#inquiry method

Currently, this blog is continuing its account of the liberated federalism model of governance and politics.[1]  With this posting, the blog looks further into suggested instructional methods in civics that teachers can utilize as most amenable to this featured construct.  The previous posting identified the use of case studies and community service projects – in both strategies, one does not eliminate other methods, but simply states that the featured methods allow teachers to get at what liberated federalism deems to be important.

          That posting also identified the psychological school of thought that supports the efforts that liberated federalism pursues.  That would be constructivism as developed from the works of Jean Piaget and Lev S. Vygotsky and runs counter to those pedagogical views emanating from behavioral psychology.  This posting will share more of Piaget and Vygotsky’s ideas.

          The Piaget based model, as explained by Geoffrey Scheurman,[2] calls effective human learning as “cognitive constructivism.”  It is dependent on a developmental view.  Scheurman writes

[Piaget] believed that people develop universal forms or structures of knowledge (i.e., prelogical, concrete, or formal) that enable them to experience reality.  This view holds that while an autonomous “real” world may exist outside the learner, he or she has limited access to it.  The emphasis in learning is on how people assimilate new information into existing mental schemes, and how they restructure schemes entirely when information is too discrepant to be assimilated.[3]

Within the cognitive constructivism model, the teacher acts as a facilitator and challenges students’ views of reality by introducing disequilibrium with incongruent factual or theoretical material.

          The teacher further guides students through problem solving activities and reviews and monitors students’ reflective and interpretive thinking after they, the students, discover their researched findings.  Experience consists of actual physical and social encounters in which they deal with unexpected claims – either factual or opinionated claims – and reflect on them, according to Scheurman.

          As for Vygotsky’s strand of constructivism, Scheurman calls it “social constructivism.”  Scheurman explains:

Accepting Piaget’s view of how individuals build private understandings of reality through problem solving with others, Vygotsky further explained how social or cultural contexts contribute to a public understanding of objects and events.  In this view, reality is no longer objective, while knowledge is literally co-constructed by, and distributed among, individuals as they “interact with one another and with cultural artifacts, such as pictures, discourse, and gestures.”[4]

Within the social constructivism view, teachers take on a collaborative role.  That is, they participate with the students in “constructing” reality.

          By doing so, certain functions are met.  These functions are to bring to light students’ misconceptions, to hold open-ended discoveries and inquiries, and to lead teachers and students to real social resources and procedures.  A class of students, including the teacher, “creates” a reality by manufacturing a culturally based understanding, conducting open-ended inquiries, and reflecting on the mutually constructed meaning.

          Constructivism promises to be a viable methodology for teaching a communally based curriculum.  As Scheurman points out, it does not preclude other types of instruction as functional components in preparing students for meaningful constructivist lessons or reflective extensions to lessons that have had students construct conclusions to a set of inquiries.

          Already mentioned in the last posting, there are more behaviorally based lessons which can be employed to establish needed information.  Also, inquiry type lessons that can test claims or conclusions presented to students and are based on the behavioral science model, can be conducted.  In other words, a healthy mix of modes of learning and teaching can add various contributions toward viable civics instruction.

          Perhaps here, as this account completes the description of the commonplace, the subject matter, it is useful to provide a short review of what has been presented.  The account first reviewed the assumptions of the liberated federalism construct regarding individual decision-making.  The account then proposed a model of the liberated federalism model which is presented as the preferred foundation for the study of government and civics at the secondary level.

          Then, using Eugene Meehan’s criteria, the model was reviewed for its viability.  Last, this and the former posting looked at methodology as a contextual factor in implementing the liberated federalism model.  In that, the presentation was in line with focusing on the more interpretive approach of constructivism, i.e., it encourages more heuristic approaches – in which students derive their own conclusions.  In that, they avoid the claim that it promotes indoctrination.  Next, the blog will address the commonplace, the student.

[1] For readers who wish to review those corresponding postings and have not read them, they are guided to this blog’s posting, “From Natural Rights to Liberated Federalism” (June 2, 2023), at the URL, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/, where this series begins.

[2] Geoffrey Scheurman, “From Behaviorists to Constructivist Teaching,” Social Education, 62, 1 (1998), 6-9.

[3] Ibid., 8.

An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …

Moving on with the commonplace of curriculum development – the learner – the next concern of this blog is pedagogic student interests.[2]  Gerald Gutek[3] puts forward the argument of essentialists, i.e., that the pedagogic interests of students are served if they are mastering the basic skills and acquiring basic subject matter content.  E. D. Hirsch writes how skills and content are related.

