Within the Middle School, students follow the International Middle Years Curriculum (IMYC) which is an inquiry-based curriculum. The IMYC encourages students to find things out for themselves with a clear direction from the teacher. Students will often be researching, investigating, inquiring, thinking and reporting within the classroom. Many parents often ask me what the benefits of such an approach are, as an inquiry-based classroom looks very different to the classroom that we all remember from our own childhood school experience, in which the teacher stood at the front imparting often meaningless knowledge that we had to memorise in order to pass that exam. Inquiry-based teaching and learning is different, with learning becoming more student-centred. The following extract taken from Trevor MacKenzie’s book, Dive into Inquiry, provides a more detailed understanding of what inquiry-based learning is all about:
Research suggests that Inquiry-based learning and the development of an Inquiry-based curriculum helps to prepare young people for the ever-changing world. For example, in the US “in 1900, 95 percent of all jobs were low skilled and required only that employees could follow basic procedures designed by others. In 2008, many jobs require specialized knowledge and skills. Today’s employees must be able to communicate and collaborate, research ideas, and collect, synthesize, and analyze information. They need to develop new products and to be able to apply different areas of knowledge to new problems and challenges.” (Barron & Darling-Hammond, 2008). Consequently, this requires students to participate in lessons that can provide these high-order skills with students needing to take part in complex, meaningful projects that require sustained engagement, collaboration, research, management of resources, and the development of an ambitious performance or product.
INQUIRY BASED LEARNING
HELPING TO DEVELOP 21ST CENTURY LEARNERS
MIDDLE SCHOOL
Ms. Sarah Boylin - Middle School Principal
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Inquiry-based learning is a process where students are involved in their learning, create essential questions,investigate widely, and then build new understandings, meanings and knowledge. That knowledge is new to the students and may be used to answer their essential questions, to develop a solution, or to support a position or point of view. The knowledge is usually presented to others in some sort of public manner and may result in some sort of action.