Week 1: Reflection on Inquiry-Based Design 

Now although I am a huge fan of inquiry-based learning as I feel it is a way to get students more engaged and can help with future life skills, in my psych course an idea was brought up that made me wonder how inquiry projects can be both good and bad in a sense.

In our psych course, we read about positionality and how it can affect us, especially as educators. It talked about how positionality will often have a major influence on what you teach, how you teach and even how you provide feedback. Of course, we have a curriculum to follow but our opinions, past experiences and privileges will affect our teaching. This is why I think inquiry projects are very good ideas for educators to do as they allow students to find topics they are interested in and even build on to their positionality.

As well as typically when you are passionate and excited about learning you will do better and end up learning more. I know that for me as a student, anytime I have completed an inquiry project I always feel super excited and proud of myself and want to show my findings, as they often take lots of individual work and exploration. There is also something that I think is pleasing to most people about having a choice, which is what inquiry allows for. 

Now well there are many benefits I also feel that if you were to do too many free inquiry projects, students would run into the same positionality issue we sometimes have as teachers. The students would become comfortable and have something they are passionate about and continue to choose that topic, which doesn’t allow for a wide range of knowledge. However, a way you could help with that is by giving inquiry projects with open-ended topics. For example this school year this is my second inquiry project but last semester the topic was an inquiry on something we noticed in our link2practice classrooms, whereas this semester is a free inquiry. So I believe that inquiries are a very powerful way of learning if done correctly, letting students have that freedom but also recognizing how positionality could affect students’ work so encouraging and creating a wide range of topics that students can question and create from in inquiry-based learning so they can continue to build on their knowledge.

Below is a picture from my previous inquiry project from last semester and my first time getting a photo from unsplash!

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash