The Pacific School for Innovation and Inquiry (PSII) is a high school on unceded lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) territories in downtown Victoria dedicated to learning through inquiry. In a similar way to High Tech High, subjects are integrated and the B.C. standard curriculum is “uncovered” by uniquely combining different subject areas across the curriculum. What’s neat about PSII, is that learning is highly personalized. Learners guide the inquiry based on their own interests, and teachers support them in this journey. There are no grade groupings, and students are grouped dynamically based on shared interests or similarities in projects or differences, depending on what makes the most sense in each context. Learners are encouraged to engage with the community in “real” projects that contribute in some way to their community and wider society. It all sounds pretty fantastic, but how does it work in practice? How do students come up with inquiry topics? How do teachers best support this inquiry? Is there any guiding structure that inquiry at PSII follows? These are the questions that this blog post will explore.
A Guide for Inquiry
So, how does one start an inquiry project? And where does it go from there? PSII follows a five-step model of inquiry. These five steps are as follows:
- Starting: What are my initial questions? What types of questions can I ask?
- Deepening: How can I answer these questions? What else do I need to know?
- Refining: Can I improve my questions from step 1? Do I have any new questions?
- Planning: How can I address these questions in creative ways? What are the best modes to address these questions? What will I need to answer these questions? How long will each of these questions take to answer?
- Learning: Am I achieving what I set out to do in my planning stage? What is going well? What could be improved upon?
These five steps are built into a standard framework that learners at PSII are able to follow. An example of this framework put into action is animated in the video below.
Applying this framework to my own inquiry
For my free inquiry project, I am exploring urban environmental education by engaging in backyard adventures. These are adventures that are local to where I live, within a radius limited by my own abilities. Through this effort, I’m hoping to explore my own environmental education, learn a bit more about the place I live, and make connections to how I may apply similar principles in the classroom (and outside of it). To familiarize myself with the PSII framework and as an example of how it may be applied to an inquiry project, I’ve laid out the five steps in the table below. I may come back to this throughout my project to modify and refine it as I learn more.
| Starting | – What is urban environmental education? – What are backyard adventures? – How can I bring adventure into the classroom? |
| Deepening | Environmental education at it’s core is an opportunity for people to learn about their environment. It involves learning skills, making observations, and cultivating values and literacy related to the environment. Environmental education is intimately tied to place, and an important part of it is understanding your relationship to place. This is where backyard adventures come in. Since they are hyper-local, these kind of adventures allow you to learn more about the place you live by travelling (relatively) slowly through it. Another key part of environmental education is action. By learning about their environment at a local level, people can also develop the skills necessary to tackle global challenges. |
| Refining | – How is environment education best applied in urban areas? – How can we cultivate a sense of place in the city? – How can we adventurify our classrooms? – How can we bridge the gap between adventure and action? |
| Planning | My plan is to engage in a backyard adventure once per week during the fall term. These adventures do not have to cover large distances or be super time-consuming, they just have to be undertaken in the spirit of adventure. For me, this involves being curious, challenging myself, embracing a bit of wackiness, and having fun. Importantly, they also have to be completely under my own steam, which with limited time between classes and other life commitments, puts limitations on what I can do (e.g. as fun as it would be, I probably will not be paddling to school). I will write weekly reflections about my adventures, what I learn, and how I think I could apply this to my future teaching practice. Some ideas I have for backyard adventures: -> A running tour of the Signs of lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) -> Following my drinking water from source to sink on my bike -> Running the length of the Bowker Creek Watershed -> Acquainting myself with my literal backyard -> Running a mile-an-hour long run |
| Learning | In progress… |
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.