How can we instill the "State of
Wonder?"
Inquiry places students’ questions and ideas,
rather than solely those of the teacher, at the centre of the learning
experience. Students’ questions drive the learning process forward. Teachers
using an inquiry-based approach encourage students to ask and genuinely
investigate their own questions about the world.
The inquiry-based approach is not a rigid methodology
or set of procedures. Rather, it entails an overall mindset, one that pervades
school and classroom life to foster a culture of collaborative learning and
idea improvement. Teachers continually encourage students to contribute their ideas
and engage in critical problem-solving processes in a variety of contexts,
whether curricular or social.
The process of student learning, more so than the
teacher’s focus on ‘covering the curriculum’ is paramount.
The Nottingham University Samworth academy has
a room packed with curiosities and puzzles that stimulate pupils' imaginations,
and generate a sense of wonder
He firmly believes the idea
should catch on. "I think every school should have a place where wonder
can be celebrated. Being interested in seeds, literally and metaphorically, I'm
keen to see this idea germinate and spread."
The school's principal, Dave
Harris, rarely misses an opportunity to talk about the Wonder Room. He first
met his "agent" at the nearby campus where McFall is doing his second
doctorate in "wonder and learning", based at Nottingham's Learning
Sciences Research Institute. "I bumped into Matthew in a corridor there
and we started talking about ways of engaging children and changing
attitudes," Harris says. "We hit it off and the kids loved him. He's
been coming into school since September – once a week because that's all I can
afford to pay for. But the room is open at other times and children wander in
during breaks between lessons."
The Sainsbury Centre at the
University of East Anglia, meanwhile, has been taking its handling collection
to schools across the region for the last three years. "They're mainly
objects from Papua New Guinea," says marketing assistant Sam Morton.
"They're used as ways to get children to think about their own culture and
heritage."
What does brain research say?
In the near future, success
will depend on accelerated rates of information acquisition. And we need to
help students develop the skill sets to analyze new information as it becomes
available, to flexibly adapt when facts are revised, and to be technologically
fluent (as new technology becomes available). Success will also depend upon
one's ability to collaborate and communicate with others on a global playing
field -- with a balance of open-mindedness, foundational knowledge, and
critical analysis skills so they can make complex decisions using new and
changing information.
We have the obligation to
provide our students with "activating" experiences that stimulate
judgment, pattern recognition, induction, deduction; and activate prior
knowledge, analysis, and prediction. Experiences that promote executive
function activation include evaluating and doing something with information while they learn,
such as discovering relationships between what they learn and what they already
know, or transforming new learning into another form, such as writing about
math or symbolically transforming a story into a drawing.
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