Seven Castles

Enquiry Learning

                                      

November 24, 2005

 

Enquiry learning is a teaching strategy designed to develop pupils' learning through systematic gathering of observation and investigation. It is a learner-centered approach that emphasizes higher order thinking skills. It may take several forms, including analysis, problem solving, discovery and creative activities, both in the classroom and the community. Most importantly, in enquiry learning students are responsible for processing the data they are working with in order to reach their own conclusions.

 

Enquiry learning has occurred ever since human beings looked around at the world and wondered what life was all about. However, in the context of nineteenth and twentieth century schooling, it is a revolution. The legacies of expert or authority-led learning to meet external requirements are still pervasive. But, teachers and learners are increasingly adopting a "new" paradigm of enquiry learning, because it frees creativity, facilitates dialogue, generates mutual respect and leads to productive engagement with the world about.

 

The term "enquiry learning" is used in order to make a contrast with the more traditional forms of schooling associated with prescribed curricula and transmission learning. Enquiry learning is about people formulating their own agendas of concern that they wish to explore. The enquiry learning approach is then about promoting the strategies that enable people to identify, choose and explore whatever it is that interests them. The whole process is, at its widest, curiosity driven, driven by one's own motivations and interests. Some may use it to explore workplace, or professional problems, issues, needs. Others drivers may be wider cultural, political or humanitarian interests.

 

The development of thinking and problem solving skills is an important objective of education for a sustainable future, especially given the urgency of problems facing the world today. These skills can be taught and enhanced through enquiry learning, which can be employed in any sphere of life.

 

On November 19, there was a gala for the 80^th anniversary of the founding of the high school I attended. The school is well known as "a cradle for the elite" and "a research-based school" over decades, that moves away from content/subject-based teaching and adopts the enquiry approach by encouraging students to ask questions and search for their own answers. Enquiry learning is highly promoted in the school through diversified programs that enable students to understand people as both individuals and groups in relation to time, space and the environment, as well as their place in the culture and material world; helps students to maintain a healthy personal development as well as to nurture moral and social values through enquiry learning and provides students with learning experiences which establish meaningful relationships between learning at school and the issues they may encounter concerning the development of the individual, human society and the environment.

 

【作者: zhangliping】【访问统计:】【2006年02月14日 星期二 05:58】【 加入博采】【打印】