 All cognitive skills depend on procedural and substantive schemata that are highly specific to the task at hand.

         Once the relevant knowledge has been acquired, the skill follows.  General programs contrived to teach general skills are ineffective.  [Artificial intelligence] research shows that experts perform better than novices not because they have more powerful and better oiled intellectual machinery but because they have more relevant and quickly available information.  What distinguishes good readers from poor ones is simply the possession of a lot of diverse, task-specific information.[4]

 Or more directly,

 Teacher-centered philosophies [such as essentialism] are those that transfer knowledge from one generation of teachers to the next. In teacher-centered philosophies, the teacher’s role is to impart a respect for authority, determination, a strong work ethic, compassion for others, and sensibility. Teachers and schools succeed when students prove, typically through taking tests, that they have mastered the objectives they learned.[5]

           Hirsch continues in this vein by further pointing out that his cited research has found that such skills as critical thinking or inquiry skills are only taught successfully for specific tasks and content and are not transferable as is claimed by the Rousseau-Dewey tradition.[6]  Even among researchers who generally support inquiry, a level of concern can be detected.

         For example, and looking at this instructional approach from a more global perspective, the following can be found:

 It should be cautioned that inquiry-based learning takes a lot of planning before implementation. It is not something that can be put into place in the classroom quickly. Measurements must be put in place for how students [sic] knowledge and performance will be measured and how standards will be incorporated. The teacher’s responsibility during inquiry exercises is to support and facilitate student learning … A common mistake teachers make is lacking the vision to see where students’ weaknesses lie. According to Bain, teachers cannot assume that students will hold the same assumptions and thinking processes as a professional within that discipline …

While some see inquiry-based teaching as increasingly mainstream, it can be perceived as in conflict with standardized testing common in standards-based assessment systems which emphasise the measurement of student knowledge, and meeting of pre-defined criteria, for example the shift towards “fact” in changes to the National Assessment of Educational Progress as a result of the American No Child Left Behind program.

Programs such as the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Program can be criticized for their claims to be an inquiry based learning program … While there are different types of inquiry … the rigid structure of this style of inquiry based learning program almost completely rules out any real inquiry based learning in the lower grades. Each “unit of inquiry” is given to the students, structured to guide them and does not allow students to choose the path or topic of their inquiry. Each unit is carefully planned to connect to the topics the students are required to be learning in school and does not leave room for open inquiry in topics that the students pick. Some may feel that until the inquiry learning process is open inquiry then it is not true inquiry based learning at all. Instead of opportunities to learn through open and student-led inquiry, the IB program is viewed by some to simply be an extra set of learning requirements for the students to complete.[7]

 This extended quote is included to point out that even in an inquiry-based approach, educators need to give essentialist ideas and ideals due respect – again, students need information before they can go off and inquire or do whatever else education calls on them to do.

         That tradition – the Rousseau-Dewey tradition – emphasizes intensive study by classroom students in which critical thinking skills, inquiry skills, or discovery skills (terms that are often used interchangeably) are practiced and “taught” over limited material (teaching in depth, not breadth).  This antithesis argument claims that students need many referents in order to make sense of the realities of the world.

         Expert thinking, as studied by current cognitive psychologists, is evidenced by being able to recall many facts which are contained within the contexts of schemata.[8]  Schemata mentally arrange facts in meaningful groupings or chunks of information.  “As we have seen, the most effective system of the mind, whether in chess or in reading, is to keep most of its indexed schemata at a medium level of generality.” [9]

         What works in reading and chess works for governmental studies. The political systems approach, under the construct of the natural rights perspective, provides such a medium level of generality.  It is a viable vehicle by which to arrange meaningful and relevant political facts. Relevancy is determined by the goals of the natural rights perspective to prepare students to be viable citizens in the competitive realities of the American political system.

         The next posting will pick up on this theme as it continues this review of pedagogic student interests.

[Reminder:  Readers are reminded that they can have access to the first 100 postings of this blog, under the title, Gravitas:  The Blog Book, Volume I.  To gain access, they can click the following URL:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zh3nrZVGAhQDu1hB_q5Uvp8J_7rdN57-FQ6ki2zALpE/edit  

OR

click onto the “gateway” posting that allows the reader access to a set of supplemental postings to other published works by this blogger by clicking the URL: http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/ and then looking up the posting for October 23, 2021, entitled “A Digression.”]

