This past week we had Jeff Hopkins the founder of the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry as a guest in EDCI 336. This was an incredibly enlightening discussion where I was able to hear first hand about the future of education. This is my first year as a student where I have really had the opportunity to experience some inquiry based learning and I think it is a valuable tool. Inquiry based education puts the student at the centre of their learning and assessment while also creating independent thinkers and life long learners. To me this is the aspect that our education system is missing. Students should be deciding what they want to learn and how they want to demonstrate that learning. When the assessment and learning is inquiry based it helps to ensure that what the student is doing is something that interests them, something they are passionate about. Having the passion behind learning will make it that much more effective.

 

That being said I understand from a pre service teacher perspective how inquiry may be hard to teach. The PSII website has a great reference for inquiry tools linked: here. This is a great resource for introducing the concept to students and helping them to develop their own inquiry questions.

 

Education is all about innovation and a great way to innovate our own teaching practice is the inclusion of inquiry based learning!

 

 

 

Photo by Nikita Kachanovsky on Unsplash

 

 

 

Feature Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash