Inquiry — As, Beyond, Of, With, Across , & Through —For Teachers, Learners, & Inquirers

by Jeff Bloom

This article was published previously in Medium (2022).

In a previous article, I discussed "teaching about" versus "teaching as," along with other prepositional modifiers. In this article, I want to apply “as” and the other prepositional modifiers to a focus on inquiry. However, before we begin this exploration of how inquiry fits into teaching and learning, I want to step back and provide some context and clarification. In another article about words and their meanings, I discussed how common it is for people to have very different understandings of any given word. And, “inquiry” is another common exampleof that type of word.

“Inquiry” is generally associated with science, since it is one of the defining features of how science is done. However, inquiry occurs in many different contexts, which we will examine later in this article. This association between inquiry and science immediately generates all sorts of ideas, emotional reactions, and so forth, which, of course, lead to multiple meanings depending upon one’s own experiences, assumptions about science, and so forth. When we think of science and inquiry, we usually connect both of these to “the scientific method,” which, by the way, does not exist in the real world of science. The standardized version of the scientific method most of us learned in school is an idealized version of how science works, which is more wishful thinking than any real description of what actually takes place. I’m sure lots of scientists’ hackles are being raised, if they read this, but if they actually look at how they do their work and how others do their work, they will find that there are about as many “methods” as there are scientists. And, each field of science — geology, biology, microbiology, bio-physics, physics, chemistry, quantum physics and quantum chemistry, astronomy, climate science, ecology, etc. — have different approaches to inquiry. An astronomer cannot do experiments. Physics and chemistry have approaches that range from experimental to purely mathematical. No one method or approach will address the contexts of all fields in the natural sciences.

However, there are some general features that all fields of science, including the social sciences, have in common. These features center around the notion of rigor, of maintaining attitudes and approaches that will yield the most accurate findings. Other scientists should be able to repeat the studies and get the same results. There should be ample evidence to support one’s claims. And, this evidence should be of high quality. Everything else that a particular researcher does is suited to the individual’s own personality and background, to the specific topics or issues being investigated, and to the specific field of science.

I was student of and a lab assistant for an ornithologist in the early 1970’s. At the time, he was interested in how bird flocks worked. Much of his work was observational, which included the filming of birds in flocks. He and another graduate student came up with the idea that they may get better films of flocks, if they attached cameras to a remote controlled plane. By the way, this story took place before video equipment was small enough to put on a model airplane, even a plane the size that they built and used, which must have had a wingspan of 6 to 8 feet. After much effort and numerous escapades, they finally gave up this effort because they found that they really had no idea where their plane was in relation to the flocks. They got lots of film of the sky, clouds, and ground, but never any birds. This biologist also developed sets of technologically facilitated observations, including a wind tunnel in which birds could fly while measuring their flight speeds and reaction times to certain stimuli. But, one of the major focuses for his inquiry arose out of a kind of fantasy brainstorming with his group of graduate students. During out weekly lunch meetings in the lab, many conversations turned into wide-open presentations of ideas about flocks. I can’t remember the exact sequence, but, at one point, the conversation started swirling around the idea of ESP in birds. Maybe the birds’ nervous systems acted as some sort of transmitter of signals between the birds? We knew there was no flock “leader,” and this version of ESP could explain how flocks behaved almost in unison and without any collisions. Years later, this ornithologist dumped this idea because of insufficient evidence, but found that he could program one of the early personal computers to replicate all of the observed flocking behaviors. Flocks were a manifestation of a complex living system, which centered around birds’ avoidance and attraction behaviors, as well as on individual idiosyncratic decisions to leave the flock or veer off on a different path. Mathematically, the model worked. However, the path which this inquiry took was not linear or not particularly focused on an expected outcome or approach to inquiry.

Some inquiries are very much like that of the ornithologist described above. This ornithologist also developed other inquiries with narrower scopes of vision of the subject and were designed in a series of highly structured experiments and observations.[1]

Inquiry comes in many forms. Good inquiry is well-suited for a particular topic of investigation. In any sort of “formal” inquiry, such as a particular person wanting to publish or in some way communicate their findings. These inquirers keep detailed records about the settings, the contexts, etc.; the methods and approaches that have been used; and detailed descriptions of the focus of inquiry, including any kind of data.

But, there are more informal inquiries in which we, and especially children, engage. Such inquiry can be flawed and not rigorous, but they are still a form of inquiry. A adults, we can strive to catch and eliminate flaws and be more rigorous in our approaches. With children, we can, in the spirit of solving-puzzles, engage them in critiquing there own approaches to inquiry and making sense of things. Can they find problems or alternative explanations?

