#494 – Inquiry Learning, with Kath Murdoch

If you are listening to the podcast with your instructional team or would like to explore this topic more deeply, here are guiding questions to prompt your reflection:

• What distinguishes high-quality inquiry from low-quality inquiry learning?
• How can you balance guidance and student agency in your classroom?
• In what ways can you model genuine curiosity for your students?
• How might you embed skill development within inquiry, rather than pre-teaching it?
• What routines or structures could support inquiry in your classroom?
• How can inquiry-based learning align with your required curriculum?
• What does it look like for students to learn “for themselves,” rather than “by themselves”?

• Kath Murdoch, Education Consultant (official website)
• Project Zero (Harvard Graduate School of Education)
• Guy Claxton (official website)
• IB Learner Profile (International Baccalaureate Organization)
• What Are the Habits of Mind? (TeachThought)
• Types of Inquiry-Based Learning (New York State Education Department)

#494 Inquiry Learning, with Kath Murdoch

AVID Open Access
50 min

Transcript

The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence.  Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.

Kath Murdoch 0:00 Just because it’s content doesn’t mean I have to pour it in their heads. I can understand the content and design a learning experience that allows children to uncover that content, not by themselves, but more for themselves, which is more engaging.

Paul Beckermann 0:21 The topic for today’s podcast is Inquiry Learning, with Kath Murdoch. Unpacking Education is brought to you by AVID. AVID believes in seeing the potential of every student. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org.

Rena Clark 0:37 Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I’m Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 0:48 I’m Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin 0:50 And I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators,

Paul Beckermann 0:54 and we’re here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 0:58 Education is our passport to the future.

Paul Beckermann 1:01 Our quote for today is from our guest, and it’s on Kath Murdoch’s blog. She writes, “The act of investigation is inevitably cyclical.” All right, Winston, what are your thoughts about that quote today?

Winston Benjamin 1:17 The part that sticks out to me is the fact that it’s an act. I think sometimes when we have students do investigation and we’re trying to have them develop increased skills, it’s really catered and very specifically designed so the teacher provides them with where they should end up. I think sometimes having students have the freedom to go and really investigate and find that thing — it’s like, oh, but what about this? — and then really dig into that. I think that authentic act of investigation is cyclical. So providing authentic acts of investigation really does support that. I love that quote, and that part about acting feels important to me.

Paul Beckermann 2:03 For sure. I think about investigation and asking questions, and for some reason, our kids stop asking questions at some point in their school careers, and we’ve got to do something about that. We’ve got to keep them asking questions and being curious, because that curiosity and those questions drive that inquiry process and keep them going. I learn a little bit, and now I have a new question, and I need to go further. And now I have another new question, and I need to go even further. There’s that cycle, as I see it anyway.

Paul Beckermann 2:34 All right, well, we are excited to have Kath Murdoch with us today on the podcast. Kath is from Melbourne, Australia. She’s an international thought leader in the area of inquiry learning. She is an experienced primary teacher, a writer, university lecturer, and consultant. She’s been teaching, researching, and writing about inquiry learning for 40 years. She’s written 17 books in that time, including the best-selling titles The Power of Inquiry and Getting Personal With Inquiry Learning. Welcome, Kath.

Kath Murdoch 3:03 Thank you. It’s lovely to be here.

Paul Beckermann 3:06 So that’s the little blurb about you. But do you want to give us a little more personal account of who Kath Murdoch is?

Kath Murdoch 3:14 Oh, gosh, that’s a big question. I’m a teacher. That’s who I am, as well as a mum and partner and all of those other things. But I’m a teacher. I’m a primary school teacher. It’s in my heart always. It’s where I’m most at home professionally — actually not in a workshop room, not in a lecture theater, but in a classroom with children. I’m very fortunate that I’ve been able to develop a kind of consultancy that means I’ve manipulated things so that I spend a lot of time teaching children, albeit in front of a bunch of other teachers.

I work mainly with children from about three or four years old through to about Year Seven, but mostly in that primary area. I’ve been doing so for — I surprise myself when I realize it’s been 42 years. I can’t believe that’s coming out of my mouth. But there you go. Four and a bit decades in what I consider to be one of the most important and privileged jobs in the world.

Paul Beckermann 4:44 For sure.

Winston Benjamin 4:47 Thank you so much for sharing the other parts of you, including being a mother and a partner. That really helps, I think, for our audience — just knowing that there is growth and a person behind the individuals we’re talking to.

