New understandings developed and new classroom practices emerged when teachers collaborated with peers and experts.
Abdul Kadir Molla International School (AKMIS) is a new IB PYP authorized school. For us, teaching and learning through inquiry is a new experience for most faculty members, administrators, parents, and students. In addition to the external barriers that teachers face, their beliefs, values, teaching styles, and the purposes of education can impose obstacles to inquiry-oriented approaches. Research demonstrates many of the predicaments that teachers face when considering new approaches. Collaboration acted as an important catalyst of change for us. New understandings developed and new classroom practices emerged when teachers collaborated with peers and experts.
Transforming a school into a learning organization that will help students to become inquirers and nurture their natural community requires the whole school community. We as learning community members pondered and tried to understand the complexities of improving schools and how educational changes can be managed. We discussed three important aspects of this work and defined them as: (1) the difficulties and complexities of educational change, (2) how structures such as professional learning communities and critical friend groups can be used to support instructional improvement, (3) specific processes and strategies known to support teacher learning.
Here are few strategies that worked very well for us in promoting, developing and sustaining the culture of inquiry:
Fostering Inquiry in Early Years
Inquiry based learning enables children to develop a sense of curiosity.
Guest Speaker sessions aid to the inquiry process of the early years classroom. Inquiry based learning enables children to develop a sense of curiosity. In the 2020-21 session we had 6 Guest Speaker Sessions for learners in early years of PYP. For the learners, the speakers serve as great role models and the learners can do inquiry based research during the sessions. Learners in early years of PYP could interact with the speakers in the session which motivated them to develop their communication skills. During remote learning, learners could reach other country’s educators through online platforms. Learners also invited parents as speakers in their class which helped them to develop the relationship with the wider school community. The parents have a chance to connect with the learners and can observe the progress of childrens' knowledge and skills.
Learners in early years of PYP have developed their IT skills in order to use some IT tools independently. Learners could reflect upon their understanding and opinions about the guest speaker session through Google Jamboard and Google Form. Early years learners developed habits of gratitude by making digital appreciation cards for the guest speakers through M/S Paint. Learners in early years of PYP love to collaborate with international educators and other school learners, promoting the importance of global collaboration, thereby helping them to be more open-minded and confident.
Figure 1: Sample of learners work in Google Jamboard. Learners have got the opportunity to write their questions in the Google Jamboard (Exit Card) .
Figure 2: Sample of learner’s work in Google Jamboard. Learners wrote their reflections at the end of the guest speaker session.
The Round Table Circle Strategy
To nurture young people towards establishing a peaceful world we need more intercultural exchange included in the curriculum
Our world needs kind people more than any other point in history. Our world is facing huge conflicts due to the lack of tolerance to cultural diversity and lack of respect for others' values. AKMIS endeavours to create a peaceful global community. To nurture young people towards establishing a peaceful world we need more intercultural exchange included in the curriculum. We believe in creating and sharing spaces for learners from different ethnicities to help young minds to foster their international mindedness. Virtual learning proves to be a blessing in disguise for our school, encouraging us to arrange interactive round table dialogue sessions. It extended the inquiry as learners got to prepare themselves for the real life dialogue. The great benefit of the Round Table dialogue strategy is that it allows everyone to participate, even those who are more reluctant to speak openly. A key purpose of the round table discussion was clarifying and creating a space for differing opinions on a topic.
Our Grade-2 learners were undertaking a unit related to home and culture. They explored the cultures and cultural diversities around them. They got to learn about the beauty of cultural diversities and family values. We were thinking of an event where learners can share the beauty of their cultural practices, family values and can talk about their home with the learners belonging to different cultures.
Figure 3: Learners are responding to the case study and creating a mutual solution of the problem
We arranged a dialogue session where the learners interacted with learners from different countries. It was such an interactive session, posing different situations to learners like, ‘suppose a girl from the USA joined your class. She has a different hairstyle, color, dress, food habits, beliefs, and even different behavior and language. Will you make her your friend?’ Learners shared their opinion on home, cultures and values and came up with solutions for different situations. This discussion strategy helps learners to develop their higher order skills while becoming grounded in a social and emotional way by building both self-confidence and respect for their peers.
Figure 4: Another case study where learners got to talk on migration and sense of belonging and home.
We shared the topic and questions of the live dialogue session with the participants’ schools beforehand so that learners could inquire into the topic and be prepared for the round table dialogue, boosting critical thinking. Learners related to real life conflicts and built a mutual understanding of the problems.
Figure 5: A sample work of a learner where he inquired about the round table dialogue questions and responded to it.
By organizing such interactions, we try to provoke learners to relate learning to the real world and be open-minded. It helps to establish a base for mutual understanding, negotiation, and tolerance on the border of beliefs, culture, and ethnicity.
DESIGN THINKING: G3 to 5
In PYP, design thinking has been extensively used in various learning engagements and our school is not an exception from this scenario. For example, we had a great experience with the team of Grade 4 students with the Transdisciplinary theme “How The World Works” under the central idea “Machines play a vital role in our life and make our work easier” where they used design thinking by empathizing the needs of simple and complex machines and defining themes. Next, they ideate many ideas for the chosen real life problems, then proceed to create and test the prototype. For example, they made pulleys to help break equipment, created a flagpole for the flag of our school, and created a catapult level for throwing things at a distance which was later donated to the school's laboratory. At present, we are heading towards our PYP exhibition for grade 5 where learners have chosen 6 Sustainable Development Goals within 6 teams and to provide evidence of their use of design thinking. One of the groups working on "Affordable and Clean Energy'' empathized the trend of needs of affordable and clean energy by doing surveys with google forms within their community and chosen areas of the world.
Regardless of the difficulties, we believe that each of us took some important first steps. As a learning community where teachers and pedagogical leaders shared responsibility for instructional improvement not only in the classrooms but also school-wide. We created professional learning communities and made our school an organization that provides structures and processes for continuous teacher learning to promote a culture of inquiry.