chip Bruce

Library & Information Science

U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Outline

1) Inquiry-based learning

2) Inquiry Page

3) Community Inquiry Labs

4) Research on inquiry

Harold Kroto

Stephen's questions• Why do cars speed up passing a stop sign?

• Why do things far away seem blue

• Why do my eyes water when I stare

• How does your body make tears

• Is salt in our tears the same as the salt we

put on food

• What's that pipe from the silo to the barn?

Weather curriculum

Jack Easley asks students to look up at a rainbow, but the children look down and ask:

"Why do earthworms come out of

the ground after it rains?"

21st-century challenge

• Find problems

• Integrate knowledge from multiple sources and media

• Think critically

• Collaborate

• Learn how to learn

Inquiry-based learning

… in which people construct knowledge based on the questions that arise in their lived experience

Teacher as inquirer

• Inquiry about the world

• Partner in inquiry

• Modeling

• Guiding

• Inquiry about teaching and learning

Interests of the learner

• Investigate: learn about the world through authentic engagement

• Create: change the world

• Communicate: enter the social world

• Express: reflect on experience

–Dewey, The School & Society, 1900

• Partner projects

• Resources for inquiry teaching & learning

• Lesson planning support and idea site

• Tools for student and community inquiry

• Inquiry in Action

1) Inquiry Page

Learning

• Students

• Teachers

• Community members

• Developers– practicums, internships, independent study

– weekly meetings

– workshops

– sequence of courses => graduate specialization

Community = support for collaborative activity and for creating knowledge connected to people's values, history, and lived experience

Inquiry = support for open-ended, democratic, participatory engagement

Laboratory = a space and resources to bring theory and action together in an experimental and critical manner

2) Community Inquiry Labs

2) Communities: NCSA

Inquiry involves people as active learners. Students in inquiry classrooms may experience anything from hatching chickens, to a classroom business, to the bioinformatics of whales. Also: Bugscope, EdGrid, VR-Savvy, GK-12, RiverWeb, ChemViz, EADS, ..

Communities: Beyond…

• Ethnography of the University• Sisternet

• Telenature; Life on the Prairie • Freshman composition• Service learning• Marshall Islands

• CAMPWS (Water)

3) Research on inquiry

How can we

b) connect learning & life?

c) support participatory design?

d) accommodate diversity & shared

values?

a) Connect learning and life

b) Participatory design

C) Accommodate difference & shared values

Conclusion

• Design: appropriate technology• Generativity: participatory design• Sustainability: incorporation into

community needs

Learning to teach - 1

As a guide for the experimentation we so freely

encourage, the table opposite will be helpful. We

must caution, however, that it is rife with half-

truths--despite our best efforts at disclosure. We

are dealing here with living things whose colors,

habits, and general constitutions will vary with

locale and with the skill of the individual

gardener.

Learning to teach - 2

This unpredictability, which strikes terror into the

heart of the beginner, is in fact one of the glories

of gardening. Things change, certainly from year

to year and sometimes from morning to evening.

There are mysteries, surprises, and always,

lessons to be learned. After almost 40 years

hard at it, we are only beginning.

–Amos Pettingill, The Garden Book, 1986

Inquiry in science learning

National Science Foundation: “research-

validated models (e.g., extended inquiry,

problem-solving)”

Reinventing Undergraduate Education (Carnegie

Foundation's Boyer Commission): “#1 Make

research-based learning the standard”

Project 2061 (American Association for the

Advancement of Science): “#1 …science

literacy for all high-school graduates”

• Chip Bruce: chip@uiuc.edu

• Inquiry Page: inquiry.uiuc.edu

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