Kath Murdoch 5:04 Oh gosh, absolutely. Being lucky enough to have children when I wanted to have children taught me so much about learning and about teaching. I think it really changed me as a teacher too, and that will always be, by far, my greatest passion — what you learn with and from your own children. The other passion I have is for the natural environment, and that’s been a big focus. I’ve had a strong emphasis on environmental education over the years too, so that’s been a really lovely layer to it all.

Winston Benjamin 5:53 I appreciate you helping our audience ground themselves in who you are as a full person, and thank you for sharing that with us. You’ve mentioned your passion for the environment and the idea of youth learning, which is also why we all do this work. To transition into the conversation for our podcast: how do you define high-quality inquiry learning? And then the second part of that question is, how did it become a passion of yours? Why was that the thing that drove you?

Kath Murdoch 6:33 Those are both really lovely questions, and I really appreciate that you’ve used the phrase “high quality.” Maybe in some ways I can define it best by defining low-quality inquiry first. Low-quality inquiry learning is what is often used as an argument against the approach. Low quality would be simply asking children what they’re interested in and saying, “Hey guys, that’s great — off you go, find it. I’ve put a bunch of resources around the room; see what you can find out.” That very loosey-goosey approach. I actually don’t know teachers that do that — I think a lot of that is a bit of a mythology. But it’s low quality when it lacks guidance and structure and purpose and authenticity and clarity.

It’s high quality when the thinking behind it — and I don’t want to get too academic here, but it’s important to acknowledge — is grounded in a theory of learning that we know of as constructivism, which, very simply put, is this idea that the learner is the one doing the learning. The learner is building an understanding over time. It’s a process of never-ending synthesis. You’ve got your prior knowledge, your prior experiences, you’re exposed to new information. Ideally, you’re given opportunities to process, recalibrate, and form new theories about the way the world works. And so it goes, a bit like you were saying with that quote, in this constant cyclical process.

I once read an article — I can’t remember who the writer was — that described inquiry as an approach that “goes with the grain of the brain,” this idea that we are gradually and continually coming to understand, and then coming to re-understand, the world around us. So it works beautifully when that is supported.

If the educator is driven by key values of curiosity, agency, deep learning, and authenticity, you can see teachers very intentionally positioning the child as the researcher. They see the child as a researcher, and they also see themselves as a researcher — which is very much something we’ve learned from Reggio Emilia, this concept of our image of the child as a capable, curious, early researcher, quite capable of inquiring, and our role being to research alongside them, with the children themselves being our constant source of information.

I think the other thing I’d say about high quality is when it’s truly responsive — when we stay constantly open to what we’re noticing. If we’re good inquiry teachers, we’re great observers. We’re listening, we’re observing, and our designs for learning are projected but also constantly reshaped based on what we’re noticing. It’s a very sophisticated way of working. I’d have to say it’s complex, it’s beautiful, and it can be so satisfying for teachers and learners, but it’s not without its complexity.

Paul Beckermann 10:43 It is very complex, and sometimes it’s hard to visualize exactly what that might look like in a classroom. Could you give us an example or two of what inquiry learning might look like in an actual classroom?

Kath Murdoch 10:59 Yes, many, in fact. And you’re right that because of its complexity, it can be hard to visualize — which is why I and many of my colleagues really do try to do a lot of work in classrooms so that people can hear and see it in action. It is the best way to understand the nuance and the complexity.

In the very early years, what it might look like to the ill-informed or untrained eye might just look like playing with very young children. Play is perhaps the purest form of inquiry. What you would see in an early years classroom is a very intentionally curated environment that invites young learners to explore, to figure out, to collaborate — with educators observing, documenting, listening, and what my colleague Matt Glover describes as nudging or provoking next moves.

Or it might be, let’s take an art room — an art teacher introducing a group of children to the material of clay. In that environment, and this is a bit simplified but just to provide an example, the teacher provides the clay and invites the children to first explore: What do you know? What does the clay do? What are you noticing about it? Explore its properties. Explore what happens when you manipulate it. Share what you discover with each other. Once the teacher has heard some of those reflections and observed and listened, they might step in to provide excellent explanation, modeling, and demonstration. So you’ll often see a teacher choosing to give kids exploration time before explanation time.

