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astroEDU encourages educators to prepare their activities to incorporate enquiry-based learning approaches. Enquiry-based learning describes an approach to learning that is based on the "investigation" of questions, scenarios or problems - often assisted by a teacher or educator. It can be thought of as “learning which is aimed squarely at a particular set of student skills”.
At astroEDU we believe guided enquiry represents a clear, ambitious, yet realistic goal to aim for in changing teachers’ practice and we encourage all the activities to use this type of approach to activities design. It allows the teacher to retain sufficient responsibility to limit the ‘riskiness’, and ensure focus on desired curriculum outcomes. Yet, it still offers students a high degree of autonomy and the ‘pleasure of discovery’ as described by Richard Feynman. Moreover other studies Level 2 guided enquiry is indeed linked with higher achievement.
Open-ended enquiry is seductive, and may appear the ‘ideal’ way to teach. However, the research into open-ended enquiry or ‘minimally guided instruction’ has shown it to be less effective compared to traditional methods. It presents many challenges to inexperienced students and is also far removed from standard-based education systems.
The 5 areas of the inquiry skill-set are:
This skill-set view can be elaborated to accommodate the student-centred elements of other views. – For inquiry activity is not as an all-or-nothing affair, but can be considered as a hierarchical set of levels as shown in the table below . The levels represent the degree of ownership given to the student. Traditional teaching is Level 0, and fully open-ended enquiry is Level 3.
At astroEDU we believe Level 2, guided enquiry, represents a clear, ambitious, yet realistic goal to aim for in changing teachers’ practice and we encourage all the activities to use this type of approach to resource design.
Level 3 Open enquiry is seductive, and may appear the ‘ideal’ way to teach. However, the research into open enquiry or ‘minimally guided instruction’ has shown it to be less effective compared to traditional methods. The explanation has been given in terms of the unrealistic cognitive demands it places on ‘novices’. It is also likely to create the most challenges and prove unlikely to be acceptable within our contemporary standards-based education systems. By contrast, Level 2, is much more pragmatic. It allows the teacher to retain sufficient responsibility to limit the ‘riskiness’, and ensure focus on desired curriculum outcomes. Yet, it still offers students a high degree of autonomy and ‘pleasure of discovery’ as described by Richard Feynman. Moreover other studies Level 2 guided enquiry is indeed linked with higher achievement.
More complete info about enquiry-based learning can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquiry-based_learning
