Inquiry-led learning can stall for many reasons: heavy curriculum requirements, hard to negotiate pathways and shifting landscapes are just some of these,
Sustaining, strengthening and deepening inquiries depends largely on educators’ capacities to maintain their own CURIOSITY, manage themselves through UNCERTAINTY, to NOTICE and WONDER. But it also depends on their ability to consider the individual learning needs of the children, to develop children’s skills to work with others and engage the children in learning experiences through which they can learn the concepts and skills they need to acquire knowledge, analyse and synthesise information, evaluate and justify conclusions and apply their learning in meaningful ways.
When we consider individual learners we can see a ‘superdiversity’ of differences. Between differences in gender, ethnicity, culture, religion, background, socio-economic circumstances and ability, there are also differences in the ways in which individuals approach their learning, process information, demonstrate understanding, and receive feedback. There are additional differences in personal needs and dispositions for learning.
Meeting and accommodating these individual differences can increase engagement and in turn, lead to sustained, strong and deep inquiry-led learning. I am not suggesting that all of these differences need to be considered at once. But each aspect of the learner potentially gives educators another way on harnessing individual strengths and improving learning outcomes.
Children will engage with inquiries in different ways. They might approach an experience by:
- creating a purpose and developing and following a plan
- jumping in and giving things a go, creating their own choices
- sitting back and watching what other people do and deciding how they want to act
- trying to work how to make things work so they do things the ‘right’ way.
These Learning Styles are ways in which we approach our learning. How educators approach their learning can affect their expectations of the children’s actions. When we want things to go the ‘right’ way (often the way we have done things), we give lots of explanations and this often doesn’t work for the children who want action or need to watch. When purpose (‘why’) we are doing something is important to us, we want the children to wait and understand that before they act. Again, that doesn’t work very well for the children needing action or wanting to do things the right way (“just tell me what I need to do”).
Howard Gardner described Intelligences as ways in which people make sense of information and demonstrate their understanding. In a similar way to the 8 Ways of Knowing, Gardner shows us that people might prefer words, numbers, images, movement, music, being outside, being with others or being alone.
The Early Years Learning Framework lists dispositions for learning (commitment, confidence, cooperation, creativity, engagement, enthusiasm, flexibility, motivation, persistence, positive attitude, problem solving, questioning and reflexivity) but again, your favourite search engine will lead you to many others).
Sandi and Chris Phoenix have described five ‘cups’ of needs that people have: needs for safety, connection, mastery, fun and freedom drive our engagement in learning and life.
Chapman and Campbell have described five ways people give and receive love (or, maybe, just feedback): words, time, touch, gifts and acts of service.
Joan Dalton described different ways of being creative: originality, fluency, flexibility, elaboration, complexity, risk taking and imagination.
Lastly, Sandra Heidermann lists Play Skills that children need to have in order to work and play with others: to play with objects and materials, role [play, verbalise about what they are doing, communicate during play, persist, interact, enter the group, solve problems, take turns and support peers.
You may have your own frameworks that help you NOTICE and maintain your CURIOSITY about children’s engagement. Please share them!
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