Choosing to Learn: Review & Response to Authentic Learning

What happens when students choose to learn, rather than being instructed, or worse, forced to learn? Larissa Pahomov unpacks this question through a case study of the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in Authentic Learning in the Digital Age: Engaging Students Through Inquiry. SLA was purposefully designed from the ground up in 2005-2006 to be a place that students could ask meaningful questions and design artifacts of learning at the cusp of when emerging digital technologies became widely adopted within the educational sphere. The emphasis was not on the technology, but rather the holistic approach of how students acquire knowledge. Within this framework, the learning process actually becomes a means to itself. The why and how are more influential on student outcomes than the what of technology. The entire system is predicated upon the idea that “when students are liberated from the monotony of memorization they have time to learn the deeper frameworks and contexts that give facts and figures meaning.” When technology is intentionally paired with an inquiry-based mindset it gives constant access to resources and communities beneficial to the learning process. Access intertwined with agency in turn “means more time to actually practice and create instead of slowly tracking down basic information,” transforming the entire educational experience. 

In this shift away from the traditional model, teachers should no longer be thought of solely as the SME, but rather as the tour guide and cheerleader for students in their quest for knowledge. Rather than existing as the lone exhibitors and purveyors of knowledge, teachers within an inquiry-based educational model step back and allow the students to have agency on their learning journey, even allowing students to fail, because the vital aspect of agency is empowering students to make choices that have meaning. Failing is simply a step in the process, teaching students to overcome adversity by processing where they veered off course in their learning. A student understanding the why and how of where they went wrong accelerates their learning more than a journey with no missteps does. This act of processing is a critical aspect of raising up 21st century citizens in a digital world. The inquiry model elevates the student’s voice, empowered to make meaningful choices. These choices are especially poignant when conjoined with technological tools that enable a democratization of the student, as all voices are equal through digital platforms. Yet technology does automatically transform the classroom; it must be meaningfully integrated into an inquiry-based classroom to unlock the potential embedded within the tools. 

To teach students how to make choices, most critically the choice to learn, SLA was founded on the basis of five core values: inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation, and reflection. These values are all predicated on larger notions:

• Inquiry  – that authentic learning happens only when there is a legitimate desire to gain knowledge or skills
• Research – what matters is how well you can find what you need to know
• Collaboration – developing interpersonal skills is essential, and that working together with others more closely aligns with adult work life rather than the isolation based framework of education
• Presentation – knowing how to present yourself and your work appropriately and effectively
• Reflection – a critical time to transition and concrete the learning before the next growth cycle

A school equipped with these values encourages classroom atmospheres where students are empowered to ask questions as they own their learning journey. Students will respond to a school that values their individual contributions to their learning, but it must be built upon clearly articulated and actualized core values. 

Inquiry-based learning requires a comprehensive integrated approach from top to bottom. At SLA classrooms introduced basic choices in the lower grades, but as students progressed towards the upper levels they were given additional freedoms to choose. Assignments through the years were framed in increasingly less specific terms. By senior year students worked predominantly in an independent study status on a professional level project, which they took with them in their portfolio. Choice and agency is such a critical essence of the inquiry process, because “trusting students to make some of their own choices about what they learn fosters student engagement and learning, promoting deep understanding of content, and ultimately retention of these individual self-selected inquiry experiences.” Start small, with a few selective choices in minimal contexts, and expand as the student develops. 

Inquiry also revolves around personalization. With personalization, students must be allowed to see their choice through to conclusion. Even if that means missteps, stumbles, or even flat-out perceived “failures,” it is essential that students commit to a choice and follow it through, because the process of working through the mistakes is where learning happens. A mistake is simply an opportunity for growth. The end project outcome plays a minor role in the learning process, it is the journey to get there that is so vital for deep learning. The process is more important than the content, because a “true inquiry-based curriculum knows that content is not the paramount goal of student learning – the goal is to make students lifelong learners, capable of acquiring any knowledge they need, when they need it.”