Another example would be where a class of children collaboratively — we call them shared inquiries — journeys through a process over several weeks to investigate a big question. It might be a question like, “What does it mean to be healthy?” or “What makes a strong community?” or “What do designers have to keep in mind when they’re designing something?” — where they’ve got what we call a big, compelling question, and over several weeks they work through a process together to uncover and deepen their understanding.

So I can see it at lesson level, and I can see it as a deep, extended investigation. And even a philosophical inquiry might look like a group of children in a circle engaging in a philosophical conversation where the educator is artfully questioning and probing. That is a form of inquiry. It’s a very broad idea — people often associate inquiry with “that’s when you do units of inquiry” — but they’re in abundance. I would consider project-based learning, problem-based learning, three-act math, and philosophical inquiry all to be avenues through which we can engage children as active inquirers.

Paul Beckermann 15:00 And then as they get older, how does that ownership and inquiry change?

Kath Murdoch 15:07 It’s interesting — when I do work with teachers from preschool through to Year 12, the underlying principles of ownership, agency, creativity, authenticity, and learning to learn don’t change. The content changes, of course. The complexity of the ideas that students are expected to work with changes. The capacity to work through a process more independently might increase as students get older. But I say that very tentatively, because I work in preschools, and sometimes I see much more agency, responsibility, and independence in a group of four-year-olds than I might see walking into a Year Nine classroom. So I’m not even sure it’s about the level of independence — maybe it’s the teacher’s willingness to release responsibility that changes, rather than the student’s capacity to manage it.

Winston Benjamin 16:32 Oh, that goes back to our earlier quote about how curiosity is removed from students as they go further through school. But there’s something else you’re mentioning, which is that it can feel terrifying to give students control of their learning. Sometimes, as a teacher, the idea of turning over the classroom can be difficult. So what are some things that teachers need to do in order to cultivate in themselves this ability to implement inquiry learning? Because it might be terrifying to know how to ask the right questions. What are some things that teachers could work on in order to implement and develop an inquiry-based discourse in their classroom?

Kath Murdoch 17:33 That’s a beautiful question, because what it acknowledges is that so much of our ability to use this pedagogy depends on how we see ourselves and the dispositions we have as educators.

I want to go back to something you said a moment ago — “handing over complete control.” That’s not what happens. It is very much the educator’s responsibility to continue to guide students. I think one of the first steps toward this is understanding that an inquiry-based approach is not sheer chaos where the kids rule. It’s not that at all.

In fact, I wrestle with the idea that people talk about “guided inquiry” versus other kinds of inquiry. At least from the perspective of a primary educator, my role is always one of guidance. Always. And if you see it that way — if you say, “Okay, I’m not relinquishing my responsibility as an educator to guide” — then you are doing that actively. I’m not even a fan of the notion of “guide on the side.” That feels a little too passive. You’re very actively and very intentionally making multiple moves across the day to support and guide your students, all the while seeing them as co-agents of their learning — with you.

I have an illustration in one of my books of a graphic equalizer, like a sound deck in a recording studio with all the different volume controls. The image I always have in my head is that sometimes the volume goes up — I need to step in and take more guidance and control. And then I can pull it back down and give the students more of what my colleague Guy Claxton calls “learning muscle.” They won’t build that muscle if I’m doing too much for them, but at the same time, I remain responsible for supporting them in developing it. That’s going to depend on individual students and the curriculum we’re working with.

So I think cultivating an understanding of your role as guide — and being reassured by it — is one important thing. The other, and it’s very obvious but worth saying, goes back to research on curiosity. No one used to talk about this, and it’s so delightful that everyone talks about curiosity now — after 40 years, I’m thinking, yes! Researchers like Susan Engel have identified that the most important factor in generating a classroom environment where children are curious is the degree to which the educator does two things: one, that they are genuinely curious — not fake curiosity, I see plenty of that — but genuinely curious, modeling it; and two, that they respond to their students’ thinking with curiosity.

So you’ve got to cultivate that within yourself. Just be a learner. Whenever I do a lesson with a group of children, I always start by saying, “I know I’m going to learn something over the next hour. I don’t know what, but I cannot wait until the end of this lesson when you’re going to ask me, Kath, what did you learn today?” And every single time they ask me, I’ve got something to say. I love that. I want them to see me as a learner, because we know that strengthens their sense of themselves as learners.

