INQUIRY INTO LEARNING
Inquiry Into Learning:
Developing Student Feedback and Engagement
Peter Ovens, Pat Wallis and Frances Wells
Nottingham Trent University
1 Contexts
1.1 Professional and academic contexts
The three year BA programme in Childhood Studies at Nottingham Trent University has two IIL modules across the whole of years 1 and 2. IIL1 aims to enable students to learn how to learn in higher education. It is unlike a ‘study skills’ approach to supporting students’ adaptation to university learning by placing responsibility for their learning on the students themselves, developing their metacognitive awareness of their learning and themselves as learners and professional people. IIL1 is about becoming a reflective learner and IIL2 is about becoming a professional inquirer. They relate progressively to each other and to the Year 3 module: Professional Research Project.
1.2 Conceptual contexts
The curriculum of both modules draws upon the process approach of Lawrence Stenhouse (1975). The IIL philosophy is person centred, drawing on Carl Rogers’ (1988) model of human relationships and learning. The approach is a practical expression of Ronald Barnett’s (1997) ideal of critical being: that students learn how to integrate for themselves critical thinking and reasoning about knowledge with effective action and critical self reflection (broadening into the domains of the self and the world). The early years educational ideas of Ferre Laevers have helped to shape our thinking and practice and Donald Schön’s reflective practitioner theory informs our work on professionalism.
1.3 Personal contexts
Peter Ovens is interested in science education, action research and the Person Centred Approach. Pat Wallis is interested in human and animal learning, transferable skills, and Personal Construct Theory. Frances Wells is an Early Years practitioner with an interest in maths education. She leads the BA in Primary Education programme.
2 IIL in action
2.1 The general approach of IIL
The dominant way of working is for students to carry out cycles of action research projects for individual and collaborative learning. Each inquiry develops a constructive practical response to students’ own perceived needs, difficulties, purposes and interests as learners.
The module process for both IIL1 and IIL2 is summarised in the following diagram. Please note that the title of the final assignment shown here is that of IIL1
NB D denotes discussion of relevant issues at each of the points indicated in the process
Students are expected to examine their learning experiences using simple inquiry techniques, and generate evidence based description for each other and tutors. Then, there is collaborative exploration of ways to improve the learning within each inquiry context generating action steps, which are tested against fresh experience. Students are encouraged to take increasing responsibility for developing positive attitudes, effective learning strategies and creative ways of solving problems. They may apply to their practice as learners and test relevant theoretical frameworks such as research into learning styles, multiple intelligence, self efficacy, etc.. Students hold regular group meetings called conferences to discuss their achievements and coach each others’ continuing improvements. There has always been an expectation for them to share their progress at each stage through discussion. However, its importance has been accentuated by the introduction of more explicit procedures for giving and receiving feedback. Later, each inquiry is the basis of a written report called a Learning Inquiry. This is made available to all students and tutors in the year group by means of a Wiki. These interim products of their learning are referred to as patches. At the end of the module, they are stitched together to create a composite document called a Patchwork Text, the module’s assessed assignment. The extracts of patches which provide material for the Text must be organised into a coherent document with the addition of short passages of linking, reflective writing called the stitching. Throughout the module, in parallel to building up the patches, students are routinely expected to make entries in a personal reflective Journal called the Jotter about their questions, puzzles, curiosity, apprehensions and surprises arising from their learning and experience. They are encouraged to share Jotter entries with each other. Jotters are an important resource for preparing the Patchwork Text as they provide evidence of changes in perspective, deepening of awareness and gains in understanding. Other features of the module include structured, tutor led inquiries into reading and writing for learning, about which students produce reports. Students are free to revisit previous inquiries or start new ones that emerge according to their own assessment of what is relevant to improving their practice. This repeated, cumulative, personal and collaborative approach to learning aims to contextualise learning rather than train students in skills through decontextualised exercises.
2.2 IIL 1
The title of the Patchwork text assignment for the first year module is: Becoming a reflective learner. The criteria of assessment are: 1) Involvement, 2) Personal development, and 3) Credible, practical knowing. Students are taught to understand and apply these criteria routinely to their study, so that they influence each student’s internal locus of evaluation which guides their learning behaviour. Various notions of learning community apply to module terminology and procedures such as learning partners and critical friends.
Examples of inquiries that students have undertaken are: “How can I learn more from my reading?”; “How can I feel more confident for the role-play session?”; “How can I motivate myself to prepare for seminars?”; “How can I give more time to writing my assignments?”; “What is my best way to concentrate in sessions?”; “What is the proper way to reference my assignments”; “How can I make more improvements with my essay writing?”; “How good am I at listening?”; “How can I overcome my negative feelings about my progress on this course?”; “How can I improve my ability to make a PowerPoint presentation?”; “What type of learner am I? How can knowing this help me to learn?”.
Some students say that they never really ‘get’ the reflective approach, however, many gain a positive appreciation of it quite quickly and some seem to be liberated by it and do amazingly innovative and inspiring work. It is during later stages of the module, or for some students, later stages of the programme, that a fuller appreciation of their achievements in IIL becomes more fully clear to them.
2.3 IIL 2
The title of the Patchwork text assignment for the second year module is: Becoming a professional inquirer. The criteria of assessment are: 1) Inquiry-mindedness, 2) Credible practical knowing and 3) Professional engagement.
Students do learning inquiries into how to conduct professional inquiry, covering a range of simple methods of data collection, analysis and presentation. Then they are commissioned to do a real inquiry by a tutor. Acting as inquiry assistants, they produce a report on such topics as: Timetable organisation for promoting effective learning; Sustainable practice in teaching and learning; Students’ perceptions of their learning gains during IIL1 and IIL2 modules; Students’ perceptions of the value of their recent completion of a School Based Task; Students’ active responses to peer presentation; Students’ understanding of professional/practitioner research; The quality of students’ talk during sessions; Students’ understanding of Sustainability education; Students’ reading to prepare for focus tasks during sessions; Students’ perceptions of the pace of teaching & value of learning activities; and Challenges in teaching mathematics to young children.