This speaks to the aspect of relevance when it comes to learning – nobody asks the why of the curriculum because the why is the curriculum. But curriculum for curriculum sake does a disservice to the curious minds occupying our classrooms. The relevance is baked in when students own their learning. I recall in my physics class in high school studying concepts of force, mass, vector, and acceleration. The teacher had us use real-world examples of cars on a highway, and calculate how long it would take vehicles with specific masses to come to a complete stop. This assignment is embedded in my memory today (14-15 years later) and this is only scratching the surface of what inquiry-based learning can accomplish. This is a concept that is used everyday while driving, even if the hard values are never actually calculated while driving. True inquiry-based learning would have let us choose our own vehicle and scenario in which to conduct the learning assignment, but it was an effective method of teaching regardless. 

Teachers can expect students to become empowered via the process of inquiry-based learning. The process itself encourages students “to become educated citizens who have the confidence to take action when necessary.” Care goes hand-in-hand with empowerment. In a classroom structured around inquiry, personalized learning “takes place in a caring environment that fosters individual growth and isn’t based on measuring one student against another.” To truly create individualized learning, identify what students need to learn, then delineate what is variable. What is variable can be encapsulated through deep inquiry-based and personalized learning. These areas give students freedom and agency in their learning, leading to ownership and application. Throughout the whole process, the teacher must model inquiry on a daily basis, because “in an authentic inquiry-based classroom, students need to know that what they are learning will help them answer the deeper questions that have already been posed or that they are generating [themselves] as the unit continues.” One method of modeling inquiry is to map out the path forward for students, and then see if it can be reworked to let students find their own way instead of the teacher holding their hand the whole way. Practically applied to the classroom, SLA is structured around a series of themes. These themes are encapsulated by general questions, and these questions guide inquiry across all subjects within a central grade level. In this way all students are working towards answering a central question, or series of questions, all in their own personalized manner. 

What ideas are conjured when you hear the term research? Is it sitting in a dusty library leafing through musty books? Or scrolling through a GOOGLE search for terms related to your topic? Maybe looking at citations on WikiPedia articles? Or inputting a search into chatGPT? But how often are activities and designs taken into account through the research process? Typically research in education takes the form of some variation of the above, focusing on a final end product through a written paper, oral presentation, or similar medium. But since “adults are expected to independently explore and extrapolate the information that will help them do better work…students need to be aware of the many ways in which they can research the world around them and that includes through their own design,” instead of simply identifying and summarizing the so-called “experts” within whichever field or discipline the students’ topic is in. Conversely, students conduct research through channeling the scientific method covertly within individualized activities that focus on play. Activities situated in this way are hands-on, thoughtful, and do not require any outside sources, but will stimulate the curiosity and mind areas necessary for conducting true impactful research outside of simulated coursework. 

Research must accommodate autonomy, activity, and metacognition. Students light up and immerse themselves in the material when they begin to seek out uncollected content – essentially conducting original research, rather than relying on secondary or tertiary sources. Educators must ask how can students be empowered to create their own original research? The key is in relevance, as “the best research topics should feel relevant to the students researching them.” But to fully embrace this model of research, there must be a gradual transition from teacher-guided resources to student-guided resources. If the transition is too rapid, it becomes overwhelming for the students and undermines the virtues within inquiry-based learning. But at some point within a student’s education, they must take full ownership over this process. It is likely that students will reach this point at various stages, and each student’s individual needs should be taken into account throughout the transition. While students may be reluctant to fully embrace this process, due to fear of making a mistake, the teacher’s job is to impart and reinforce the concept that “making mistakes is an integral part of the learning process.” 

The use of standards as a measuring and evaluation tool supports the entire inquiry-based process. Teachers can lean on standards to know what students already know when entering the classroom, and then use that as a jumping off point. Projects can be interdisciplinary because a social studies teacher can reference science standards and be assured students have already grasped the necessary concepts to embark on their own individual inquiry-based learning journeys. Leaning into standards as a whole, schools can design their own standards that align with the themes and questions that each grade will grapple with. This ensures that each student is equipped to handle each series of successive questions and themes as they advance, but the entire organization and framework must be built around this system in a cohesive manner to truly leverage this process, including transparency between teachers in sharing methods, resources, and lessons. 

