Inquiry: Why Now?

Fostering a culture of inquiry (where students learn by asking and investigating questions, examining evidence, and creating interpretations) can both redefine the professional role of classroom teachers and substantively improve student learning with an explicit focus on equity.

These past two years have been remarkably difficult for educators and educational leaders. The multiple crises – the relentless pandemic, protests for racial justice, environmental catastrophes, and threats to our democratic system of government – have challenged even the most confident and experienced educational leaders. School and site administrators, teacher leaders, and classroom teachers have reported feeling unsure and ill-prepared to support each other and their students. On top of all of this, teachers have left the profession en masse and the ripple effect of a teacher shortage is being felt by administrators, students and beyond.

The multiple crises that schools face require a collective response that leverages the expertise and experience of an entire school community. Educational leaders are currently in a position to pursue equity-minded reforms in the classroom and across schools. Inquiry as an instructional practice can advance equity at three different levels: the student, the classroom, and the school/system.

Inquiry Fosters Equity. As explained in the 21CSLA Equity Statement, a leader for equity seeks to, “…transform education to improve access, opportunity, and inclusion for students and adults, especially those who are systemically marginalized and historically underserved, so that they can thrive.” To develop and sustain a more equitable educational system – one that supports, “…the learning, development, and achievement of students who have been historically underserved…”(Friedrich and McKinney, 2010), inquiry is both necessary and appropriate. The process of inquiry, especially when it is embraced collectively, offers the tools necessary to transform a goal of social justice into a sustainable method of advancing equity. An inquiry model’s focus on questions offers the first advantage: Who is learning? Who is not? Who is asking the question? How do we know? How might a change in methods impact student learning? How can educators work together to improve student learning? How have educational divides deepened over the pandemic, and what interventions have been the most effective in confronting them? Inquiry’s focus on the collection and use of evidence offers a second tool. In addition to grades and test scores, what other pieces of data can educators use to deepen their understanding? What about classroom participation, formative assessments, observations by colleagues, and one-on-one interviews? And inquiry’s other tools, analysis of evidence leading to meaning-making, communicating new knowledge, and more questions, provide actionable steps forward for students, teachers, and leaders alike. Because these new understandings are cultivated through careful investigation, based upon analysis of relevant evidence, and carefully considered through collaborative dialogue among peers, they are more likely to take hold, impact a school culture, and positively impact equitable practices. “As teachers collaboratively work towards interrupting patterns of inequitable achievement,” Friedrich and McKinney argued, “they develop relationships grounded in analyzing their teaching and its impact on student learning and development.”

Inquiry Develops Life-Long Critical Thinkers. While “knowledge” in different subject areas is substantively not the same, the distinct disciplines do share a process for acquiring that information: inquiry. “Knowledge, as an abstract term, is a name for the product of competent inquiries,” wrote John Dewey, an influential American educator, in 1938. “It is the convergent and cumulative effect of continued inquiry that defines knowledge in its general meaning.” Dewey reminds us all that the inquiry cycle’s emphasis on questioning, investigating, and analysis of emerging and relevant evidence both define and expand a disciplinary knowledge base. “All bodies of knowledge emerge from collective attempts to answer a discipline’s core questions,” wrote Richard H. Audet, Professor of Science Education at Roger Williams University. For example, public health researchers follow up on concerns voiced by environmental justice advocates since at least the 1960s to study the impact of industrial pollution, auto emissions and hazardous waste. These studies focus on neighborhoods with high numbers of people of color. A recent Harvard study confirms what community members had long noted: that African Americans are exposed to 14% more PM 2.5 (pollution that causes heart and lung diseases) than white Americans. And, exposure tends to be much higher in neighborhoods that are at least 85% Black. This leads to African Americans being three times more likely than white Americans to die from this pollution. It took the questions, concerns and formal and informal investigations from within and outside these neighborhoods to uncover this inequitable pattern. The questions and the data are situated in a particular disciplinary field – public health – which both defines and constrains its use of data, the questions asked, and conclusions that can be drawn from its analysis. In other words, the subject matters.

Inquiry-based instruction develops the disposition necessary to develop and sustain life-long learners. When students and adults are carefully apprenticed in the cycle of inquiry, over time they come to appreciate the value of questioning, the process of discovery, the need for the careful selection of relevant evidence, and the confidence to challenge assumptions and make informed decisions based on their analysis of the evidence, and with it, new understandings – leading to even more questions as the cycle continues. To be able to discern lies or disinformation has always been a valuable skill, but it seems even more so in 2022. How do we know if our leaders are telling us the truth? How can we be sure what we read, see, and hear is accurate and reliable? Inquiry-based instruction builds our individual and collective capacity to discern the credibility of a claim through the analysis of relevant evidence.

New Knowledge Supports Social-Emotional Wellbeing. There is a well-documented and inextricable relationship between children’s ability to learn and their social-emotional wellbeing. Cognition and emotion are interrelated. Students who experienced the greatest trauma during the pandemic, for instance, are least prepared to learn in the way that they did before 2020. Losing loved ones, suffering dislocations and isolation, experiencing housing and food insecurity, and facing COVID themselves, students have social-emotional needs that will take years to begin to address. As a starting point, inquiry-based instruction can serve as an approach to engage these students, especially if the classroom investigations are centered on issues that are relevant and meaningful to the students and their communities. Through this inquiry-based approach to instruction that centers equity, students can develop their own internal capacities to grow and succeed in the face of adversity.

About CSMP and 21CSLA

The 21st Century School Leadership Academy (21CSLA) is dedicated to the professional learning and support of California’s educational leaders--teacher, site, and district- to create more equitable learning environments that ultimately improve success for underserved students.

The California Subject Matter Project (CSMP) has been engaged in inquiry for decades, investigating how knowledge and skills in various disciplines is developed and best taught. Across the projects, one truth has emerged: Inquiry leads to improvement, innovation, and empowerment.

Together, 21CSLA and CSMP believe a focus on inquiry can support the larger goal of equitable education.

Download a PDF version of this theory of action essay here.