Does Guided Inquiry enhance learning and metacognition?

Research carried out at Loreto Kirribilli, a Catholic independent secondary school in Sydney, Australia, in 2014 demonstrates that Guided Inquiry scaffolding enhances learning and metacognition. Students undertaking the Historical Investigation in Year 11 develop an interest in an area of Ancient or Modern history, explore it, develop an inquiry question, and answer it in an essay. The Ancient History class was scaffolded by Guided Inquiry curriculum design and support, while the Modern History class conducted their investigation independently. Deep learning was evident in the questions asked and the answers written in the Ancient History essays. There is evidence of a difference in quality in the questions asked and answered by Modern Historians. It would appear that the scaffolding of Guided Inquiry has enhanced learning, while recognizing the effect an excellent teacher has on already high achieving students. Ancient history students also demonstrated a high level of metacognition in their reflections.

Symbiopolitics, Sustainability, and Science Studies: How to Engage With Alien Oceans

This essay explores the implications for inquiries in sustainability education of Helmreich’s discussions of how human biocultural practices scramble nature and culture, life forms and forms of life, and his ethos of acceptance of ambiguous boundaries and transformative linkages with others. The silences in Helmreich’s arguments around gender and sustainability through looking at Probyn and Merchant, and the possibilities for a more-than-human scientific inquiry curriculum, are discussed, as is how science studies offer an image of a more-than-human anthropology that leads us to reconceive evolution, nature, gender, and sustainability, to which educational researchers need to pay attention.

Examining preservice teachers’ thinking about teaching first grade economics through inquiry

Purpose In recent years, the field of social studies education has seen renewed interest in using inquiry to teach intradisciplinary concepts and skills. However, prospective primary grade teachers may have few (if any) opportunities to observe classroom teachers modeling inquiry during field placements. Methods courses provide fitting contexts in which to introduce preservice teachers (PSTs) to inquiry as a basis for intellectually challenging, meaningful social studies instruction. The purpose of this paper is to utilize a published inquiry curriculum developed for the New York Social Studies Toolkit (NYSST) Project as a tool to explore PSTs’ thinking about teaching first grade economics. Design/methodology/approach This qualitative study utilized focus groups with two groups of early childhood PSTs enrolled in a social studies methods course (n=28). Secondary data sources included PSTs’ handwritten comments on hard copies of the inquiry curriculum and the researcher’s analytic memos. Findings In the process of critiquing curriculum during focus group interviews, PSTs concentrated on the proposed tasks, evaluated those tasks for their potential to affect children’s understanding, and suggested new activities that would promote more active student engagement. Participants recognized the significance of children’s prior knowledge and were sensitive to students’ family values, although they underestimated young children’s capacity for robust discussion and intellectually challenging content. Originality/value This study is unique in its use of a published NYSST Project inquiry to explore how PSTs make sense of new curriculum. Its attention to PST education for primary grades contributes to elementary social studies literature. Additionally, this study addresses a general concern in teacher education about the need for PSTs to develop skills in interpreting and adapting curriculum materials. Findings suggest that engaging PSTs in discussions about social studies curriculum can help teacher educators identify latent learning goals for their courses that may be overlooked or assumed unnecessary.

Collaborative Inquiry in the EFL Classroom: exploring a school related topic with fifth graders

This action research study reports an inquiry based learning process in which fifth graders worked collaboratively by examining a local topic (free school snack) from their school context. Collaborative inquiry was used as a way to promote elementary students’ reflections in the EFL classroom drawing on Vygotsky’s ideas about learning mediated by social and material contexts (Lee & Smagorinsky, 2000). The EFL curriculum was organized around students’ communities and realities as relevant resources for language learning (Sharkey, Clavijo & Ramirez, 2016). Lessons were organized around students’ knowledge about the free daily snack that school provides to all children and what they wanted to learn about the topic. In this sense, Dewey’s (1997) idea of learning as experience was implemented through an inquiry curriculum with students. Findings suggest that through a classroom project, fifth graders developed inquiry skills and digital, visual, oral, and written literacies while learning together through collaboration. Inquiring in the language classroom evidenced the use of languages (Spanish and English) as the means to learn about meaningful content beyond English grammar lessons. It also led to individual reflections about the challenges of working together as well as about school coexistence understood as the way all the members of an educational community relate to each other.

Re/Presenting Artful Pedagogy: Relational Aesthetics in Early Childhood Contemporary Art Experiences

<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="section"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>Young children are experts in creating unpredictable </span><span>projects akin to the work of contemporary artists and within contemporary art practices. The author utilized a hybrid method of a/r/tography and action research to reveal the </span><span>relational moments, specifically conversations, collaborative </span><span>art making, and interactions of early learners. Contemporary </span><span>art, specifically as it relates to relational aesthetics, has the </span><span>potential to blend with pedagogy and point to new directions for art education of young children: an artful pedagogy. Art </span><span>created with a relational aesthetic emphasizes and only exists from participation and interactivity. Within the context of classroom experiences, compelling findings surrounding unpredictable projects and young learners as experts are deeply explored. In particular, implications are brought into focus </span><span>for visualizing conversations with young learners through art. The connections of relational aesthetics in art education to artful pedagogy are revealed through images of conceptual work by young learners and blurry photographs. Interpreting relational aesthetics with a pedagogical lens led to conclusions that point to an elevated view of the art of young children, a view that reveals the possibilities and further questions for art education that is informed by contemporary art. An artful pedagogy suggests that art education catch up with </span><span>contemporary art and reflect the living inquiry, curriculum, </span><span>and art of the educator and young learners. </span></p></div></div></div></div>