Please Find Snips Below on my peers Curation and Responses.
I found this process of peer reviewing to be highly beneficial, I need to be able to read over my feedback and process the information. Otherwise it becomes a barrage of criticism that I struggle to process. This way I was more suited to my personality. I tried to be critical and helpful, while always using the compliment sandwich or 3-1 ratio of positive feedback to negative feedback. We all need to hear what we are doing well. Me especially so, as it gives me a solid basis from which to work and develop.
When I set forth on this initial journey, wandering into the as to yet, unknown world ahead. I had a passing knowledge of what Inquiry-Based Learning was, though admittedly was still unawares as to how it could be implemented within my own classroom and TL practice. I was also intensely engaged in my own personal inquiry into The Wander Society, I wanted to link these two seemingly disparate ideas together. For really, wasn’t their essence and process much the same? Unsure as to what benefit Inquiry-Based Learning would have within classrooms if embedded in the pedagogy of all subject’s.
Can a Transdisciplinary Arts Inquiry-Based Learning Cycle transform secondary arts education and the learners?
With the secondary question of: How do we design a transdisciplinary arts cycle?
Being a cross curricular Arts educator, I want to create a program wherein all key arts areas are integrated and build on one another to answer a series of important questions, culminating in an arts performance and/or exhibition. Throughout the academic world there are only a number of researchers who have explored the value of transdisciplinary Inquiry-Based Learning cycles within and across the Key Learning Area of The Arts in secondary education. Within this research, many of the findings relate to a primary based education setting, wherein the process has been found to have profound results for both the students but also the teachers (Montgomery, 2015). Youth Learn, in their highly comprehensive document Inquiry Based Learning: An Approach to Educating and Inspiring Kids, state in simple terms that an Inquiry-Based Learning approach is flexible and “works well for projects that range from the extensive to the bounded, from the research orientated to the creative” (2016, p.1).The Ontario Capacity Building Series into Inquiry Based Learning (2013) also states that this process requires learners to “engage in evidence-based reasoning and creative problem-solving”( p.2). As a process, IBL lends itself remarkably well to the current pedagogical styles of The Arts. So why are the Arts and IBL not linked more implicitly? Is it because to be effective a true IBL cycle needs to be built on collaborative teams, and to span across a number of disciplines?
Today we wander into the murky depths of social media, shining a torchlight on the process of expert searching using non academic databases.When one considers searching for information, particularly academic information looking towards Social Media is not often the first thing that we consider. However, within the world of Web 2.0 and social media there is a wealth of information that is ripe and just waiting for the picking. If I am honest, I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of information. Being a highly regular social media user, I was eager to apply my new search methods to different databases outside of the usual academic searches. For the purpose of this post we will only be shining the spotlight on YouTube and Pinterest.
ProQuest is the go to academic database for K-12 to Academic Researchers. As a database it is highly reliable, providing thorough tutorials and links to assist you in your first interactions with their site you can access this wealth of information here. Aside from this ProQuest is a exceedingly valuable and relevant database that provides an excellent source of information/ links and articles. By this stage of my inquiry, I had spent a bit of time on A+/ Google and Google Scholar. So am launching straight into my expert searches and their effectiveness in illuminating my learning path.
“Chance furnished me what I need, I am like a man who stumbles along; my foot strikes something. I bend over, and it is exactly what I need” (Joyce. J, (1922), Ulysses)Taking my cue from Joyce,it wasn’t chance that led me to my most effective search results, it was skill and expertise. Expertise that we will be outlining within this and the following posts, exploring the most effective means of finding answers to my inquiry. With this in mind, I started small with my search string in Proquest and incrementally increased the complexity of the string to ultimately find the majority of the texts that will be explored within the curation post. Frustratingly, I discovered that still the majority of the results were not linking with my subjects (film, drama, visual art or media arts) or The Arts in general. This was despite my progression with my search strings and my planning.
When exploring the internet, searching for anything, Google is the go to search engine. So frequent and pervasive is this use, that now “Google” has become a verb in everyday language. Everyone has used Google at one point in their daily habits, some of us more than others. However, many users are not experts and are only reaping half of the rewards that Google has to offer. Throughout this post we will be exploring what is considered expert level searching. By deconstructing the concepts and writing formulaic search strings, expert searchers are able to delve into a wealth of information that the non expert can only dream of. I hear you asking “what does expert searching look like?” Followed by “how does one write a correct search equation?” Well my friends, I am here to set your mind at ease. First though, Google and its uses.
A+ Educationis an Australian database, as such many of the results for this particular search into Inquiry Learning and Arts Cycles will pertain to the Australian Curriculum. A+Education, as with all of the search engines, is much more successful when logged in with your institution. A+ Education, like Google and Proquest offer the user an option to use an advanced search. The Advanced search guides your search and then turns your phrases into a search string using the correct operators. However, for the purpose of this task, that is cheating. Informit, who are the provider of A+ Education Database, provide a number of highly accessible documents and are able to hold the hand of any less confident searchers who come across their database.
Please Note: This initial post was still full of a number of errors, if you want to see how easy it is to go wrong with “Expert Searching” then this is the post for you. It is detailed and very exploratory. If, on the other hand, you are looking for an expert searching post, then the posts above this will be more to your needs.
