If you want your classroom to…

• be more about student learning rather than what you do as the teacher
• support learners to engage actively in meaning making
• nurture more independent, critical and creative thinkers
• foster life-long learning

…you might find The IBL 5 helpful. Here they are…

IBL #1: Productive or generative BIG questions in an IBL classroom are those that are:
—conceptual i.e. beyond descriptive elements, such as wind turbines and coal stations to ‘analytical concepts’, such as global warming
—connected i.e. related to the world and to students’ lives (see examples in previous blog).

Source of TELSTAR: Queensland Department of Education (1994) and Victorian Ministry of Education (1987).

IBL #2: Models of inquiry are used in an IBL unit design to scope and sequence learning and teaching, such as:

TELSTAR, which involves the phases:

See learning ajency resource: Inquiry-based learning for a guide indicating what teaching/learning activities are included in each of the phases.

Source of TELSTAR: Queensland Department of Education (1994) and Victorian Ministry of Education (1987).

IBL #3: Thinking skills taxonomies
e.g. ‘three-storey intellect’: ‘gathering’, ‘processing’ and ‘applying’ (Bellanca & Fogarty, 1991).

See learning ajency resource: Critical and creative thinking through thinking skills taxonomies.

Source of TELSTAR: Queensland Department of Education (1994) and Victorian Ministry of Education (1987).

IBL #4: Questioning frameworks
e.g. ‘Socratic questioning’: ‘assumption probes’, ‘clarification questions’, ‘reason and evidence probes’ and so on (Paul, 1995).

See learning ajency resource: Critical and creative thinking through questioning frameworks.

Source of TELSTAR: Queensland Department of Education (1994) and Victorian Ministry of Education (1987).

IBL #5: Inquiry-based learning strategies are those which involve learners in active meaning making for themselves (in contrast to a ‘teaching as telling’ approach). Digital pedagogies are really important, of course, in 21 century classrooms.

Source of TELSTAR: Queensland Department of Education (1994) and Victorian Ministry of Education (1987).

Here are a couple of IBL strategies associated with each TELSTAR phase. You’ll recognise some…others you may not as I make up a name with a new strategy. I recommend you do the same! Share the names with your learners so that they can talk about the strategies that help (or don’t help) them to learn. It also helps you to design units collaboratively with your colleagues when you name your teaching strategies.

Remember that particular strategies can be used in other phases. Contact me if you’d like to know more about any of the strategies.

TELSTAR phases and IBL strategies

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Big picture curriculum

Designing learning for any classroom is a complex business as there’s much to be taken into account. Teachers must attend to the required Australian Curriculum while at the same time responding to their students’ current understandings and skills, as well as their interests and aspirations. Teaching is as much about designing learning as it is about leading it in the classroom. My work supports teachers to answer three key questions:

1. What do my learners need to understand and be able to do?
2. How will my learners demonstrate what they understand and can do in relation to the targeted curriculum?
3. How will I support the range of learners in my class to complete assessment tasks as successfully as possible?

(Read more about these in learning ajency resource, Three key Qs; see box below re: QCAA resources which align with these Three key Qs.)

The teachers and schools with whom I’m collaborating are doing a brilliant job to ensure that there’s alignment among the responses to the Three key Qs. This means, of course, that the understandings and skills we need to teach are assessed and that the teaching and learning going on in the classroom is focused on the successful completion of the assessment tasks.

Keep focused with BIG questions

One very powerful way to keep learners (and you, the teacher) focused on the curriculum intent, the assessment task/s and the learning they’re engaged in is to use a BIG question to drive the teaching/learning unit.

Basically a BIG Q is one which focuses the learner on the deep knowledge and understandings and skills that are valued (and assessed) in the unit. I like to talk about BIG Qs that are conceptual and connected: conceptual in that they involve higher-order thinking and connected in relation to learners’ lives and the world.

In a classroom in which the teacher is comfortable and competent in relation to inquiry-based learning—a form of indirect teaching—the BIG question for a unit might be collaboratively developed. Teachers should feel at ease, however, to design a BIG question that brings the curriculum intent and the assessment tasks to life—until they feel the circumstances are right for them to collaborate with learners on this.

Examples of BIG questions

Check out the range of questions below.

* Prep in Queensland

Sub-Qs addressing directly the Australian Curriculum

All of the above BIG questions address the knowledge, understandings and skills throughout the relevant learning area/subject and year level. They are designed to engage and motivate students to learn and achieve. For each BIG question, teachers develop (or collaborate with learners to develop) a set of sub-Qs that ensure that the relevant portion of the achievement standard and the corresponding content descriptions are targeted. For example, sub-Qs appropriate for the Year 5 history BIG question might include:

• Who were the convicts sent to Australia?
• Why were they sent to Australia?
• How did the convict population influence the growth of the colony and later the nation of Australia?
• What approaches were used to deal with people who committed crimes?
• Who were the winners and the losers of each approach?

The sub-Qs show that the targeted curriculum is addressed with student focus captured via a BIG question that is both ‘conceptual’ and ‘connected’. The BIG question requires higher-order thinking and it is connected to today’s world.

BTW, someone—ahead of a conference presentation I was doing—asked me if ‘BIG’ written in uppercase was an acronym. I replied that it wasn’t—it was a reminder to flag the importance of BIG questions driving units. Such questions had to be personally meaningful for learners and meaningful for society. That’s BIG!

