Could inquiry be one of the most balanced approaches to education?
Have you ever scrolled through social media and had a bit of an “a-ha” moment?!
As much as I love the educational banter on LinkedIn (and used to on Twitter - what happened?!), Pinterest is my go-to place for expansive, nurturing inspiration that feeds my soul. I love how the algorithm works for me over there! It’s not doom scrolling, it’s joy scrolling - I leave Pinterest more energised than when I dived in (i.e High ROE - Return on Energy - How I’m measuring all of my interactions these days).
Anyway, I was getting inspired over on Pinterest and came across this visual of “yin yoga” words. Take a moment to check them out … What do you notice?
Here’s what I noticed … Some of these are words I might hear an inquiry teacher use with their students. This vocabulary is part of the repertoire of inquiry “Learnish”.
So, then I was wondering …
Why do I associate these words with inquiry?
Why not with other approaches to education?
To answer these questions, I want to take a moment to explore our recent coaching with Rebecca Hartnell in Learning Pioneers. Rebecca is bringing a brilliant model to the world to prevent burnout in business. The crux of her thinking and the model she shared with us is that, in business/the workplace, we spend so much time “doing” and “pushing” and “achieving” and very little time slowing down, reflecting, integrating, allowing, wondering. This imbalanced (and counter-productive) approach leads to stress and burnout.
This is the cycle she shared with us.
The cycle is made up of times of action, for example, mobilisation, action (obviously!) and completion.
And times of allowing, reflection, for example, sensation (tuning into our senses), awareness and withdrawal.
Interestingly, this cycle involves “starting with a stop” - Or “diving into the fertile void” as Rebecca puts it - Time to allow ideas to bubble up, emerge, reveal themselves, before starting a project -
When do we ever do that in our busy lives?!
What might happen if we did?!
When do we make time for that in education?
As a side note that might be useful to you personally, we tend to want to “fill” that fertile void with distractions - TV, drinking, social media (ironically, since that’s where I got the inspiration for this blogpost!) - anything to stop us from being still and hearing the voice within. Interesting.
So, looking at this cycle, if you are an inquiry practitioner, you might be noticing some links with inquiry and, potentially, the LPA (which focuses on developing Learner Attributes intentionally for those of you following the IB or PYP)
a) It’s a cycle, just like inquiry is a cycle …
b) I wonder, what would happen if we put the inquiry cycle OVER Rebecca’s cycle -
What might match? What might be different?
How could they add to and reinforce one another?
What if we could inquire in schools and this could translate into business using these cycles (now, there’s a thought! I do like to dream a better world into being …)?
For example, inquiry learning often DOES start with a stop - That’s part of “tuning in” ...
And if you’re an LPA practitioner, you might also be wondering - How might different Learner Attributes fit into this cycle? For example, towards the end, “distilling” and “reflection” would be both exercised and used. “Planning” might align with “finding out” in the inquiry cycle and “mobilisation” in Rebecca’s model.
What language might we use at each stage of the cycle? Taking the list of “yin yoga” words above, where might we use some of those during these cycles?
Pulling on Rebecca’s point about burnout in business - that we spend so much time pushing, doing, achieving and don’t make enough, or an equal time to allow, reflect, integrate - It doesn’t take much to see that there’s an imbalance here. And imbalanced systems lead to dis-ease and sickness; imbalanced systems lead to burnout.
I would equate this largely “doing” focus with classrooms governed by a packed curriculum. For example, here, in England, our curriculum encourages us to push through content without placing as much explicit, conscious value on reflection, allowing, being.
Whereas, in inquiry, both “doing” or taking action AND “tuning in”, reflecting, slowing down, allowing, are BUILT INTO the cycle and structure of learning.
So, inquiry has as much yin as it does yang. Balanced.
Approaches or systems with overloaded curriculum objectives, it seems, have an imbalanced tendency towards the yang (Open to your thinking on and experience with this - Do share your thoughts in the chat below!).
My friend, colleague and co-author Guy Claxton talks about education being an “epistemic apprenticeship”. We are not only teaching children content, we are teaching them, consciously or unconsciously, how to be as learners and as humans. That’s a pretty big responsibility! As Jennifer Abrams put it in our “live” on “How do we aspire to be as leaders”:
“Someone is learning to be a human just by watching you.”
If we are teaching children, through the process of our instruction to “do do do” all the time, to push, soldier on and “get through content”, we are teaching them this as a habit of existing. These children will grow into adults who push, do, don’t take time to reflect. They will develop the habits of being stressed and burned out.
If we are teaching children, through the process of our instruction and guidance, to balance doing and taking action with reflecting, allowing, being and making time, we are teaching them that both are valuable to learning and growing - That there are times to take action and times to reflect, allow and slow down. That there is an ebb and flow to life and both states of action and, seeming, inaction are productive. These children will grow into adults who are in tune with their intuition and able to know when to take action or not and be totally fine with both. They will be balanced.
So, I’ll be adding “creating balance” to my why’s behind inquiry education, alongside the power inquiry has to intentionally “build learning power”.
Here are a bunch more “whys” behind inquiry teaching and learning shared by the incredible lead thinkers at the Chapters International “Kaleidoscope of Inquiry” conference in Vancouver last year. What might you add? What are your “whys” behind inquiry? We also have some wonderful reflections and questions in the thread of this post on LinkedIn: "Inquiry is the answer: what's the question?" I wonder what you would add ...?
I’ll wrap up my thinking with a story about Picasso working in his garden …
One day, Picasso was in his garden, sitting peacefully, not doing anything in particular. His neighbour, curious about what the great artist was up to, leaned over the fence and asked, "What are you doing, Picasso?"
Picasso replied, "I'm working."
The neighbour, surprised because it didn’t look like Picasso was doing any actual work, shrugged and went about his day.
The next day, Picasso was at his easel, painting with great intensity and focus. The same neighbour saw him and, again, leaned over the fence. He asked, "What are you doing today, Picasso?"
This time, Picasso smiled and replied, "I'm relaxing."
How are you creating balance in the teaching and learning in your classrooms?
How are you creating balance in your own life and approach to work?
Do you see learning as linear or as a cycle? Has your perception of this changed over time?
P.S. We’re getting excited in Learning Pioneers as we’re about to learn from and with one of the world leaders in inquiry, Kath Murdoch, in a series of Masterclasses which will explore refining Inquiry Leadership - If we get our leadership aligned with a deep understanding of inquiry pedagogy and how to support our teams in implementing it, then embedding inquiry practice throughout our schools will be a much more intentional, impactful process.
If you and your leadership team are keen to embed inquiry learning in your schools and want strategies and worked examples to do so, consider joining us. Find out more and sign up here.
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Becky is the co-creator and thought-leader of Learning Pioneers. She loves the magic of children's imagination and thinking and has taught in classrooms across the world from Argentina, to Thailand to the UK, where she is originally from. She has co-authored a book with Professor Guy Claxton and travels the world inquiring into the most meaningful, purposeful, joyous educational settings across the globe.
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