If I am honest with myself and you, these series of posts have been rather daunting for me. Although I enjoy writing immensely, I have never been very good at journaling, or writing on a regular basis regarding a certain topic. Instead, I seem to dive in and do it in one go, so as you can imagine, being put on the spot to write an exploratory journal is something that has my stomach in a bit of a whirl. Nevertheless, this sense of nervousness need not daunt me, it merely means I have more to explore. The following is an outline of my discoveries within my first wanders or journeys or forages into the realm of Inquiry Learning using Google and Google Scholar. In the previous post I outlined my intention to link this exploration and inquiry to the mindset of the Wanderers Society, approaching the task with an open mind and eager to see what information is hidden directly in front of me hiding behind some clever search strings. I urge you to grab a cuppa and get comfortable, because this will not be a short post. I do like to go on a bit sometimes.
When I realised last semester that I was studying Inquiry Learning in semester 2, I (being typically me) jumped in and tried to find as much information as I could to get my head around the topic. I then realised I should have been documenting every step of my searches to illustrate the progression of expert searching and associated concepts. It wasn’t the end of the world however, my search strings had been rudimentary at best, with only marginal yields and very little of value. That is not to say that it was all useless, but the majority of the information was of little help to me.
Before now I have had what I would consider surprisingly little interaction with Inquiry Based Learning within the classroom. Being an arts teacher, inquiry learning is not a teaching or learning style that has been presented with much emphasis. Despite the fact that arts based education and Inquiry Based Learning bear remarkable similarities. I honestly do not know why it has been thus neglected, especially when I communicate with the Humanities department who have been basing their classroom practice on IBL for a number of years. My current role within the classroom is the schools Media and Film and Television teacher and subject coordinator. However, I am also a senior teacher of: Drama, Visual Art, Photography and English. Essentially, I love the arts, literature, education and learning (yes they are different). From my first foray into the nature of IBL, I initially discovered that it is highly relevant and would be incredibly beneficial within an arts classroom, so why haven’t we been using it? Or, more importantly, why haven’t we been aligning our arts based education with IBL from the inception of the arts curriculum?
Why at the very least is it not integrated into drama, visual art, music dance or media? This first burning question in mind I launched into my exploration of Inquiry Learning from a pedagogical and curriculum design perspective. I am determined and have made it my mission this semester to integrate the methods more intrinsically into my classroom practice, particularly within the context of Film, Media and Drama.
When I first touched on this unit, I was eager to apply the methods of IBL to my own Inquiry based practice and develop my own research cycle where I explored the Wander Society. The wander society expounds the idea that all of our consumer driven malaise can be thwarted with the regular act of wandering, questioning, exploring and documenting our findings. I was then gently nudged into the right direction by Mandy Lupton, her assuring me that I was completely off track. We were in fact inquiring about the process itself and deconstructing the methodology in the context of the curriculum. Slightly deflated, and even more overwhelmed, I went back to my drawing board and kept reading. In the end, I found that Whitman was on to something. Solvitur Ambulando, or all is solved by wandering,
I realised eventually, through more exploration on the topic of Inquiry Based Learning. That the Wander Society could still guide my explorations and learning about the methods and the cycle of learning. This is what I have postulated so far, the act of wandering, as I understand it, is the physical manifestation of Inquiry Based Learning. IBL separates itself from the more traditional means of TWS; through a more focused exploration of the topics of information, using a specific methodology or process known as a cycle. With IBL we are searching and becoming information literate from our chairs and our minds, within TWS we are exploring with our feet, bodies and minds. Within both frameworks, there are a set of specific rules to guide our research, it is these frameworks that we will use to guide the following blog and exploration into the world of Inquiry Based Learning within arts education. When I did eventually get my head around the cycle in its basic form. It was through a social media search on Pinterest , I’m a very visual person. With this first search I came across a number of highly informative and helpful infographics, articles and images. Since then I have been collecting and sorting as much relevant information and images/ templates that I could get my hands on.
My first wander or exploration into the world of Inquiry Based Learning on Google threatened to overwhelm me, most of the information was in relation to science/ math or history, I struggled to find the relevance to my practice beyond my future role within the library. Even with (what I thought was) a fairly comprehensive grasp of search tools; every link and the recommended readings appeared to point towards other Key Learning Areas, and not my own. To this date I have found very few documents, one or two that provided examples of and a structure for Inquiry Based Learning implementation within the arts. It would appear that I had identified a large, if not massive gap in the resource development. A gap that admittedly intrigued me, why was there still so little information to be found that encompassed the arts? The style of Inquiry Based Learning is something that all arts subjects could benefit from aligning more with. Particularly during the formation/ planning and research phase that guides every project. I did realise that the process has been utilised by a number of Arts teachers within the research or planning phase of the units. With a push from the department behind the explicit teaching cycle. The nitty gritty phases of the IBL cycle have been neglected and certainly are not purposefully implemented with much awareness, minimising their overall effectiveness.
This initial journey of my own inquiry into the process and cycle of Inquiry Based Learning, has left me with a number of questions to guide the next chapter of my search. First, as I already mentioned, why is there such a gap within the arts and Inquiry Based Learning? Secondly, where can I really implement the cycle into my own classroom practice and how can I do so within all of the KLA’s I teach? Thirdly, how can I work to make my questions an artform by the end of the semester? This first week will see me collating what I have already researched into my searching posts, as well as trying to answer the question of what approach I intend to take with the upcoming unit. What I do already know is that I have raced ahead with my research a bit at the beginning, and now have to curate, refine and abstract the documents that I have already found valuable. I must also document and refine my burgeoning expert search processes with a more critical and aware eye, ever using my Wanderers mindset.
1. Why isn’t IBL integrated with the arts more?
2. Why at the very least is it not integrated into drama, visual art, music dance or media?
3. Is Inquiry Based Learning the same as Creative Based Inquiry?
