Inquiry learning - Not whether, but when

Often in social media and staff room debates about teaching, it feels like we are talking around in circles. 

It’s not all about explicit teaching!

You can’t teach it all through inquiry! 

But students should be able to discover for themselves!

And on and on it may go. What makes these conversations potentially more confusing and repetitive is that we do not have a shared understanding of the terminology used. 

What kind of inquiry?

Teacher and Ed Researcher, Greg Ashman who writes about this extensively, notes in his book on explicit teaching that inquiry based learning and other minimally guided approaches tend to rebrand every 5-10 years. So if it’s structured inquiry today, it might be concept-based teaching tomorrow, or guided discovery another. If there are agreed definitions of these approaches send them through!

The confusion goes both ways though. 

We all think we are explicit. But how? And for what?

It’s not just the explicit teaching ‘somewhere’ in the lesson or unit

Often the debates centre on whether and where explicit teaching can fit into inquiry. Most will agree that we don’t want students to stop their learning when they master exactly the content that teacher has provided. We want them to go further, to be independent thinkers, and to generalise their learning to a variety of contexts.

Many circular discussions about this occur because we don’t have a shared definition of explicit instruction either. Nor do we really make clear how explicit instruction as a pedagogy differs from occasionally providing some explanation or modelling in the midst of other types of activity. 

The limits of just in time teaching

All teachers can pause an explorative task or a session of independent inquiry and briefly explain something they have noticed. Maybe the teacher spots a misconception or missing connection and seeks to clarify. This might be in the early stages of the students’ inquiries, or it might be late in the piece. 

But this ‘just in time’ teaching pales in comparison to the highly intentional, structured, and planned teaching of concepts and skills which are systematically modelled/explained in explicit instruction pedagogies. Here student practice is also facilitated and error checked using constant checking for understanding. 

Is embedding explicit teaching into inquiry enough?

Other advocates of inquiry learning might say that their explicit teaching is embedded throughout, and that the inquiry is highly scaffolded and guided. 

Nevertheless, if we are embedding the explicit part somewhere in the mix of an inquiry or problem solving mode of teaching (no matter how clearly we try to do this), I would argue this does not constitute the “explicit instruction” that aligns well with the science of how students learn. 

A new book from Jamie Clark provides summaries just like this …

Check out some of the one-pagers available on Explicit Instruction and great teaching

Why should we be explicit?

Because it aligns with what novice learners initially need

If you’ve read blog posts or research syntheses on cognitive load theory, you’ll be aware of the limitations of working memory, and how novice learners in a particular domain are easily overloaded by new information and complex tasks. 

The headline here is that when novice learners are thrown in the deep end they will not have the skills or knowledge to navigate the complexity of the end product. Yes we want them to move towards the application and independent exploration in the domain, but we can’t make students into inquiring and exploring learners in that area by just doing lots of inquiry and exploration. 

It’s not to say that they will always be novice at a task. In fact, if we are doing our job well, our explicit instruction will actually move the student from novice to intermediate to relative expert. That’s the purpose of ‘fully guided instruction’, an umbrella term under which explicit instruction and explicit direct instruction fall. The approaches have high levels of guidance and support initially, then systematically withdraw this support as students become more competent in the intended skills/knowledge. 

However, if we are not using explicit instruction in the early stages of teaching then we are creating a divide in our classroom between those that happen to have the requisite knowledge and skills and those who do not. 

Mode A vs Mode B teaching 

One of the best models for explaining how we teachers can manage the tension between more explicit and more inquiry-focussed teaching is the distinction between Mode A and Mode B from Tom Sherrington. When I use this rule of thumb with teachers they seem to instantly see the value of teaching in a more structured and explicit way (the I do, We do, You do) 80% of the time; with the view that we need to let loose and let students get their inquiry on about 20% of the time. 

We don’t have to be all or nothing. 

Should we get caught up in the ‘magic of inquiry’ ?

Many sceptics of science of learning do not like the idea of investing time and energy into becoming an excellent explicit instructor. They likely see resources like Rosenshine’s principles, Explicit Instruction (Archer and Hughes), and Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI; Hollingsworth and Ybarra) as dangerous or problematic. 

What I find problematic is the rhetoric that we can set students off on an adventure with an inquiry project, and magically using the power of our intuition as teachers. I think it is unrealistic that we will JUST KNOW when to provide explanation, what questions to use to prompt thinking, and how to provide ‘just in time’ teaching. 

There isn’t any magic in inquiry in my view. I think inquiry can be a natural extension and application of our students’ learning (that we should initially take the reins of, to ensure that all students benefit from this initial (explicit) instruction). We should use checking for understanding to make sure it happens before they go off and inquire, or else we should go back and re-teach! 

Inquiry can be great as the middle to endpoint of our teaching, because we all want our students to have opportunities to inquire, critique, create and collaborate using their newfound learning as the foundation for this work.

But, inquiry is most certainly devoid of magic. In fact, inquiry does pose a risk for us as educators when it’s our first or primary port of call for teaching new content. The risk is that students don’t have the requisite knowledge to benefit from this mode of learning, and as such waste precious time and energy inquiring up the wrong tree (Swain and Groshell, 2024).

The takeaway?

I haven’t given this a full treatment and I think what I’m trying to argue needs time and effort to digest. As opposed to some, I am not against inquiry as a meaningful and important aspect of student learning. For me it is all about WHEN this comes in and FOR WHAT PURPOSE.

We should make use of inquiry as an application/extension/exploration of learning which you have already ensured through a more explicit and fully-guided mode of teaching. 

Start by teaching them well with clear modelling and explaining, provide opportunities for guided practice and significant checking for understanding, then ensure students have mastered the foundational skills/knowledge by facilitating independent practice, giving feedback, and using retrieval practice in the days and weeks that follow.  

Trying to cram your explicit teaching into an inquiry cycle or project would be overwhelming for teacher and student, and fails to pay heed to the limitations of human working memory. It makes the job harder for you and your learners. 

When inquiry is the natural mid-end point of a unit of work it can have a culminating, exploratory, and confirmatory purpose, that takes student learning to the next level, without leaving any students behind. 

Do you agree? Share your thoughts below.

A brief plug

I get into these tensions in depth in the book Harnessing the science of learning. In this book coming in November, I work with my contributing authors (including Zach Groshell) to distill precious insights into the challenges of teaching, and the benefits for ways of teaching that aligns well with how we learn.

This book is a new volume I have had the pleasure of writing, with help from some amazing contributors: Pamela Snow, Tanya Serry, Zach Groshell, Reid Smith, Toni Hatten-Roberts, Simon Breakspear, Katie Roberts-Hull, David Morkunas, Steven Capp, Shane Pearson, and Eamon Charles.

You can secure your pre-order copy (or a copy for a sceptical colleague or leader) from any great bookstore. For example: Amazon Australia, Amazon US, Amazon UK.