Securing a Hopeful Future by Reconsidering the Educational Past: Using Inquiry to Ignite Learning and Ensure Democracy

In an era of rapidly changing technologies, dramatic shifts in global orders and radical declines in local, state, and national test scores, it seems that everything is being questioned – including classroom practices. Teachers are told to rethink the old techniques, often characterized as irrelevant to the contemporary learner and powerless in the face of our current crises and priorities. They should use a “21st century” approach instead. However, despite earnest and committed efforts by educators, these strategies consistently fail to deliver. Students become passive; literacy growth remains stagnant; and the new content of the classroom fails to move and motivate. Students wonder what they are learning and why they should care; teachers wonder why the life-changing impact of their own school experience is not being replicated for today’s learners.

Perhaps the solution lies not in inventing something new, but in reconsidering something from the past instead. The inquiry method of instruction, as “old” as Dewey and Plato, ignites curiosity, centers student voices and promotes democracy. The panelists – some who serve as coaches for and authors of books about inquiry instruction; and some who are just adopting these practices into their classrooms themselves – will demonstrate, through engaging examples and hands-on experiences, how and why inquiry breathes life into even the most challenging classroom environments and provides opportunities for every student to access the best that schools have to offer. Attendees will experience the excitement of inquiry, receive a flexible framework for building lesson sequences and access empowering, ready-to-use materials.