Thursday, June 16, 2011

Inquiry Approach vs. Coverage Approach

All too often we see a teacher standing in front of the classroom feeding information and facts to students.  As Mrs. J mentioned, this is what Friere called the “banking method”.  The teacher is the know-all and has the duty of filling the mind of the student, whereas the student’s job is to memorize. 

Do we not want our children to grow up to be independent thinkers who are curious about our world?  Do we not want children who have the skills to research the topics they are interested in?  Because so many teachers feel the pressure to teach to the test, inquiry-based learning is often-times put to the side.  As a two-time Boundless Readers grant award winner (http://www.boundlessreaders.org/), I was fortunate to be a member of a professional study group this past school year (2010-2011) as well as this upcoming school year (2011-2012).  The professional text that we studied and just recently finished is called Comprehension and Collaboration by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels. 

Inquiry circles need to be a part of the curriculum in every classroom.   As educators, we need to teach and model for our students our curiosity about different topics because it will eventually (and hopefully) carry over to them in their lives.  Children need to learn how to do accurate research and how to evaluate websites.  We need to prepare our students and teach them how to formulate “wonder” questions that they will eventually research and find answers to.  Unfortunately, this is seen as “not structured” by many people and is therefore the first type of teaching and learning to go when worries about test scores occur and teachers feel the pressure.  Fostering curious learners is not new in education.  This idea of constantly questioning comes from Socrates, a Greek philosopher, whose pedagogy remains talked-about today.  Socrates believed that right questions lead to clarity, understanding, and further inquiry.  He said that it is not a clarity that is given to you by others, but arrived at by your own questioning.  He said that you basically cannot have knowledge without knowing the right questions to ask.  So why are so many teachers continuously dumping information into their students’ minds?  Why do we still see students reading text and answering “right there” questions?  We need to embrace students’ natural curiosity by supporting inquiry learning in our classrooms.  Teachers need to stop the busywork and worksheets and instead give students opportunities to research interesting topics, synthesize the information, and eventually ask more questions so that knowledge and understanding are gained. 
Check out the chart—Inquiry Approach versus Coverage Approach:

Here’s something to try:  Don’t look ahead, just read this text until you feel you understand it well (from Comprehension and Collaboration book).
MS2 Phage Coat Protein—RNA Interaction
This system is being studied for three reasons: (1) it is an example of a sequence-specific RNA-protein interaction, (2) it participates in a well-behaved in vitro capsid assembly reaction, and (3) it is a good model system to study how protein finds a target on a large RNA molecule. Available are an X-ray crystal structure of the RNA-protein complex and an NMR structure of the free RNA hairpin target. Current efforts focus on understanding how the thermodynamic details of sequence-specific "recognition" is achieved. We have made mutations in all the amino acids believed to make contact with the RNA and are evaluating the affinity of the mutant proteins to the normal RNA target as well as to targets that have single atom changes in either the bases or the phosphodiester backbone. It is already clear that nearly all the contacts predicted by the co-crystal structure contribute to the total free energy of binding. Thus, unlike several protein-protein interfaces that have been analyzed in a similar way, there are no "hot spots" that dominate the affinity. However, we have several examples where affinity and specificity are defined by structural elements of the RNA in its free form.
                -Olke Uhlenbeck, Interdepartmental Biological Sciences, Northwestern University










Okay, now you need to take a comprehension test:
  1. How many reasons are there for studying this system?
  2. What is the nature of the in vito capsid assembly reaction?
  3. Current research focuses on what details of the sequence-specific recognition?
  4. How many “hot spots” dominate the affinity?
  5. In what form are there examples of RNA where affinity and specificity are defined by structural elements?

So, you probably got all 5 questions correct, right?  This is to show you how a teacher can “cover the material” but the students truly have no understanding or knowledge.   Need I say more? 
                Ms. S

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