[1] This presentation continues with this posting.  The reader is informed that the claims made in this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this blogger.  Instead, the posting is a representation of what an advocate of the natural rights view might present.  This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.  This series of postings begins with “Judging Natural Rights View, I,” August 2, 2022. [Note:  This blog, in the postings entitled “Judging the Natural Rights View, I-XVI, started with “An advocate of parochial federalism continues his/her presentation …” It should have read “An advocate of natural rights …”  Please excuse the mistake.  The archived record has been corrected.]

[2] The learner or student is one of Joseph Schwab’s commonplaces.  See William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).

[3] Gerald L. Gutek, Basic Education:  A Historical Perspective (Bloomington, IN:  Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation, 1981).

[4] E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Cultural Literacy:  What Every American Needs to Know (New York, NY:  Vintage, 1987), 61.

[5] Matthew Lynch, “Philosophies of Education:  2 Types of Teacher-Centered Philosophies,” The Edvocate/Entelechy, August 5, 2016, accessed October 5, 2022, https://www.theedadvocate.org/philosophies-education-2-types-teacher-centered-philosophies/.

[6] Hirsch, Cultural Literacy.

[7] “Inquiry-based Learning,” Lumen/Foundation of Education (n.d.), accessed October 5, 2022, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/olemiss-education/chapter/inquiry-based-learning/.  British spelling.

[8] Schemata, plural form of schema, are representations of developed plans, theories, or models presented in the form of graphic models, other graphic presentations, or outlines.

An advocate of parochial federalism continues his/her presentation[1] …

This blog just finished a review of essentialist educational thought concerning American schooling and reported that despite that approach’s attempts at becoming more sophisticated, its application has been mostly limited to dispensing information.  That has been primarily in the form of lecturing and the use of media – film and film strips – to enhance the information that the students’ textbooks present.

         In terms of sophisticated efforts by essentialists, the blog pointed out the work of Robert Gagne – a behavioral education psychologist – with his five conditions of learning and nine instructional events.  Perhaps his work should be required in teacher preparation programs across the country.

         With that review, the blog will now address, as it did with parochial federalist curriculum, the commonplaces of curricular development – learners, subject matter, teachers, and milieu – as they apply to essentialist educational efforts.  With a general view of how essentialists go about developing the subject materials and activities they favor, readers will acquire a better insight into how natural rights biases affect civics education.  

Students or Learners

         Interested parties might ask:  what is known about the nature of students in relation to the principles of the natural rights/essentialist perspective?  This promotion of that perspective contains evidence regarding that nature and, in turn, can be utilized to support that construct’s implementation in America’s civics classrooms.

         Some of the issues to be addressed pertain to the individual interests of students, to the affected parties who deal with those students’ long-term interests, and to the conditions that students confront within the wider society.  What follows will focus on various areas of concern: student interests, student problems, and student educational requisites.  

It will answer the following questions:  what personal, social, economic, political, and pedagogic interests are benefited by using the natural rights construct in the teaching of government and politics at the secondary level?  This will not be an in depth inquiry into these issues (each can be the topic of extensive study), but a general review which sufficiently helps justify the adoption of the natural rights construct.

Personal Student Interests

         At the individual level, when attending secondary schools, students can be generally described as being in the adolescent period of their lives. Within American culture, profound changes take place in this stage of life.  This state of affairs is not necessarily apparent, in all its complications, to the adults with which the youths must deal.  In the area of maturation, various writers have addressed the prevalence of competitiveness during the adolescent years that young people experience.[2]

This aspect is highlighted here because it affects how predisposed young people are to accepting the capitalist nature of the American economy.  For example, there are times in which their numbers have grown more rapidly within the general population than the number of economic opportunities, particularly for those who are vying for employment at lower skilled levels.  This has led to an inordinate number of youths becoming discouraged by their prospects.[3]

         At a premium, more so than in the past, are good grades, sports awards, and other demonstrations of achievement.  The youngsters often begin to feel pressure from parental demands in these areas of concern.  These demands are offset by feelings of guilt on the part of parents when they are motivated to befriend their offspring.  This has led to confusing interactions among family members due to unclear parental roles.[4]

         Within such a pressured environment, knowledge of the causes of such conditions would help young people deal with the demands they feel.  Schools, for example in modern America, are often complex institutions.  The systems approach not only explains the manner in which governments are managed, but also other social institutions such as schools – thus the compatibility of the model.[5]

         In short, a systems approach to the study of government and politics could shed light on the structures of those schools and how they govern morally – assuming they do – and, in terms of political interactions, how these structures make demands on students.  Such concerns as roles and expectations could be placed within a logical whole.  That whole, in turn, could be analyzed and the position of the student and significant others could be placed mentally within that system.