When my younger son was about 4 years old, we were driving home from his preschool one partly cloudy day. He was always asking questions, like all 4-year olds, but this time he asked a question about clouds. I don’t remember the actual question, but he immediately followed the question with an explanation. I remember that the explanation was absolutely great, but absolutely wrong. I had to exert a great deal of effort to keep from breaking into hysterical laughter. I regained my composure and asked him if he could come up with any alternative explanations. There was dead silence, which lasted block after block for a kilometer (we were living in Canada, where measurement systems are what they should be). I thought I just crushed his curiosity and was beginning to feel badly, when he very quickly went through three or four alternative explanations. A couple of these were pretty close to our current understandings cloud formation. I then asked him which explanation he liked best, which was not the one he originally described. At this point, we arrived home and didn’t have a chance to go further.

The idea in this story about generating explanations sets the basic grounding for how we
can engage children, and ourselves, in more authentic and rigorous approaches to inquiry. Rather than just telling children the “right” answer or telling them what to do, we can encourage them to come up with answers and to develop ways of inquiring further. And, then as the inquiry proceeds in the way a child has designed, we as parents or teachers can ask further questions, such as the following. Did you find out what you expected to find or were the results surprising? Do you think your methods or approaches affected your data? Can you think of different methods that may confirm what you found? The wording of these questions can differ in ways to make them appropriate to children’s vocabulary and language abilities, but these types of probing and critical questions are important foundations for how to think about all kinds of problems, issues, and inquiries. Try to avoid being the authority and take on the role of a co-inquirer. With children, making mistakes and coming up with “officially wrong” explanations are important to the process. “Correct” answers don’t really matter. What really matters is developing the patterns of thinking, questioning, and conducting inquiries. Both of my sons incorporate these patterns into most everything they do as adults. It now just comes automatically.

Before we get into the ABOWAT (As—Beyond—Of—With—Across—Through) aspects of inquiry, I just want to briefly describe other contexts of inquiry. As I mentioned in my first Medium article about ABOWAT (https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/teaching-about-vs-teaching-as-more-immersive teaching-27d1c35a3e68), inquiry also is integral to non-science contexts. The arts, literature, and poetry are often seen as just expressions of someone’s ideas or perceptions of things. But, each of these contexts involves the artists’, poets’, or novelists’ inquiries into some aspect of our world. They look for patterns and find ways to juxtapose and explore ways in which these patterns work and the implications these patterns have on other contexts.

Such inquiries look at somewhat different questions than science and often involve a focus on our emotional and aesthetic reactions, as well as the cognitive dissonance that may arise from the juxtaposition of contexts, assumptions, and so forth. At the same time, artistic and literary explorations often explore the implications of the knowledge claims in the natural and social sciences. They also expose the possible effects of various technologies. The whole array of inquiry across disciplines is critical to our understandings of the world. But, he tendency of society as a whole is to diminish the importance of artistic and literary inquiries, while valuing only the scientific and technological. However, as we have been seeing over the past couple of decades, even scientific inquiry is being dismissed as irrelevant and just made up to suit the needs of some particular group. This particular degradation of science issue is a whole other article or book and will not be addressed any further in this article. What we do need to do is start engaging in a transcontextual approach to inquiry, where the artistic, literary, and scientific are merged in ways that yield a richer understanding of the world in which we live.

Inquiry As—Beyond—Of—With—Across—Through

In the context of schooling, inquiry almost always centers around having students follow predetermined steps to doing experiments and other types of investigations. Students never engage in the entire process of inquiry — from initial curiosity and questions to designing and engaging in the investigation to analyzing and communicating one’s findings. In the typical school approach, there is no ownership of the questions and the inquiry. And, what is learned is how to follow directions, not how to actually do inquiry.

In the following descriptions of Inquiry ABOWAT, keep in mind that these six perspectives of or approaches to inquiry are not necessarily separate and distinctive. They all contribute to different aspects of inquiry. They merge and intertwine as is appropriate.

So, Inquiry As is about doing inquiry as a real inquirer, where one individual or a group “own” the inquiry. It is the person’s or group’s curiosity, questions, design, analyses, and findings. The inquiry is not the teacher’s or the parents’ or some textbook writer’s inquiry.

Inquiry Beyond can be viewed as moving towards transcontextual inquiry that goes beyond the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Many scientific discoveries and advances have resulted in technologies or other applications that have ended up having somewhat, if not drastic, ill-effects. Climate change is a obvious example of how we have created huge issues without paying attention to transcontextual perspectives on inquiry, which in this case, could have benefited from philosophical inquiry, sociological and anthropological inquiry, poetic inquiry, literary inquiry, and artistic inquiry.

