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.

How can colleges develop learners who pursue innovative ideas that enable them to flourish and contribute in a rapidly changing world? Two decades into the twenty-first century, our nation's colleges and universities no longer embrace a clear and convincing definition of the purpose of a college education. Instead, most institutions have fallen prey to a default purpose in which college is essentially workforce preparation for jobs that already exist, while students are viewed as commodities instead of being educated to flourish throughout their lives. But rather than bemoan the diminishing legacy of liberal education, this new edition of Cultivating Inquiry-Driven Learners argues that the time has come to advance a pioneering purpose of college that guides the undergraduate experience from program requirements to teaching and learning. This purpose, Clifton Conrad and Laura Dunek write, is anchored in the premise that the world in which we live is one in which change—environmental, cultural, economic, political—is a constant driving force. The authors envision a college-educated person in the twenty-first century as an "inquiry-driven learner": a person equipped with the capabilities to explore and cultivate ideas that will prepare them to successfully navigate constant change, capitalize on career opportunities, enrich their personal life, and contribute to the public good. They describe four signature capabilities that students must develop in order to innovate and adapt: core qualities of mind, critical thinking skills, expertise in divergent modes of inquiry, and the capacity to express and communicate ideas. Guided by this trailblazing vision, Conrad and Dunek have thoroughly revised every chapter of the book to reflect current scholarship and emerging trends. In an expanded conclusion, they provide a cornucopia of ideas for replenishing undergraduate education accompanied by real-world examples of innovative programs and practices from colleges and universities across the United States. 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!

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.

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!

Give your students a leg up and improve learning outcomes with this revolutionary, hands-on approach to teaching In Cultivating Curiosity: Teaching and Learning Reimagined, distinguished educator and author Doreen Gehry Nelson inspires anyone yearning to break away from formulaic teaching. Told from dozens of powerful and personal perspectives, the effectiveness and versatility of the Doreen Nelson Method of Design-Based Learning described in the book is backed by years of quantitative and qualitative data. You’ll learn how applying this cross-curricular methodology can transform your K-12 teaching practice, regardless of changes in content standards. The book includes: Discussions about how to launch creative and critical thinking in your students Explanations of the methodology’s 6 1⁄2 Steps of Backward ThinkingTM that invigorate the teaching experience and dramatically improve learning The inception of the methodology and the experiences of K-12 teachers who practice it in their classrooms. Perfect for K-12 educators seeking a methodology that consistently engages students in applying what they learn, Cultivating Curiosity is also an ideal resource for teachers-in-training, administrators, and post-secondary educators.

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.