         With that, the interests of different participants in the youths’ lives could be identified.  The policies emanating from those people, which often can seem to young people as arbitrary and capricious, could begin to make sense as those students are exposed to a more contextualized whole by which to identify and measure the various levels of power and influence among those other participants.

         That is, the position of students and significant others – fellow students, teachers, administrators, and staff members – could be meaningfully placed within that system.  The interests of different participants in young people’s environments can not only be identified but also talked about and understood within the system.

By doing so, a better comprehension can potentially emerge and those realities can even be seen in a more legitimate light.  In addition, the systems approach and the natural rights agenda are aimed to instill the cultural knowledge that would help those youngsters mature into productive and competitively prepared individuals.  This is serious business that cannot be left to curricular attempts which rely on methods such as inquiry and discovery.[6]  

Such other strategies leave students with possible erroneous beliefs about the world with which they deal or will deal in the future.  This concern with the lack of definitiveness that one can ascribe to inquiry or discovery methods can be noted in the literature back to the early 1980s.

 While [Willian C.] Bagley [leading essentialist] decried the deemphasis on the “exact and exacting studies” and the “disparagement of system and sequence in learning,” contemporary critics of the curricular innovations of the 1960s have charged the “discovery method” or “inquiry method” is inefficient and causes students to “reinvent the wheel” rather than master the funded knowledge of the past in an orderly way.  Contemporary critics argue that the process and method of learning has been overemphasized to the detriment of content.  While the innovators of the 1960s promised that they would teach children how to think, the critics of the 1970s and 1980s have argued that, in order to think, students must have something to think about. Like Bagley, they argue that the curriculum should have a content that is logically or chronologically structured.[7]

           Therefore, the personal interests of students, especially during adolescent years, are best served by providing them with fundamental, practical knowledge and fundamental skills (such as being able to read and comprehend information regarding the political realities of the polity).  In that way those students, as adults, will be able to adequately define their interests and act in a functional manner.

         This posting will end with this more practical message.  Next, the blog will address the social interests of students.  But it will start with one last reemphasis that this philosophical view, essentialism, highlights.  That is, the posting will begin with expressing a basic call or an expectation that one has of schools, especially public schools (in that taxpayer funds are involved).

That will be that those schools are meant to functionally prepare students to meet the challenges of adulthood.  So, the next posting, before addressing social interests, will add one more essentialist concern involving student interests and the role that schools, even in their civics offerings, are called upon to meet.

[1] This presentation continues with this posting.  The reader is informed that the claims made in this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this blogger.  Instead, the posting is a representation of what an advocate of the natural rights view might present.  This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.  This series of postings begins with “Judging Natural Rights View, I,” August 2, 2022.

[2] This characteristic varies during different times and in various places or nations.  In the 1980s, David Breskin wrote of heightened levels of it during that time.  See David Breskin, “Teen Suicide,” Rolling Stone (November 8, 1984), 26-37.  More recently, levels seem lower in Korea. See You-Kyung Lee and Eunjin Seo, “Cooperative and Competitive Attitudes During Adolescence and Their Social and Academic Outcomes,” Journal of Youth Adolescence, 51, 4 (April 2022), 792-804.

[3] For example, Sam Quinones gives a compelling argument of how the loss of manufacturing jobs in America has been instrumental in the initial and continued popularity of opiates. See Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (New York, NY:  Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015).

[4] “Parenting: The Teen Years,” American Psychological Association (2011), accessed September 22, 2022, https://www.apa.org/topics/parenting/teens.

[5] Daniel Katz and Robert Louis Kahn, The Social Psychology of Organizations (New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1966).

[6] Even proponents of inquiry or discovery methods share in concerns over the viability of those methods.  See, for example, Cassie Quigley, Jeff C. Marshall, Cynthia C. M. Deaton, Michelle P. Cook, and Michael Padilla, “Challenges to Inquiry Teaching and Suggestions for How to Meet Them,” Social Educator, 20, 1 (Spring 2011), accessed September 22, 2022, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ940939.pdf.