Cultivating Inquiry Driven Learners

Throughout, Cultivating Inquiry-Driven Learners challenges stakeholders from across higher learning—faculty, students, staff, administrators, and policymakers—to reflect on the purpose of college, embrace innovation, and ensure that students are educated to thrive in and contribute to our constantly changing world.

Want to make learning more meaningful in your classroom? Looking to better prepare your students for the world of tomorrow? Keen to help learners create authentic connections to the world around them? Dive into Inquiry beautifully marries the voice and choice of inquiry with the structure and support required to optimise learning for students and get the results educators desire. With Dive into Inquiry you'll gain an understanding of how to best support your learners as they shift from a traditional learning model into the inquiry classroom where student agency is fostered and celebrated each and every day. This book strikes a perfect balance of meaningful pedagogy, touching narrative, helpful processes, original student examples, and rich how-to lesson plans all to get you going on bringing inquiry into your classroom. After reading this book educators will feel equipped to design their own inquiry units in a scaffolded manner that promote a gradual shift of control of learning from the teacher to the learner. Exploring student passions, curiosities, and interests and having these shape essential questions, units of study, and performance tasks are all covered in this powerful book. Learn to keep track of the many inquiry topics in your classroom and have students take ownership over their learning like never before! Trevor MacKenzie provides readers with a strong understanding of the Types of Student Inquiry and proposes a framework that best prepares both educators and learners for sharing the unpacking of curriculum in the classroom as they work together towards co-constructing a strong Free Inquiry unit. Helpful illustrations for in-class use, examples of essential questions from a variety of disciplines, practical goals for making progress in adopting inquiry into your practice, and powerful student learning on display throughout, Dive into Inquiry will energize, inspire, and transform your classroom!

Curiosity comes from within—we just have to know how to unleash it. We learn by engaging and exploring, asking questions and testing out answers. Yet our classrooms are not always places where such curiosity is encouraged and supported. Cultivating Curiosity in K–12 Classrooms describes how teachers can create a structured, student-centered environment that allows for openness and surprise, where inquiry guides authentic learning. Award-winning educator Wendy L. Ostroff shows how to foster student curiosity through exploration, novelty, and play; questioning and critical thinking; and experimenting and problem solving. With techniques to try, scaffolding advice, and relevant research from neuroscience and psychology, this book will help teachers harness the powerful drive in all learners—the drive to know, understand, and experience the world in a meaningful way.

Harness the Power of Curiosity to Foster Students' Love for Learning From their youngest years, our children are innately curious. Cultivate an inquiry mindset both as a teacher and in your students! Adopt an inquiry approach that results in the most authentic and inspiring learning you've ever experienced!

How can colleges and universities engage students in ways that prepare them to solve problems in our rapidly changing world? Most American colleges and universities assimilate students into highly competitive undergraduate experiences. By placing achievement for personal and material gain as the bedrock of a college education, these institutions fail to educate students to become collaborative learners: people who are committed and prepared to join with others in developing promising solutions to problems that they share with others. Drawing on a three-year study of student persistence and learning at Minority-Serving Institutions, Clifton Conrad and Todd Lundberg argue that student success in college should be redefined by focusing on the importance of collaborative learning over individual achievement. Engaging students in shared, real-world problem-solving, Conrad and Lundberg assert, will encourage them to embrace interdependence and to value and draw on diverse perspectives. Learning with Others presents a set of core practices to empower students to enter, nourish, and sustain collaborative learning and outlines how to blend the roles and responsibilities of faculty, staff, and students; how to adopt best practices for receiving and giving feedback on problem-solving; and how to anchor a curriculum in shared problem-solving. Bringing together lessons learned from more than 300 interviews, along with notes from 14 campus visits, 3 national convenings, and examples from across our nation's colleges and universities, Conrad and Lundberg explore ways in which successful antiracist networks of problem-solvers are learning to contribute to the flourishing of their communities on campus and far beyond. Outlining strategies for identifying and dismantling barriers to participation, Learning with Others will pique interest among faculty, students, and administrators in higher education and a wide range of external stakeholders—from families and communities to policymakers and funders.

