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August 28, 2024 8:52 am

Taking a Leap of Faith Toward Inquiry

Explore how taking bold steps toward inquiry-based learning can ignite curiosity and deepen student engagement. This blog post delves into the power of inquiry to transform traditional classrooms into dynamic spaces of discovery, fostering critical thinking and lifelong learning skills.

In the iconic movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy is in search of the Holy Grail and must complete three tasks in order to save his father and secure the ever-elusive cup. My favorite scene is when he must take a leap of faith across a deep, dark canyon to reach a doorway on the other side of the chasm. Passage seems dangerously impossible.  

He consults his guidebook for directions, and he reads, “Only in the leap from the lion’s head will he prove his worth.” Indy then takes a breath, raises his left foot, and takes a brave step into the unknown. Instantly, a camouflaged bridge appears, and he is able to cross the void and retrieve the Holy Grail.   

Social studies teacher reading from text to class

Teaching with inquiry can feel like this scene — especially in the back-to-school months of August and September. Social studies teachers look out into the eyes of a new group of students petrified that the inquiry bridge might not appear.  

After all, inquiry is filled with unknowns. Teachers may have a solid inquiry curriculum stocked with compelling questions, sources, and tasks, but that is no guarantee that students will care about or engage with the material. And even if they do, there can be a palpable fear of losing control — what might students say in response to a question? Could the interpretation of a source land the teacher in an uncomfortable place? What if students get heated or offended by another student’s argument? 

And then, if teachers are able to pass the first two “tests” of inquiry-based curriculum and instruction, there is always the leap of faith required to help students take informed action and participate civically. Inquiry teaching is fraught with instructional challenges, and fear can often get the better of us. 

On the other hand, committed inquiry teachers loudly proclaim, “Inquiry is totally worth it!” They liken inquiry-based teaching to a holy grail of social studies where they reap exponential rewards. In writing this blog post, I polled some of my closest teaching colleagues and asked them to summarize the benefits of inquiry instruction, which I have coded and summarized below. 

Teacher overlooking device with students

Teaching with inquiry provides more:

  • Curricular coherence: Inquiry truly binds content, historical thinking and practices, and critical thinking/writing into one pedagogy. 
  • Student agency: Students have autonomy in learning (not in a silly choice board sort of way but in a “my teacher trusts my judgment and conclusions” sort of way). 
  • Deeper learning: We talk about critical thinking a lot, but inquiry is that process, and it pays off for students outside of the social studies classroom. 
  • Interdependence: Even more so than other methods of teaching, since inquiry is a “process,” it forces students to collaborate in meaningful ways — not “what is the correct answer?” but in a “well, what about this idea?” sort of way. 
  • The power of questioning: How questions are phrased expands how content can be approached. Inquiry also welcomes the idea that questions can be changed and challenged. Even asking a particular question can help students consider perspectives they hadn’t before. 
  • Opportunities to consider multiple perspectives: Invite meaningful classroom discussion where students can share and investigate multiple perspectives. 
  • Deliberation: Students have more opportunity to deliberate when considering the various perspectives, costs, benefits, problems, and solutions faced by humans past and present.  
  • Complexity: Inquiry gives students experience with the realistic messiness and complexity of human interaction. 
  • Curiosity: Learning through inquiry stokes a culture of curiosity, giving students agency to think, wonder, and question. 
  • Application/transference: Being expected to craft evidence-based claims regularly may transfer to students expecting the same of friends, family, and media. 
  • Community building: Engaging in inquiry builds trust and reciprocity between students, their peers, and the teacher.

This is inspiring for sure, but may not be enough to overcome fears even if it promises to transform us or our students. For example, I know the transformative benefits of daily exercise, yet I often opt for a comfy binge watch of my favorite tv show instead!   

What, then, can move a teacher to take that leap of faith toward inquiry? I would argue that we take a page from Indiana Jones by consulting a guidebook and afterward taking a first (often scary) step forward.   

One of the best sets of directions comes from John Dewey. In 1916 (that’s right — over 100 years ago!), Dewey provided this direction on teaching and learning: 

“Only by wrestling with the conditions of the problem first hand, seeking and finding [his or her] own way out, does [he or she] think.”  

That is, if we want students to know stuff, they need to do stuff. They need to wrestle with thorny human questions, and they need enough time, space, and support to make their own headway toward an answer.  

In the meantime, teachers need to step back and help students in this messy and unsteady process — not too much help, not too little help, but just the right amount. That’s the part that can feel like leaping from a lion’s head! Watching students intellectually struggle is really hard, and knowing when and how to help them is even harder. 

If inquiry feels like an impossible leap of faith, I recommend starting with a small step that revs your students’ curiosity engines.

Here are three ideas:

1. Take a traditional lesson and reframe it with a question

For example, take a lesson about Thomas Jefferson and frame it with the question, How should we remember Thomas Jefferson? 

Try posing that question at the end of a short lecture or after they have read a biography of him. Ask students to answer it in the form of a short epitaph that captures his complexity, contributions, and contradictions in American history. Then, notice what happens when you change from teaching about something to answering a question. 

Thomas Jefferson

2. Take time interrogating an interesting source  

Show students a source — a photograph, a map, a political cartoon — and ask them, “what do you make of this?” Then see what happens.

For example, I have used this image below featuring students protesting in Virginia in the 1960s. I find it irresistible because it immediately begets a series of questions:

  • Who are these women?
  • Why are they carrying signs?
  • Why do the signs say they have lost years of education?
  • When does this photograph look like it was taken?
  • If you had to write a caption for the photo, what would you need to know?
  • How were people impacted by massive resistance?

There is nothing like a juicy compelling source to get you off to the inquiry races!  

students protesting massive resistance in Virginia in the 1960s

Source: Neh.gov 

3. Take time to bring the past into the present 

For example, flip a lesson on ancient Egypt and focus on the current controversy over the repatriation of stolen artifacts.

Here are a few articles that feature these modern issues about preserving and owning the past:  

Students could engage in small group discussions on historical and archival preservation and how people have fought to own history. For homework or if they have in-class devices, students could find additional examples of stealing artifacts and repatriation (e.g., Jews during Holocaust, Native Americans in American history, Africans during the era of European imperialism) and the challenges of returning these precious items to their rightful owners.   

The Rosetta Stone

As a final note, take heart knowing that perfection can be the enemy of good. For new-to-inquiry teachers, don’t worry about being the perfect inquiry teacher, just try taking a small step like the ones described above and then pay attention to how the students, the classroom culture, and you begin to change. Next, keep taking more (maybe larger) steps. For you veteran inquiry teachers, leap onto that inquiry bridge and show us why we need to continue crossing it.

In the words of the Grail Knight, “You have chosen wisely.”   

Rear view of large group of students listening to their teacher

About the Author: Dr. Kathy Swan

Professor, University of Kentucky; C3 Framework Lead Author; Lead Consultant on Traverse

Kathy Swan is a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Kentucky. Kathy was awarded UKY’s Great Teacher Award in 2021 and has been a four-time recipient of the National Technology Leadership Award in Social Studies Education, innovating with inquiry-based curricula. Dr. Swan served as the project director and lead writer of the College, Career, and Civic Life Framework for Social Studies State Standards (2013), the national standards for social studies. She has co-written a number of best-selling books, including Inquiry-Based Practice in Social Studies Education: The Inquiry Design Model (2017), The Inquiry Design Model: Building Inquiries in Social Studies (2018), and Blueprinting an Inquiry-Based Curriculum: Planning with the Inquiry Design Model (2019).