Learning for Learning for Learning

I grew up in a sport focussed environment. I played soccer from the age of five, basketball from the age of eight, tennis from ten, volleyball from twelve, I took swimming lessons and did athletic camps; you name it, I played it. The old saying ‘practice makes perfect’ was not unfamiliar to me, it had become an inherent part of my understanding of everything.

While I was researching Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) this week I began to understand how this saying caused me turbulence rather than ‘success’. Success. What is it? This is the problem. The saying says practice makes perfect, which makes our focus this anomaly of perfection when we should really be focussed on the importance of consistent practice.

Eventually, I lost my desire to play sport. I had played competitively in high school but due to this desire to be the best I was terrified of failure. I hated making mistakes and developed an extreme feeling of performance anxiety. Even if I was playing for fun I hated missing a free throw or serving into the net and would continue to feel that disappointment and embarrassment for many minutes after it occurred. After a while I began to experience these same feelings in areas of my life that weren’t related to sport and it all surrounded around a fear of mistakes.

Inquiry Based Learning is a great demonstration of how to prevent this type of fear from developing in students. The saying shouldn’t say practice makes perfect but instead it should say practice is perfect or merely just PRACTICE.

What is Inquiry Based Learning?

IBL is surrounded around student centred learning. It is a move away from the traditional style of classroom in which teachers are the providers of information and students are the vessels in which they pour. Instead, IBL encourages students to play an active role in their own learning and therefore develop a sense of ownership over the development of their knowledge. In an IBL environment students are encouraged to ask questions and then even more encouraged to ask questions about their questions. They are to develop individual, group or full class inquiries that require critical, creative and collaborative thinking. The desire is not to answer the questions but to foster the idea that knowledge is forever growing. Instead of encouraging our students to find one ‘correct’ answer teachers are encouraging their students to find as many possible solutions as they can and to never stop expanding on their search.

This style of learning is not a magic bean to be planted and miraculously sprout overnight. Similar to anything, Inquiry Based Learning needs to be taught, or better yet scaffolded, to be successful in a classroom. The role of the teacher is to be a model for the students. They need to foster an environment in which they are proud of their mistakes and use them for opportunities of growth; demonstrate how respectfully challenging an idea can lead to even further expansion and discovery; and create opportunities for collaboration and creativity.

Most importantly Inquiry Based Learning requires an environment that is safe, open and welcoming. Students need to feel confident in the importance and benefit of their mistakes; they need to know the classroom is open to whatever contribution they choose to make (whether they are posing a question, challenging an idea or connecting to other topics); and they need to feel that they, for all that makes them unique, are welcome in the conversation.

Wait, Isn’t This a Math Blog?

Why, yes it is! Remember those feelings of anxiousness and embarrassment I was having about playing sports? Well, you guessed it, I had them about math too and I know I’m not the only one. Inquiry Based Learning is the perfect way to refresh the page on math. It allows us to remove all of those scary so called ‘facts’ we grew up with about math….

1. Myth: there is only one right answer

IBL response: wrong! Let’s try and find as many possible solutions as we can!

     b.   Myth: As long as the answer is correct, you’ve succeeded at math

IBL response: How about we explore all of the processes of solving this question, even the ‘incorrect’ ones so we can understand everybody’s thinking, build new perspective and hopefully learn for the future!

And foster an environment of positivity, creativity, curiosity and most of all inherent motivation to learn!