TeachFX interviewed Kimberly Mitchell: Founder of Inquiry Partners, Lecturer at the University of Washington, Author of Experience Inquiry about powerful ways that teachers can generate inquiry. View our highlights from the conversation below.

What is your description of the 5 powerful strategies for generating inquiry. Please describe them for us and explain why you chose these five.

• First, I like to say I’m not an inquiry expert. I’m an inquiry enthusiast. Like many educators, I’m still learning what makes for inquiry rich classrooms teachers facilitate student inquiry

• I used to think inquiry classrooms were chaos. I was wrong. We need to create space for inquiry, but like “a river needs banks to flow”, we need structure in the classroom for inquiry to flow.

• After many observations of “inquiry” teachers, I found five things that kept surfacing: 

  • 1. Relationships - teachers have developed emotional bonds with students, and helped students create emotional bonds with each other 

  • 2. Curiosity - the teachers come in like co-learners, maintain curiosity Teachers have to marvel at the information alongside the teachers. I call this “co-marveling” — even if it is a bit faked.  

  • 3. Asking more, talking less - teachers need to ask more and better questions, and they need to shut up more! And get students to talk more and to ask their own questions

  • 4. Encouraging the use of evidence - asking “how do you know that” and modeling how we as teachers know what we are teaching (citing!)

  • 5. Extending think time - this includes wait time but also letting theories continue - kids might come home and still not know the answer or have the right answer… but that has to be allowed, encouraged, etc. 

How do the strategies relate to one another? 

• The first two are “dispositions” or mindsets. The other three are strategies to implement. 

• The dispositions are foundations for instructional strategies that follow. Teachers must establish a strong foundation for the strategies to work. 

• The strategies foster thinking and dialogue and serve as starting points for richer inquiry.

This may seem like an obvious question for many people, but why is inquiry so important in the classroom? Aren’t students supposed to acquire knowledge not ask questions?

• We acquire knowledge by asking questions! All humans have innate curiosity and our current system of education is set up in the worst possible way for inquiry. 

• Susan Engel out of Williams College found that every year that kids are in school they ask fewer questions.

• BUT keep in mind - inquiry requires input as well! 

• Standards can be a real impediment to inquiry - just know your standards really well

• What about assessments? Ugh we need to get rid of them! “the tail is wagging the dog here”

  
  

Let’s zero in on the strategy of “staying curious.” Teachers often say that kids aren’t interested in math. With all the mechanics, it is just hard to generate curiosity in math. How would you keep kids curious in Algebra I?

• You have to do what you need to do to get kids engaged in any subject… you have to let them play with it!

• Why do we teach Algebra I? Math is about patterns, looking for patterns, making conjectures, constructing examples and counterexamples, creating arguments

• A Mathematician's Lament - written by Paul Lockhart, a math teacher, explains that math is an art! What we do in math class now would be like sending kids to music or art class and never giving them musical instruments or a paint brush!

  • We worry so much about trying to make math relevant that we are missing the point - math should be JOYFUL in and of itself 

    
    

Tell us about your work with teachers. What are teachers’ paths to growth in terms of inquiry in the classroom?

• While I’m not teaching in the K12 setting anymore, I’m married to a teacher, and he keeps it real for me… I don’t want to just be a consultant that shows up at the end of the day at a faculty meeting and delivers expert advice, so I am always going into classrooms; working shoulder-to shoulder with teachers; do a lot of modeling; videos of other teachers teaching

Q & A/ Continued Discussion with Kimberly

What steps have you taken to generate inquiry in your own and/or other teachers’ classrooms? Are there places where you get stuck in your inquiry efforts? What other comments or questions do you have for the group?

• I pitched a nontraditional school (alternative school); the whole school is very inquiry based; challenge is applying those same ideas in a traditional school system so focused on standardized tests 

  • Imagine this: What would happen if we just DIDN’T teach to the test? Do you think the students would perform worse? 

• I observed a physics teacher who never answered a question without asking a question! He could have answered any of these questions, but he never would - and his students loved him and loved physics.

• We created a class called “TedX” to give students the time and space they need to be able to research and plan for their own Ted talks next year. I think it’s a great way to let the students lead their own learning and hopefully serves as a model of instruction for other classes.

• As administrators, it’s important to be aware of how you’re leading (be aware of your own talk time, help your teachers and school leaders be inquiry based as well!)

• Does inquiry come more naturally to elementary teachers? 

  • Yes, because students tend to ask more questions at younger ages! But it doesn’t have to be that way. 

  • In “Teaching as a Subversive Activity”, the author suggests every secondary teacher should teach elementary for a year and vice versa. They’d learn a lot more about inquiry that way.  

• If we want inquiry based classrooms, then you have to be an inquiry based SCHOOL… Encouraging inquiry is an art and takes time and practice to get good at it!

More from Kimberly on teaching/fostering inquiry:

• How do we get students to inquire? It is an art! And it’s like a muscle that you need to build over time… Here are some resources: 

  • The Right Question Institute: The Question Formulation Technique (QFT) - strategies to get students talking and asking questions. Slightly artificial at first but then they get better at asking questions

  • TeachFX: Empower your teachers with feedback on their instruction. 

  • Teach Different: Great resource for social studies

  • ThinkLaw 

  • Teaching as a Subversive Activity 

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