Author: Caleb

Abstract

The world as a whole is more educated than ever before, yet some trends indicate the quality of education could have already passed its peak. A return to more classical means of instruction such as inquiry could improve education efficacy in the twenty-first century. There is a lack of teacher experience and time in the school day to improve the current quality of classroom instruction. Professional development and training seminars are too frequently created for new teachers, which limits the amount that more seasoned teachers have for improving their practice after their first few years on the job. Teachers should reference and continually participate in educational research in their daily practice in order to improve education through evidence-based instruction strategies and increase the availability of in-depth educational research. Inquiry-based instruction is one teaching strategy lacking significant data identifying effective implementation strategies.

Keywords: inquiry-based instruction, Socratic Method, questioning, student-centered learning, teaching strategies

Introduction

Were humans who lived millennia ago more or less intelligent than humanity today? The modern educational sphere sees new buzzwords every few years touted as progress in the field. With limited time in a school year for educator training, lesson planning, and instruction time for implementing such new strategies, has the revolving door of new strategies usurped more effective instructional methods for the sake of trying something new? There has been a phenomenal turnaround of educators in schools across the United States (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics 2005). This is a result of a number of factors. The United States population grew by more than 17% between the 2000 and 2020 Censuses, leading to a never-ending need for new teacher hires (US Census Bureau, 2021). The average age of a teacher in the United States peaked at 55 in 2007-2008, and an increase in federal and state-level regulation in public schools have also increased the amount of time and resources spent meeting standards and restrictions, resulting in an even greater need for teachers (Will, 2020). Teacher salaries in many locations have not kept up with inflation over the same time period (Cornman, Nixon, Spence, Taylor, & Geverdt, 2019). There has also been a decline in the quality of education in the United States. The United Nation’s Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) conducts a periodic testing program on student performance called “Programme for International Student Assessment” (PISA). According to PISA data, the United States saw a decrease in mean scores in all tested subjects of reading, math, and science between 2009 and 2015 (2015). Is there a connection between the decline in average years of teacher experience across the United States and this fall in educational rankings?

The Socratic Method in the Modern Educational Context

Student-centered learning has been part of the twenty-first century classroom idealized by school administration and teacher leaders. This is a multi-faceted approach to instruction which when implemented properly gives birth to a form of education strikingly different from that which was common as recent as one or two decades ago. The idealized student-centered classroom, however often it may be heard spoken as a buzzword between educators in professional development seminars, has not yet become the norm. Many professional development sessions and teacher trainings cover a basic understanding of topics and rarely make it to practice of effective implementation of the method. Professional development sessions are often pushed as something best taken in as quantity over quality. A certain number of hours are required of educators for many purposes such as license renewal, and in many school systems participation in teacher mentorship programs are now a yearly requirement for all educators. However these systems have failed to bring about the idealized paradigm shift in modern education. One research survey found teachers were on average 68% satisfied with professional development (Torff & Sessions, 2009). Another study by Alzankawi went further to show that more experienced teachers require more in-depth professional development before they will find satisfaction with their time spent in the session (2020). New teachers enter the field bright-eyed and ready to help their students learn, yet they lack the skills. University teacher preparation courses fail to prepare teachers for the classroom, and schools are forced to do the practical teacher training while teachers are alone in the classroom while on-the-job. Young teaching professionals are not comfortable with this situation, and students and their families are not satisfied with the inconsistency and lack of quality of education. On-the-job teacher training methods are not sufficiently structured to support these new teachers. Few teachers make it past their first, second, or third year in the profession (Will, 2020). If school systems cannot support the professional growth of their faculty, how can they support the education of their students? Inquiry-based education inspired by the age-old methods Socrates used to lead his students to the truth within themselves is one strategy for creating a student-centered classroom and is not an uncommon concept within the modern education field. Proper implementation is, however, a great challenge even to experienced educators. Teacher trainings and articles in educational journals often stop at touting its value for creating a student-centered learning environment without going into advice and actionable strategies.

Teachers looking to utilize the strategy often find forming questions and getting students involved, among other aspects, difficult to plan and implement. It is one thing to understand the importance or effectiveness of a given strategy, but it is entirely something else to employ it regularly and effectively. Strategies are tools and as such require a set of instructions for proper use.

“Strategies are tools and as such require a set of instructions for proper use.”

Seeking Strategies

The teacher looking to create the best context in which students acquire knowledge and build critical thinking skills is therefore left with few tools. A maze of state and federal regulations and a lack of funding for an education system viewed in a seemingly worse light year after year compound problems for the classroom teacher with unmanageable class sizes, more complex curricula, and less time in the day for planning. It is rare that teachers are provided with access to databases of published educational research, and it is highly uncommon for teachers to reference educational research in their personal practice.

There is a need for a change in the way teachers practice the profession. Teachers should have access to educational research and be collaborating to implement research-based strategies for the unique needs of their classroom. Teachers should not be satisfied with only a surface-level understanding of fad concepts in teaching and should instead compete cooperatively for excellence in the field by not only reading and utilizing research, but continually designing and participating in studies. Quite simply, there is a need for more evidence-based discourse in the field of education.

The topic of inquiry-based education, however ancient its roots may be, also lacks sufficient studies in the forefront of modern educational research. Many studies in modern journals also stop at looking at the effectiveness of the strategy in general without testing specific methods to find the most successful means of implementation—the most critical aspect of any strategy. New teachers especially need to know the “how” in addition to the “what”.

Seeking Strategies for Inquiry-Based Education

With such a lack of modern research and concrete strategies for implementing inquiry-based education, a number of strategies may be tested in the classroom. First and perhaps most importantly, teachers should try to keep everything they say during class time to questions. These should be information questions and not yes or no questions. Students, too, should form their own questions and lead the discourse on the topic. Teachers must facilitate a comfortable learning environment for this to occur, and some level of student input on the lesson topics and direction will also help improve participation.

Lessons must be planned in advance to fit within the course curriculum. Planning big-picture discussion questions along with appropriate guiding questions based on the points of the curriculum is critical for leading the classroom, especially when students seem lost or are quiet on the topic. Debates are a good activity to use, and teachers can keep the focus on the speaking and thinking skills by assigning the position students must argue—regardless of their true opinion.

Teachers must also consider how to approach the exam. Depending on the classroom and lesson pacing, Socratic discussions can vary in style significantly. It would not be uncommon for different class periods for the same class and instructor to arrive at different conclusions through varied paths of dialogue. Therefore multiple-choice assessment is unlikely to be the most appropriate form when teaching primarily with inquiry. Exams should reflect the style and content of the class.

It may also be helpful to consider other teaching strategies such as a flipped classroom in which students complete learning at home through readings or lecture videos, for example, before deeper discussion or practice to take place in the classroom.

Need for Further Research

Existing research should be looked at more thoroughly to develop a specific, testable strategy for teaching a full unit of instruction such that the results of its implementation can also be compared to an appropriate control group to judge the effectiveness of the strategy. A strong study would compare inquiry-based instruction with other methods commonly practiced in the contemporary classroom across a variety of grade levels, schools, and regions to account for outlying data sets from small sample sizes. The study should be structured and implemented consistently, then the data compared within similar curricula and disciplines. Nevertheless, variables such as years of teacher experience and prior skills for using inquiry in the classroom could limit a study to one school year of implementation without taking these aspects into consideration. Care must be taken to account for any bias emerging from data of teachers with different levels of familiarity with the strategy or failure to employ the strategy with the same consistency as other classrooms.