Research and Inquiry

Today's demo with Christin has got me revisiting some thinking that has been ongoing over the past couple years, thinking about cultivating student inquiry within my classroom, and doing so in the context of the wealth of content students can access on the web and tools they can use to organize and create.

But before I go there, let me back up to today's inquiry with Christin.

She began by having us map our inquiry over the process of SI.  This inquiry, for most of us,  has taken the form of reflective blog posts we have written daily about what that day had us thinking and wondering about.

Honestly, I haven't been feeling too good about my inquiry blog.  Lots of random pieces that I feel really didn't dig too deeply into anything.  It just sort of skated across the surface of a bunch of disconnected, but important pieces of my thinking throughout SI.

But, in the interest of being a good sport, when Christin directed us to map out our inquiry, I opened my blog in one window and a new Prezi in another.  I read through my posts, and typed what I though to be topics or key ideas into my Prezi.  The experience of revisiting the path of my thinking over the course of SI had value in itself.  It made me realize how much thinking I did these last few weeks, as well as the value of documenting it on my blog.  Though, like I first thought, my ideas were pretty scattered.


  *an aside: Prior to SI, in thinking about the blogging I would be doing and this article that I had read on blogging, I made the conscious decision NOT to try to keep my posts focused around a particular focus or within a certain niche.  So, even though I'm sounding a little critical of the scattered-ness of my posts, the criticism is related to how I was thinking that I'd be able to find connections between ideas, not the fact that I was writing without these connections in mind. 


For the next piece of her demo, Christin had us turn and share our maps with a partner.  Without a clear focus for my "story" I turned Laura sitting next to me, explained a little about the process for creating my map, then started at the beginning for the key ideas that I found.  When I finished, I zoomed out to see the whole thing, and just before I was going to comment on the messy disconnected thing that I had going, I stopped.  Starred off into the distance, and let a low "whoaaaaaaa" escape my lips. In telling my fragmented story to Laura, I saw the pieces come together.   Categories formed, fragments overlapped, and I dragged them into piles and labeled them: 

• Concepts Underlying my Practice, 
• Adaptations and Thinking on Current Classroom Practices, 
• Writing Project and Me
•  Unfinished Starts.  

Still hanging on this "ah ha" moment, Christin moved us to the next piece: taking the mapping we just did, and making it into a plan for a MLA style research paper.  

I moved to my daybook, with these big inquiry categories in mind, and started planning.  I didn't get too far because of the limited time we had to work, but in that time, I managed to write a thesis statement of my inquiry-research paper: Through my inquiry I developed both my understanding of the values which underscored my practice, specific aspects of my practice, and the role that the UNCCWP had in it all. 

And it's here, at this place, where my wheels really started spinning.  

I thought back to this digital inquiry project that I started last year with my students, which involved students going to the web to learn, make annotations of their thinking, and keep on learning with the direction that their inquiry took them.  They then took this learning and used it to inform pieces of writing.  It was cool, no doubt, but I abandoned it this year because I found that when the writing students were doing in writing workshop the were doing online, the going to the web to learn about stuff just happened naturally.  And it did, it's been awesome.  

But now I'm rethinking about revising this process again based on what was happening in my mind during the demo today and my learning over the course of SI.  

I'm thinking about how to engage my students in real inquiry that they document reflectively.  I'm thinking about how to let this sort of learning in pieces happen while also putting the structure in place to guide students and encourage them to both make meaning and embrace the mess. 

And I'm thinking about what a research paper would look like that drew upon all of this.  

And I'm thinking about the last question that I need to keep in mind as I think through the shape this will take in my classroom: How can inquiry be sustained, when we move towards the research process?

I'm excited, but out of time for the day.  That's fine, though.  I'm feeling that this piece is best left unfinished. 

Write on!