Be a risk-taker. Be courageous. Be curious. And the last thing I’d say is just be willing to collaborate — with your students and with your colleagues. This approach is so much stronger when you’re better together. Engage in conversations with colleagues about what you’re noticing, what steps to take next. Come into my room, watch me teach, help me see what I might not be seeing. That open-mindedness doesn’t suit everyone’s personality, and that’s not to say that teachers who use a highly didactic approach can’t be really effective too. You can’t put a square peg in a round hole. But if you want to cultivate inquiry, those would be the things I would do.

Winston Benjamin 23:31 I really appreciate the way you remind teachers that they are in power as guides to students’ learning. One framework I know of is the Socratic method — Socratic seminar — as one way of providing an inquiry-based structure for a classroom. Could you provide some examples of inquiry frameworks or processes that you’d recommend to help teachers guide students, since Socratic seminar has rules about how the teacher can engage? What are some strategies or processes you could offer?

Kath Murdoch 24:15 There are many. I’ll just think of two.

One is to shout out to the beautiful work of Project Zero at Harvard. In particular, the thinking routines that my colleagues Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, and others have published. Even some of the most simple, popular ones — like See Think Wonder, or Connect Extend Challenge, or What Makes You Say That — these small but powerful routines, when used consistently, gradually help shift the culture in the classroom toward a more inquiry-based way of being. If you want a toolkit of strategies that isn’t overwhelming but that you can start to apply to any subject area, encourage children to be more active in their thinking, and help you see what kids are capable of, then the visible thinking routines from Project Zero are a great go-to.

Then I would also argue for understanding and using a cycle of inquiry. I have a cycle that I work with, and there are others, but they’re more similar than they are different. Generally, using the one I work with, you would learn to design learning so that you are tuning in first — connecting with students’ working theories about whatever you’re moving into. Then there’s a phase of finding out or investigating, where we’re positioning them as researchers and developing research skills along the way. A phase I call sorting out or meaning-making follows — making sense of information — followed by a going further phase, where new questions bubble up to explore, perhaps moving on more divergent paths.

We talk about drawing conclusions, pulling it together, and reflecting: What have we learned? And we also talk about an element of doing — what are we going to do with this learning? That’s where the work of people like Ron Berger comes in, with real learning for real purposes and real audiences, and the idea of developing beautiful work for real purposes.

That inquiry process, when you learn what the purpose of each element is, allows you to both teach with those purposes in mind and design the learning accordingly. The children become aware of those phases too, which allows them to develop their own inquiry journeys. It doesn’t have to be that specific language — there are plenty of models of a cycle of inquiry — but it can be really helpful. So small routines and big cycles are both really powerful.

Paul Beckermann 28:03 I think that’s helpful for teachers who want to get into this, because there’s a tendency to be nervous — how do I do this? I need some kind of structure to guide me through. And then some teachers say, “But how can I do this when I have a curriculum I have to teach? How can I teach like this when I have so much content to cover?” What do you say to those teachers?

Kath Murdoch 28:29 Well, I’m one of those — I don’t say that, but I am a teacher who has to use curriculum. I don’t work in many places without one. There’s the Australian curriculum that I work with here, or if I’m in British Columbia, I’m working with that curriculum; if I’m in the UK, the English curriculum; in the US, the Common Core.

The way I see it is that the curriculum tells you the what, but inquiry is not about the what. It’s about the how. I can choose to use an inquiry approach to help uncover the curriculum I’m responsible for teaching, and I won’t choose to use it for everything. There’ll be some things that are either quite shallow in the curriculum or are non-negotiable must-dos. I’m going to choose to use inquiry where depth is required, and I may use more direct instruction where that suits the content. It’s nuanced in that way.

My advice to teachers is always — and in fact my friend Sam once said this to me — make friends with the curriculum. It’s not an impediment. The more you understand it, the more you have it in your head, the more it stops bossing you around. You can see it as a fantastic opportunity.

Not long ago, for example, a group of Grade One children came in after lunchtime full of anxiety because there were baby birds they thought had been thrown out of a nest in the schoolyard. The teacher had set the stage for her math lesson, but being a true inquiry teacher, she could see that so much learning could come out of this moment and chose — and you’re not going to do this every day — to abandon her plan. Because she knew her curriculum really well, she was able to quickly pivot into a little mini inquiry around that. At the same time, she was clocking in her mind, and later auditing, her standards for biological science, design technologies, aspects of humanities. It was all there in that one lesson.

