3 - 2 - 1 Reflections on Inquiry Based Teaching

Inquiry based teaching has been at the forefront of many of my courses at Penn State.  It has been stressed as a very important teaching strategy in educating students and helping them to value and seek their own learning and education.

3 relevant connections to my upcoming student teaching internship.

1 - In my student teaching internship in the spring, I will have many opportunities to use and put into practice the inquiry base method of teaching.  I will be leading students through labs and projects that could very easily be led with inquiry in mind. 

2 - Additionally, the student teaching experience itself will be an inquiry based learning experience for me as well.  I will constantly be inquiring about teaching and will have many opportunities to ask Mrs. Dingman at Tri-Valley for advice about teaching, classroom management, and content knowledge.  I will then be able to put that advice into practice and experiment as to whether it works for me or not and then make changes based on my teaching style and previous content knowledge.

3 - The third and final relevant connection I can make between inquiry based teaching and learning and my student teaching learning experience is that the inquiry process I use and form for myself in my teaching and reflection of my teaching is an inquiry thought and action process that I will be able to use as a future teacher to improve my teaching and delivery of content to my students.

Inquiry based learning categories from https://thinkingpathwayz.weebly.com/inquiry-based-learning.html

2 connections to other courses that are part of my #TeachAg Journey.

1 - Inquiry based teaching is very similar to problems based learning which we talked and learned about earlier in the semester in AEE 412.  Additionally, Inquiry based learning has been utilized in AEE 100.  I remember being told to look at what a picture was without any previous context and figure out what it was.  After many guesses, Dr. Curry then explained that the image was one of crop circles and related the activity to the rest of the lesson.  Although in this instance, inquiry based teaching was used as an interest approach, the same method could be applied to an entire lesson as well.

2 - Another connection to other courses I have taken at Penn State is in the course AEE is the connection to completing labs in the two biology courses that I took.  Some of the labs I completed were begun with a worksheet and a question in which we had to collect data to answer the question(s) and submit our findings.

1 connection to outside sources.

1 - One source I found categorized inquiry based teaching/learning into levels.  These include structured inquiry, controlled inquiry, guided inquiry and free inquiry.  From structured to free, the levels of guidance and control of the teacher over the content is lessened.  

“Inquiry-Based Learning.” THINKING PATHWAYS, thinkingpathwayz.weebly.com/inquiry-based-learning.html. Accessed 25 Nov. 2021.