Inquiry vs. Discovery
In the past year there has been a lot of debate in the news over "discovery" learning. It is important to note that, although there is sometimes discovery in Inquiry, they are not the same thing. Schools around the world have been focusing on Inquiry since the 1970s.
Discovery learning is based in the idea that if you present an idea, set of numbers or concept and give students enough time, they will uncover the understanding of that concept on their own without direction, guidance or influence from the teacher. The term "discovery" is often mistakenly used for Inquiry because when we engage in Inquiry there is sometimes a stage of exploration in which we allow students to engage with the concept on their own terms as a way to build engagement, curiosity and the desire to know more.
Inquiry, at its essence refers to a mode of learning in which students engage with and teacher present concepts through questioning. When the learning is driven by questions we call this Inquiry. As such there are many different forms of Inquiry. In some cases the teacher might present an idea, let students wrestle with it together and then help them reformulate their ideas into more complete understandings. At other times, the teacher may use a direct instruction focus to ensure that students are building the right mental "schemas" and not creating mistaken connections.
There are as many versions of Inquiry as there are teachers because each and every one does it slightly different based on what they know and believe, however the essence is that we use questions posed by the teacher and the students to guide the learning and we draw the answers out of the students when possible instead of "telling" them what a correct answer is.
Likewise, in Inquiry we usually seek to tackle "authentic," real-world problems. That does not mean that we tell students what to think. The goal of Inquiry is to build critical thinkers who can make informed choices and opinions for themselves based on evidence that they have uncovered through research. We ask very big, difficult questions of students because we believe that they are capable of figuring them out and coming to their own conclusions. This honours students as intellectuals and ensures that they will be able to tackle the big questions of our society as they grow older.
All of this talk about the big concepts, however, does not mean that we don't teach the skills students need. Yes we live in the realm of the big concepts, but we also help them to build the basic skills so that they can more fully understand those big ideas. One way to look at it is that instead of teaching small, isolated facts and ideas, then building up to the big ideas, we flip it so that we start with the big idea.
When introducing an Inquiry unit, a teacher will pose a big question such as: "Why do people choose different political systems? How does a society benefit?" or "how might we use shapes to understand numbers better?". These ideas give students the context they need to want to engage with the smaller, more precise ideas and facts. We could teach students that two of the world's political systems are democracy and communism and fill them with facts, names and dates in history, but it is much more meaningful to them to provide them with the big question and then they must learn those facts to really understand and answer the question for themselves. The question becomes what Jarome Bruner referred to as a "hook." Students need a reason to learn something and those facts are important. The Inquiry question gives them the reason to do so.
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