Unfortunately, traditional schools create barriers to this type of interdisciplinary collaborative process through segmentation. Students are expected to work in isolation, turn in work privately, and only operate within the confines of the topic of that particular class. But modern workplaces rarely operate within such strict parameters. On the contrary, collaboration is an essential skill in the modern workplace. Members from various departments interact through various methods, share information, and solve problems together. Shifting classrooms towards a more realistic model of what students should expect after graduation benefits the entire learning model. In traditional schools, teachers are expected to check and aid each student as they progress, which is cumbersome, but “when students truly embrace the spirit of collaboration, they will also work to aid each other’s academic progress.” Students then become agents in the learning process for each other. As they grow individually in their own expertise, they share ideas with their classmates and aid each other in exploring new ideas within their own inquiry-based design projects. The students will help each other learn. The teacher isn’t alone, navigating twenty-five different projects from twenty-five distinct voices. The teacher has twenty-five secondary sources of expertise all helping each other learn and play in the world of discovery. While it is daunting for educators to embrace the model of inquiry-based learning, when implemented holistically, it will alleviate many of the issues modern educators are facing today. 

The process of collaboration not only elevates the artifacts of learning students produce, but is complementary to aiding the students in preparing a presentation of their artifacts. Students may serve as a test audience collectively, prior to a student presenting their research for a larger group such as families, administration, or external businesses, or in pods, as a small group leading up to a presentation in front of the entire classroom. In traditional schools, presentations are often one-and-done experiences. But to hone the craft, students should practice and repeat in front of an audience, to afford the opportunity for feedback, adjustment, and improvement leading to a more professional final product. The entire process of researching through genuine inquiry, generating a final product in a personalized medium, and presenting said artifact of authentic learning shapes students with empowerment and confidence. It takes great strides in raising up students to be prepared to handle the 21st century digital world. 

Presenting in various mediums can also be flexible and personalized for the students. While the content may need to adhere to the rigors of specific standards or themes, the medium in which a student chooses to demonstrate their deep learning does not. This is an exemplary example of where a student can be given agency in the inquiry design process of authentic learning, because “students get to select a medium in which they enjoy working, but they also have to make sure that they have a deeper connection with that format as a learning tool.” If the medium requires new technical skills for the student, introduce the holistic project early on in order to determine what skills need to be grasped. Frontload the technical aspect, so that assignments can be content rich to authentically demonstrate learning throughout the year. In this area of learning, teachers additionally play the role of event coordinator. Student learning should be put on display within a venue, to give students the opportunity to share their learning with internal and external constituents. Creating this venue and determining the best method to collectively share student achievement is up to the teacher. 

A key aspect of deep learning that is too often overlooked is reflection. Intentionally undergoing the process of reflection cements learning and coaxes out additional meaning and purpose for the student outside the standardized curriculum track. Asking students an open-ended question to guide their reflection, such as “If you were to do this project again, what would you change or do differently,” gives the students a voice and agency in the process. Properly curated classroom spaces are critical to aiding in a student’s reflection. Classrooms must be safe places where students can be transparent, vulnerable, and authentic, so that they can talk openly about weaknesses and failures as a catalyst for the learning process. To bring about this transformation, “the classroom has to become a place where each student is recognized as being on an individual path of improvement.” Critically integrating reflection as a learning mechanism requires orienting reflection at the forefront of the class by setting individual goals early on, de-emphasizing grades, paralleling student and teacher reflection together to feed and build off each other, and incrementally incorporating reflection between modules for knowledge bursts on launchpads into the next segment.  

Although inquiry based learning can be implemented via a wide array of means, what is most important is that the school designs a model that works for their setting, community, space, and families. Taking the time to talk “with students explicitly about curriculum and pedagogy shows them that they deserve a voice in the conversation.” Students that participate in the decision-making process gain a sense of ownership, responsibility, and a vested stake in the success of the school. The school as a whole should additionally be thought of as a learning community where everyone works together. Inquiry-based learning works best when projects become interdisciplinary and cross-platform, where teachers and students help each other through the process in a mutual pact on the journey of lifelong learning. Inquiry is the path forward.