“You’ll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step.”(Dr Seuss 1957, 1990)
Reflecting on my re-search journey and the places it has taken me, has made me appreciate just how far I have come down the inquiry road. New understandings have been made and old assumptions challenged since my initial inquiry questions were posed. In the beginning, I saw inquiry learning as a very unstructured and free approach to learning. I now know that inquiry learning is much more complex and guided than that, with many deliberate choices and a repertoire of skills needing to be employed by the inquiry teacher for successful educational outcomes.
My knowledge and understanding of my initial primary re-search inquiry question also completely changed throughout my research.
How do you structure the physical learning environment to support inquiry learning?
I thought there would be a standard, how-to-guide to setting up your inquiry learning space. What I now know is, that the best inquiry learning spaces share commonalities but are unique in design to the classes learning in them. I learned about the critical role of the learning environment as “the third teacher” in enhancing the outcomes of inquiry learning.
What also had an impact on me was the importance of the school library as a physical learning environment, which is reflected in one of the new inquiry questions I posed during my re-search journey. It is this area that has particularly interested me and prompted the following inquiry question for further exploration at a later date:
How can the learning environment of the school library influence the whole-school implementation of inquiry learning?
I also experienced a roller coaster of emotions during my re-search journey as discussed in Carol Kuhlthau’s Information Search Process. I found my emotions and confidence looped through the affective feelings of overwhelm, confusion and doubt particularly throughout the initiation and exploration stages of my search process. At times I felt it was one step forward and two steps back. It did not feel like a linear process for me and at times I wondered how I would ever finish!
I did experience a sense of clarity, increased confidence and focus during the collection phase of the process, once my question was further honed. This feeling was at its highest when completing my curated collection as I had a clear focus and purpose. I felt a great sense of satisfaction when finally completing my infographic and a huge sense of accomplishment and relief at the end of search process. Although a challenging process, I found my learnings and understandings gained were at a much deeper level and more personally relevant with an inquiry approach.
Reference: Dr.Seuss (1990). Oh, the places you’ll go! New York, NY: Random House. (Original work published 1957
The Inquiring Mind 