The other main focus of IIL2 is learning about the theory and practice of reflective professionalism, both in doing inquiry and in professional practice generally.
2.4 Our Action Research
This paper is a result of our ongoing collaboration. We each do our own reflective writing and keep a database of evidence about the groups we teach, their interactions and developments. We discuss our concerns, evidence and action steps at regular research meetings and disseminate our collaborative work at conferences and through publications. We monitor student feedback, to deepen our understanding of what their learning is like and how it relates to our shared educational vision. We judge how well we are achieving our vision and interdependently, reflect on what are the deeper values and beliefs which underpin our vision. Therefore aims and means are held in dynamic tension with each other. For example, through reflecting on a key issue such as: What counts as reflective learning, as part of the process of autonomy for these students? our evidence has forced us to reshape our vision of what reflective learning and autonomy are, for these students in this programme during present times. Our ideals have included: 1) Growth of collaborative autonomy as learners and as professional people; 2) Development of a reflective, wholistic approach to learning from experience; 3) Abilities to integrate theory with practice and to contribute to the development of both
We are conducting second-order action research into the improvement of our practice as tutors in enabling students to conduct their (first-order) action research into the improvement of their practice as learners. For example, the evolution of a person centred pedagogy has been a focus of one tutor’s reflection: The style of teaching is a lot different to what I’m used to. I’d always used a ‘timed/prescriptive’ structure, where I’ve known exactly what the students were going to do minute by minute. I felt like I had total control. This approach is more student led. It feels more relaxed for both the student and the tutor. This surprised me. Before I would have thought I’d have found the lack of control uncomfortable. I now feel that my previous teaching style was to ‘feed’ the students information, so the pace of sessions was controlled by the clock. I no longer use a clock as my monitor in IIL, but use the students’ motivation, contributions and interest to guide the sessions.
Our research is guided by John Elliott’s views of action research (Elliott 1995). The theoretical framework provided below was not the starting point for our development of this module. It has gained a place in our thinking because of its value as a resource for our reflection on evidence. Our research is not about putting theory into practice, but improving practice by understanding it better through personal theorising disciplined by others’ theoretical resources.
As the research has progressed, we have refined our aims and currently see them as follows. We want our students to develop:
o an attitude to learning characterised by self initiation, self evaluation, self direction, professionalism, and autonomy (freedom from inner and outer compulsions)
o engagement with experiential learning processes which value situated meaning and contextualised action
o an appreciation of academic literacy and development of skilful reading and writing to learn
o a valuing of professional interaction and relationship with others marked by openness, honesty, empathy, valuing, acceptance and appreciation of difference
o a willingness to give and receive constructive, formative feedback and responsiveness to challenges, helping to sustain a sense of one’s own and others’ mutual development
o characteristics of what Rogers (1953) calls a fully functioning person
o a shift in world view from modernism to post modernism concerning beliefs about knowledge and action.
3 Our theoretical framework
The BA Childhood Studies programme has a vision for students to become autonomous as learners and as future professionals. In support of the general achievement of the Programme aim of professional autonomy, the IIL modules aim to foster not only the acquisition of learning skills and abilities for academic study and professional inquiry, but also the development of personal and interpersonal qualities.
A significant resource for our vision is the idea of the reflective practitioner originated by Donald Schön (Schön 1983). In seeking an epistemology of practice, he rejects the positivistic and technical rationalistic values that underpins a conventional approach to professionalism, which he calls that of the infallible expert. The dilemma in a reflective professional person’s practice are cast as being between following the tenets of positivist ‘rigour’ or trying to wrestle with ‘relevance’ in "the swampy lowlands … of … messy but crucially important problems" (pp. 40–3).
This model of professionalism has implications for curriculum. It demands induction and initiation rather than mere instruction and skill training. These terms are used here in ways proposed by Lawrence Stenhouse (Stenhouse 1975) in his Process Curriculum Model. His distinction between training and education is helpful in understanding how all aspects of learning to learn and to be professional relate to each other, and how it is induction and initiation into reflective learning which represent the kinds of autonomy to which we aspire.
4 Student feedback and engagement
There is an expectation that a student learns to see her/him self as a learner who is able to say “I don’t know” or “I can’t do that” and to do something to find out, try new ideas in practice, notice intuitive and stubborn ideas, listen, observe and reflect on errors. For some, this positive efficacy (Knight 2000) needs to replace the deficit model which they seem to bring from learning in school which is characterised by an external locus of evaluation. We try to create expectations of University study like those of learning without limits (Hart, S. 2004). Our task is to develop a group ethos of mutual acceptance and support. As a basic example, an initial group visit to the library to find and borrow books provoked extreme anxiety for some students who feared this new environment, believing others watched critically how they coped with the situation (or not!). Many students acknowledged later how this daunting experience had been helped by being in a supportive small group. Giving and receiving feedback about such experiences becomes integral to the learning.
Students’ Jotters, whether kept private or shared, support reflective processes and facilitate shared feedback. Naturalistic, informal styles are encouraged to incorporate the qualities described by the module assessment criteria. For example, three weeks into the module a student wrote:
I’m feeling that all I do is ask questions of myself like how do I learn best? Why do I learn in this way? Are there other ways to learn? Why do I worry about this? But I really want some answers. My questions just seem to be confusing me.
Negotiating these protocols to support students and recognising different perspectives are seen as integral to the relationship that tutors develop with students during the module, and as models for how students can learn to relate to each other.