INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING AT WORK

Bertram (Chip) BruceNational College of Ireland

U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Presented at the Learning at Work Seminar: Practical Responses to the Future Skills Challenge

National College of Ireland, 15 May, 2008

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19TH-CENTURY LEARNING

Solve well-defined problems

Read one (printed) source

Follow directions

Work independently

Rely on fixed procedures

WHO SAID?

Innovations in transportation & communication

Relaxation of social discipline & control

Growing need for knowledge in all affairs of life

Need for lifelong learning

Transform learning & teaching

John Dewey, “The School as Social Centre,” 1902

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21ST-CENTURY CHALLENGE

Find problems

Integrate knowledge from multiple sources & media

Think critically

Collaborate

Learn how to learn

People have to adapt to the work, habits, and values of the machines. People are generally regarded as the sources of problems, while devices are considered as means to solutions

...also eliminates the opportunities of developing those human skills that are fundamentally different from the skills of machines: abilities such as listening, interpreting, instructing, and working out to mutually acceptable accommodations. But it is the skills, more than anything else, that the global village needs. –Ursula Franklin

INQUIRY CYCLE

Ask

Discuss Create

InvestigateReflect

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INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING

Questions: arising out of experience

Materials: diverse, authentic, challenging; two-way

Activities: engaging. hands-on, creating, collaborating, living new roles

Dialogue: listening; articulating meaning

Reflection: from concepts to action

Teachers saw the enormous pedagogical difference between solving problems and formulating them, between answering someone else's question and generating your own. –Schwartz, Olds, & Willie, 1980

ASK

Blogs

Online video

Web resources

Digital libraries

Social networking

Second Life

Internet radio

Mobile devices

Simulations

E-learning

Virtual reality

Ubiquitous computing

INVESTIGATE

Constructing a third space at the computerin a first-gradeclassroom – Christine Wang

CREATE

DISCUSS

Water cooler learning

privacy

propinquity

social designation

–Anne-Laure Fayard & John Weeks, 2007

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We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run amounts to anything.

–John Dewey, Experience & Education

REFLECT

ENGINEERS

novel situations

budgets, marketing experiment

multiple sources

lifelonglearning

ACTIVITY

Think about your own workplace setting (or refer to the examples from this morning, the video cases, ...)

You’re a consultant. What can you do to promote learning at work?

How would you encourage: Ask – Investigate – Create – Discuss – Reflect?

What would you say to workers? to management?