“You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.” (Dr. Suess 1957/1990)
Before setting off on my journey, I needed to determine the path I would follow. After some preliminary searching on my three initial inquiry questions, I finally settled on my primary focus – How do you structure the physical learning environment to support inquiry learning? To help guide my re-search journey, I created the following mind map outlining topic keywords, relevant search terms and synonyms.
To begin my re-search, I decided to start simply by entering my primary inquiry question to test the key search terms within. Not surprisingly, I end up with 19,200,000 results. What is surprising, however, is that the first two pages yielded some interesting and highly relevant sources. In particular, Vanessa Miller’s recent thesis (2017), was exactly what I was looking for and introduced me to the concept of learning environments as the “Third Teacher”. This concept was also further explored in other relevant articles unearthed during this search and highlighted the importance of the “Third Teacher” in conjunction with an inquiry pedagogy. From this initial reading, the following inquiry question was sparked in my mind:
How can the concept of the “Third Teacher” be effectively used in inquiry learning classrooms to improve outcomes for students?
Buoyed by my initial success, I analysed the highlighted keywords in my initial re-search results and found terms such as 21st Century learning environments, learning environments, inquiry-based, physical environments, the third teacher and collaborative appeared prominently. It was time to put my topic analysis to work and put some search strings together.
Search highlights
This search yielded three interesting targeted resources, particularly a YouTube clip by Ken Robinson, a blog post by Kath Murdoch and Trevor Mackenzie’s website. However, a significant amount of other search results looked at a general learning environment rather than focusing on the physical aspect of the classroom.
More targeted results that were aimed at primary school level. Interestingly Google also automatically provided results for “elementary” as the synonym of primary. I found another useful professional article by John Muscovitz (2013, p.6) that argues “without a contemporary vision of pedagogy the true nature of the child’s third teacher, the environment will not emerge”.
Several good results relating to government frameworks for creating innovative learning environments. Interestingly, when “primary schools” was added to the search string results reduced to 10,200, however the search results were similar.
Insights I gained from the above results also resulted in further inquiry questions. A recurring theme was the importance of integrating inquiry pedagogy and physical learning environments to create a unique, user-designed space that has the ability to improve student outcomes and transform teaching practice. The following questions began to form:
How can the physical learning environment transform teaching pedagogy?
How does teacher involvement in designing learning spaces assist in transforming pedagogy?
Google Scholar
Although I had already uncovered some sources from Google Scholar during my google searches, it was time to do some targeted re-search in this area.
Search highlights
I found some general results related to my topic and found my best sources by following the reference list of relevant articles. However, at times this felt a little overwhelming and it was easy to get lost on tangents.
I decided to search for the thesis by Vanessa Miller (2017) that I found in my initial google source and look for the relevant articles listed. Following this path led me to Reimagining school libraries: emerging teacher pedagogic practices which highlighted the transformative role of the school library learning environment in enhancing and supporting innovative pedagogical practices such as inquiry learning.
This was a light bulb moment for me and led to a new inquiry question for another day:
How does the physical environment of the school library support the implementation of inquiry learning?
It was time to move onto my next destination and step out into the open air.
Reference: Dr.Seuss (1990). Oh, the places you’ll go! New York, NY: Random House. (Original work published 1957
The Inquiring Mind 