Blog #5 - Student-Led Learning and Lifelong Success

Students are immersed in reading every day, whether it is academic or not. Reading comes in many different forms: textbooks; recipes; and Instagram posts. The authors of the book Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction write that students are much more willing to read challenging texts if they are embedded in a context that interests the students, such as a post on social media (Hinchman, 2014). When students take charge of their reading, they read about (and therefore learn about) topics they are interested in. Knowing this, it is interesting to think about what a classroom would look like if students were to take charge of their own learning, especially in terms of reading and understanding.

The system that this previously described classroom uses is called Inquiry-Based Learning. In Inquiry-Based Learning, student questions are the driving force behind each unit (Edutopia). This means that students should, theoretically, be interested in the content they are learning, and therefore be more willing to learn it. Even though much of the direction students’ learning takes is based off of their interest, there are still core skills and facts that students need to know. In Inquiry-Based Learning, students demonstrate their knowledge of these skills and facts via the content that they have chosen (Edutopia). One way to encourage Inquiry-Based Learning in the classroom is to begin each unit by framing a problem related to the big ideas of the unit. Throughout the unit, students will be able to view the problem through multiple lenses and attempt to answer certain aspects of the question depending on their interests (Hinchman, 2014, p. 222). The reading that students will be doing to answer this question will challenge them; however, because their learning is based on what they want to learn, they will be more interested in these texts than others that may have been picked out.

Inquiry-Based Learning seems like it would really promote student learning when done correctly; students are gaining skills and knowledge about things that matter to them. But how do we judge its success if most of the class is student-led? Similar to how teachers measure students’ understanding of complex texts (see Blog #3), teachers should be looking for student connections between multiple content areas. When students make connection across the content areas, they are also using multiple knowledges that students use in each class. Hinchman writes about six different knowledges that students may use to decipher a challenging text: semantic; mathematical; historic; geographical; discursive; and pragmatic (Hinchman, 2014, p. 211). If a high-school student is in seven different classes every day, and each class uses all six knowledges, there are 42 different categories of knowledge that students need to keep organized in their brains. Forty-two!

All of these different categories seem very confusing and intense, but this is where Inquiry-Based Learning allows for some clarity. Ideally, students are integrating multiple knowledges and content areas into their understanding of the texts they are reading; this allows them to ask really good – potentially even critical thinking – questions that help them expand their brains (Hinchman, 2014, p. 214). Specifically, students may begin to ask the “why” questions that promote critical thinking (Hinchman, 2014, p. 226). Students cultivating their own critical thinking questions based on the learning that they are leading is as close to hitting the teacher jackpot as we may ever get!

Now, let’s tie all of this together. Inquiry-Based Learning allows students to learn about things that they are interested in, which means that they will be more motivated to read the challenging texts their teacher places in front of them. In their understanding of these texts, students will be reaching across multiple content areas and multiple knowledges to eventually create their own critical thinking questions. If we think back to Blog #1, we learned that critical thinking is the skill that students will need to succeed in a flat world. High-school students do so much learning; encouraging students to read challenging texts that interest them will help them to make connections that allow them to see the overlap between content areas and think critically through multiple lenses, ultimately helping them to succeed in an ever-changing world.

Resources: 

Edutopia. (2015, August 24). Harnessing students' curiosity to drive learning. Retrieved from: https://www.edutopia.org/practice/wildwood-inquiry-based-learning-developing-student-driven-questions

Hinchman, K.A., & Sehridan-Thomas, H. (2014). Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction. New York, New York: The Guilford Press.