What are you teaching next? What BIG Q could keep your learners (and you) focused on the deep knowledge and understandings and key skills your learners need to demonstrate?

Templates and exemplars

The Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority has readily available resources containing templates and exemplars for such whole school planning, year level planning and unit planning on its website at www.qcaa.qld.edu.au. These resources are built on teachers using five planning processes including:

1. identifying the curriculum
2. developing assessment
3. sequencing the learning and teaching
4. making judgments
5. using feedback

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• engaging and relevant curriculum (drawing on what’s required of course!);
• innovative and democratic pedagogies (using research-based frameworks!); and
• credible, rigorous, real-life and user-friendly assessment.

And, of course, ensuring that these three elements are aligned—a sure fire way to boost engagement, learning and achievement!

At the heart of this work around curriculum, assessment and pedagogy has been a commitment to inquiry-based learning. Why wouldn’t there be!

Why IBL?

Young people want to learn about phenomena/issues/events that are interesting and meaningful to them. And I agree with Mr Beane (James Beane, that is, 1995), we should design learning for young people that is both personally and socially meaningful. We look to the mandated or Australian Curriculum—in the case of Foundation (Prep in Queensland) to Year 10—to find the spaces to explore phenomena/issues/events that are meaningful for our learners and for society.

If we start with our lens as teachers who are ‘in the world’ and aware of its big questions (global warming, genetic engineering, war and famine, global movements of people… and the list goes on), this supports us to design curriculum at the local level with learning contexts (i.e. topics and roles for learners) that suit the learners in our classroom. A learning disposition for now and for the future must be about scaffolding our learners’ inquiry into things that matter.

Why would we just tell kids stuff? Why would we take up a ‘teaching as telling’ approach in the 21^st century? Why wouldn’t we work like scientists, historians or geographers in our classrooms, when we can? Why wouldn’t we strive to understand ourselves and others through our study of English? It seems to me that this is an ongoing human project of inquiry. Don’t great mathematicians want to inquire into things that matter to them? Isn’t that what maths is about? I think these questions remind us to read the rationale and aims of the learning areas/subjects (at www.australiancurriculum.edu.au) and to think about why we teach what we teach.

Some educators appear to be apprehensive—or even fearful—when they hear the term, ‘inquiry-based learning’. Sometimes I think that those sceptical of this approach assume that the teacher is abandoning their responsibilities as the leader of learning in the classroom.

This is definitely not the case! In fact, it’s quite the reverse! Teachers are taking their students’ learning very seriously.

So what is IBL?

Two facets of inquiry-based learning (IBL) are important here. Firstly, IBL refers to a pedagogical approach which is based on the belief that powerful student learning occurs when learners make meaning for themselves. This meaning making occurs when learners investigate phenomena/issues/events through pursuing questions that are personally relevant and important to them. The subject of investigation also needs to be meaningful to society—this meaning comes from the understandings and skills that comprise the Australian Curriculum. As a result, IBL as a pedagogical approach is about real-world learning and is often associated with learners taking some sort of action.

The second—and related—facet of IBL is its focus on investigative skills. Such skills are more explicit in some Australian Curriculum learning areas than in others. Geography, History and Science each has a strand that privileges questioning, finding answers, analysing and evaluating findings as well as communicating what has been found.

The image featured with this post was created, based on Jenny’s definition of IBL, using tools available at http://www.wordle.net (retrieved 31 January, 2010).

The argument here is that IBL, as a pedagogical approach, serves all areas of the Australian Curriculum. For its specific focus on investigative skills it is especially relevant to those learning areas/subjects with inquiry-based strands.

Linda Darling-Hammond and her colleagues (2008) present a range of evidence to indicate that learners engaging in ‘project-based’, ‘problem-based’ or ‘design-based’ learning—all forms of IBL—achieve higher levels of thinking than do those exposed to a ‘teaching-as-telling’ approach. Their book, Powerful learning: What we know about teaching for understanding (John Wiley & Sons), is a very useful resource for teachers.

Direct teaching is important too!

IBL, as a pedagogical approach advocated here, is a form of structured teaching. The teacher must lead, monitor and review learning at every step of the way. Darling-Hammond et al. also point out that IBL can fail without appropriate and adequate scaffolding by teachers. The IBL approach advocated here must be used alongside:

• direct teaching
• other forms of indirect teaching such as interactive approaches and experiential learning.

Direct teaching in which the understandings and skills are explicitly explored is part of the learner entitlement. Experiential teaching supports learners to experience the phenomenon about which they are learning. This might include voting in a Civics and Citizenship class or creating substances in a Science lesson. Interaction in the classroom supports learners to learn from each other. IBL, interactive and experiential approaches require teacher commentary or exposition to clarify, extend and reinforce.

Teaching as telling—that is direct teaching 100% of the time—is not an appropriate pedagogical approach for the 21st century. If we want to support our students to be ‘successful learners’, ‘confident and creative individuals’ and ‘active and informed citizens’*, pedagogies of inquiry would seem to be essential. BTW, some people feel more comfortable with the term, ‘guided inquiry’.

What’s your view about inquiry-based learning? Food for thought and action?

* Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians, 2008.

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