The point of reflection is to recapture the experiences, mull them over critically in order to gain a new understanding and so improve future practice. This is all part of being lifelong learners. (SkillsTeamHullUniversity). Looking back at my MindLab experience I can honestly say "What a journey this has been". I have learnt so much about myself, my practice, my students and my future. So much has fallen into place, now. I wish someone would have told me at the beginning of my MindLab journey that I would come out thinking more about my teaching practise. The first few weeks I spent dreading the thought what I would have to come up with at the end of each session to put on the portal to show my learning. It was only through my assignments that I realised the wealth of information I was gaining.
Is that how our students feel?
I would say my journey started, dare I say, ten years ago. I was one of the teachers using the new catch phrase "preparing our students for the 21st century and for their jobs that don't yet exist". I blindly went where the future was taking us- into inquiry based learning where we, the teachers chose the inquiry topic, the process and the the all important question. We, the inquiry lead team, made an amazing model and we lead the teachers and students through this model. The only problem was we never seemed to get past the knowledge stage, we felt our students needed more front loading. I, and many other teachers, never got to the presenting and reflecting part of the model. A few years later we re- developed the model-put more information into it and relaunched it. Same result. A few years later we designed a new model, now much more simplified. It lives on as a token in our planning.
It was while attending the first 16 weeks of MindLab, where I was learning about 21st century skills, like collaboration, knowledge construction, communication and real world problem solving and innovation that I realised: I really didn't know very much about the 21st century learner. Then another revelation dawned on me while discussing Inquiry based learning models with a fellow MindLab colleague- that I actually didn't know as much about inquiry based learning as I thought I did. In fact I was missing a few important aspects- namely the 21st century skills needed for the inquiry to work and the fact that the actual inquiry should be student driven, based from the student's questions. This was not entirely new information, as somewhere in our model there was a student question part, but we just never got there or if we did the question was not deemed rich enough. Oh boy did I get it wrong. Another problem with our inquiry based learning was we only allocated time for it as a topic, not as an interdisciplinary unit across multiple curriculum areas.
Armed with this new understanding I would like to introduce real inquiry based learning, not with a model, as I feel we get too hung up in the steps or phases, but real inquiry based on a broad topic that students could enjoy investigating and really immerse all our curriculum areas in this topic. I have already discussed this concept with my syndicate and we will explore this further at our next planning day.
There are many other things I have learnt this year, but inquiry based learning when done right can really make a difference to the way my students learn and it will bring the enjoyment of learning back.
References
University of Hull SkillsTeamHullUni. (2014) Reflective writing. [video file]. Retrieved from
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