Inquiry Of can take on the multiple features of the contexts into which the inquiry is being done. Take, for instance, a group of children who want to create a community garden. They may need to investigate which types of plants can grow in the location they want to turn into a garden, along with an extensive investigation of types of fertilizers, of frequency and amounts of water, of how much sunlight or shade is needed, and so forth. So, this investigation is more botanical in nature, which requires some well-designed experiments characteristic of botany research. They also need to investigate the local ecology, whether that is an urban ecosystem or a rural ecosystem. Are there potential issues with polluted run-off affecting the garden location or water table? Will the garden adversely affect the local ecosystem or will the local ecosystem adversely affect the garden? For these questions, they are engaging in the inquiry of ecology. Then, there are the investigations of the social sciences, which need to explore the needs of the community, as well as the attitudes and willingness to help with the garden. And, there are poetic, literary, and artistic aspects of inquiry that could explore how the garden resonates with the community, reflects the qualities and characteristics of everyone in the community, and so forth.

Inquiry With not only refers to the mutual inquiry among the group, but also with the community. In addition, as mentioned in my introduction to ABOWAT article, inquiry "with" involves conducting investigations “with passion, with heart, with beauty, with skepticism, with openness, with empathy, with wisdom, with vision, with vulnerability, and so forth.”

Inquiry Across is another way of viewing the entire process as one that takes on multiple perspectives and is transcontextual. In addition to the approaches to inquiry discussed previously, there may need to be a political and legal dimension that may only become evident after the garden is functioning. Other perspectives may look at how the garden affects crime, individual family well-being, social interactions and dynamics, and so forth. If you haven’t noticed, very little of this sort of transcontextual research takes place anywhere.

Inquiry Through involves actually conducting research transcontextually. So, for the community garden example, inquiry through involves combining investigations within the following contexts: botany, ecology, politics, sociology, psychology, arts, poetry, literature, and other appropriate contexts. Truly transcontextual approaches incorporate a variety of different lenses through which understandings are developed and not just understandings of the specific focus, but also of the contextual complexity in which the

focal phenomenon is embedded. Such approaches allow us to “see” the matrix of interdependencies[2] that need to be addressed as we seek multiple approaches to problems, which can range from community gardens to climate change.

An ABOWAT approach to inquiry is essential to our attempts to address the entire range of problems and issues we face now and are likely to face in the future. It also is essential to curiosity-based inquiry, where we seek to understand phenomena in more detail. In such cases, the “details” are not enough. We need to investigate the details of a particular phenomenon along with investigations of all of the contextual interdependencies.

We can start this process of ABOWAT inquiry with young children, who already think transcontextually[3], by modeling and supporting their inquiries of whatever interests them. Such thinking and inquiry needs to be a part of the entire range of schooling from pre-K through university and beyond.

As adults, we need to start “playing around” with such approaches to thinking and inquiry in our daily lives. We no longer can bungle our way into the future. Most of the big issues we face are a result of such bungling, such as global warming, famine, resource depletion, political unrest, ecosystem collapse, increasing extinction rates, etc. We now have to move forward with a much broader and more critical view of what we do. And, we need to keep in mind that all complex systemic problems (i.e., all problems involving living and social systems)

To move forward into our uncertain futures, we should always keep the interdependencies in focus.

NOTES:

[1] Experiments are really just a type of observation. They focus on observing, describing, and/or measuring the resulting action that occurs after some “thing” has been changed in the context. However, in this paper, “Experiment” refers to the defined approach to manipulation some context, while “Observation” refers to all other ways of observing.

[2] • Bateson, G. (1979/2002) • Bateson, M. C. (2004) • Bateson, N. (2016)

[3] • Bloom, J. (2021) • Bloom, J. W. (1990) • Bloom, J. (1992) • Malaguzzi, L. (2016)

References

Bateson, G. (1979/2002). Mind and nature:A necessary unity. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Bateson, M. C. (2004). Willing to learn: Passages of personal discovery. Hanover, NH: Steerforth.

Bateson, N. (2016). Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing Through Other Patterns. Axminster, UK: Triarchy Press.

Bloom, J. (2021/2024). On Learning — Part II: Knowledge and Epistemology. **NOTE: This article was posted on a previous website, but will be posted here on Passionate Meanderings in the near future.

Bloom, J. W. (1990). Contexts of meaning: Young children’s understanding of biological phenomena. International Journal of Science Education, 12(5), 549–561.

Bloom, J. (1992). The development of scientific knowledge in elementary school children: A context of meaning perspective. Science Education, 76(4), 399–413.

Malaguzzi, L. (2016). Loris Malaguzzi and the schools of Reggio Emilia: A selection of his writings and speeches, 1945-1993 (P. Cagliari, M. Catagnetti, C. Giudici, C. Rinaldi, V. Vecchi, & P. Moss, Eds.). New York: Routledge.

© 2022/2024 by Jeffrey W Bloom