This study explored how facilitators of adventure-based education described the role of their facilitation experience on their learning and development. Gaps in the literature surrounding student involvement and engagement (i.e. how student involvement and engagement affect students, and how they describe it), as well as adventure-based education (does facilitating adventure-based activities promote learning development?), informed this research. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach was utilized to develop a shared understanding between researcher and participant of the experiences of 10 participant facilitators of adventure-based education. Cultivating inquiry-driven learners (Conrad & Dunek, 2012), a theory on learning development for college students, provided a scaffold for the inquiry and subsequent analysis of the data, including 30 interviews, researcher-created documents, and hours of participant observation and memos. Findings indicated a transformative experience for facilitators came through facilitating adventure-based education workshops. Additional findings point to purposeful structure and developmental advances created by the experience. This study contributes to the field theoretically, methodologically, and in practice.

Promote positive change and elevate teacher practice with this actionable framework for school-based innovation Inquiry-Driven Innovation: A Practical Guide to Supporting School-Based Change addresses a pressing need for intentional and sustained innovation in education. It is both a practical guide for supporting school-based change and a handbook for effective professional development that empowers and re-energizes practitioners. Throughout this book, educators will find a wealth of examples from different school contexts and a rich array of research-based pedagogical tools and resources. In recent years, educational innovation and school redesign have been the focus for many school boards and departments of education. However, current school-based innovation methods typically lack flexibility and intentionality. Inquiry-Driven Innovation offers an approach to innovation that recognizes local contexts, promotes listening across stakeholder groups, and suggests structures for ongoing and purpose-driven work. Discover an actionable framework for school-based innovation Learn from real-world case studies of educators developing innovation strategies in a variety of school contexts Explore an Innovation Toolkit filled with research-based pedagogical tools and resources for educators In this book, you'll learn the five essential qualities of Inquiry-Driven Innovation: an ongoing process that empowers individuals and communities to pursue positive change that is both relevant and responsive to their contexts. Inquiry-Driven Innovation is purposeful and intentional; attentive to multiple perspectives; adapted to context; sustained and iterative; and structured and supported. Read this book to learn how you can implement evidence-based innovation strategies in your own community.

Finally, an easy way to create a real change in your classroom! Do you want to drive change in education but feel restricted by the system? Do you want to create an innovative culture in your classroom? You've entered this profession because you have a passion for teaching young people. You want to shape the minds of the young generation and develop our next leaders and change-makers. It's your calling! But then you got into the system and discovered many hurdles in your way to fulfilling your calling. It frustrates you. You feel that you can't become the teacher you want to be. But what if there was an easy way to turn your classroom into an entrepreneurial environment? What if there are proven strategies that you could implement with your students tomorrow? Think Unique combines the creative thinking and innovation process that drive start-ups and organisations success with the principles of Project-Based Learning. By adopting this approach, you bring the methodologies used by the best innovators and thought leaders of our time to your classroom. It is a practical, easy to follow how-to book that will enable you to create an innovation-led environment in your classroom. Think Unique promotes entrepreneurship education and lead students to become confident and creative leaders. With this book, you will develop your students 21st-century skills, provide them with a voice and open their world to infinite possibilities! Whether you are new to project-based learning or want to enhance your teaching capabilities, Think Unique is the book for you. Ortal Green is a thought leader who has implemented Design Thinking methodologies in primary schools. Her book breaks down the main principles of project-based learning and explains the why, the what, and the how behind this approach using real-life classroom examples. This innovative framework can be used for any subject, including STEM, Math & Literacy. Experts rave about Think Unique: "In such a dramatically changing world, our children will need to be creators and problem-solvers. Ortal Green has responded beautifully to this need with a practical and inspiring exploration of Project-Based Learning. This is the book for every teacher who cares about the future." Tony Ryan, International Best-Selling Author, learning futurist and Education consultant. "It's not just shifted my students' thinking; it shifted my thinking as well and the way I look to design project-based inquiry experiences in the future. I am really excited by the change that it had in such a small space in time with our students already." Hayden Callahan, project-based inquiry leader Start your Think Unique journey today!

This book, edited by experienced scholars in the field, brings together a diverse array of educators to showcase lessons, activities, and instructional strategies that advance inquiry-oriented global learning. Directly aligned to the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standard, this work highlights ways in which global learning can seamlessly be interwoven into the disciplines of history, economics, geography, civics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Recently adopted by the National Council for the Social Studies, the nation’s largest professional organization of history and social studies teachers, the C3 Framework prioritizes inquiry-oriented learning experiences across the social studies disciplines in order to advance critical thinking, problem solving, and participatory skills for engaged citizenship.