Know your curriculum. Make friends with it. Stick it up on the wall. With older kids, show them the standards. Show them where what they’re doing connects to the curriculum. Don’t make it secret teachers’ business. It’s not your enemy unless you make it so.

Paul Beckermann 31:47 Yeah, that’s a great reminder. It’s “and,” not “or,” right?

Kath Murdoch 31:52 Inquiry is the approach. So when people say to me, “But I’ve got to cover this content” — yes, and you can do that using an inquiry-based approach. Just because it’s content doesn’t mean I have to pour it in their heads. I can understand the content and design a learning experience that allows children to uncover that content, not by themselves, but more for themselves, which is more engaging. Again, I’m not going to do it like that every single minute of every day, but when it is done like that, it is super engaging and it sticks, because curiosity drives it.

Winston Benjamin 32:43 Are there any skills that students need to develop before participating in an inquiry approach? Is there anything we need to pre-teach in order for students to be successful?

Kath Murdoch 33:01 Of course, there are many skills that adept inquirers have in their toolkit, and we need to be really clear about those skills. I think it’s less about pre-teaching and more about being clear, as we’re journeying through an inquiry, what the demands on the children are in terms of those skills — and where we might pause to lift those skills up and be more explicit about them. I think they’re best taught in the context of the inquiry, but not assumed. We can lift them up as they’re happening.

Let me give you an example. One of the most obvious skills an inquirer needs is the ability to frame the right question for their investigation. I can do some standalone lessons on questions, but it’s more effective if we generate some questions together at a certain point in the inquiry and then use those questions to press the pause button. I might say to kids, “Okay, we’ve got a whole lot of questions here. Before we decide which questions are going to work best for our survey or our interview, let’s learn more about what makes a question effective.” I might do a concept attainment strategy or use quadrant frameworks, and it always feels like I’m stepping to the side of the inquiry in order to make that skill more explicit — developing it, and then bringing it back in to keep going. Rather than “I need to teach them all of this stuff first, and then we can inquire,” I embed it and highlight it along the way.

That requires the educator, as the inquiry is being designed, to ask: What are the skills that students will need in order to be successful here?

There are dozens of frameworks that identify skills and dispositions that are generic to effective learning. In IB schools, there are the Approaches to Learning and the Learner Profile. Guy Claxton has his learning powers. There are the 16 Habits of Mind — what I think of as the original dispositions framework. In one of my books I identified over 20 different frameworks. I use what I call learning assets: the skills and dispositions that are an asset to you if you are inquiring effectively. I group them into five or six big ones — thinking skills, collaboration skills, self-management skills, communication skills, research skills — and I added a sixth: the skills needed for contribution or active citizenship, the “making a difference” skills.

When I’m working with teachers, we’re always scanning those lists — and many of them line up with particular skills in mandated curricula too. We try to establish what we’re going to put in the spotlight. A great inquiry-based lesson often has children drawing on all of those assets, but I’m choosing to spotlight certain ones and make it really clear to students. We use what we call split-screen learning intentions: we activate a question we’re exploring in that lesson, and we put the spotlight on — and let kids know — that while we’re investigating this, we’re also strengthening these learning muscles. For example: while we’re listening to this scientist explain how they go about protecting an endangered animal, we’re also, as researchers, strengthening our capacity to take notes so we can go back and remember the information we’ve heard.

In any lesson, I’m toggling between the what of the learning and the how of the learning, and both elements are developed with an inquiry stance from both the teacher and the learner.

Paul Beckermann 38:17 I’m also thinking, as you’re talking about this — you mentioned it earlier as well — that it’s a different feel to an inquiry classroom, where students are more independent at times. Teachers can feel like that’s chaos, that it’s not managed. And you clearly said that it is managed. But what are some practical ways that a teacher can manage that environment when it’s maybe a little looser than they’re used to?

Kath Murdoch 38:50 I often think of that phrase “tight but loose.” There’s this idea that a lot of creatives talk about — in order to be creative, you need constraints. Too much choice, a task so open-ended that there’s nothing to hang onto, no framework, no structure — we’re going to fall back into that loosey-goosey stuff that gives inquiry a bad name.

I actually find that the classrooms where this approach is strongest have, first of all, really clear routines. Routines that ensure a sense — that important sense that we all need — of predictability, safety, and belonging. That’s particularly important for young learners in a primary school. When you’ve got those predictable routines, a moment like the baby birds falling out of the nest can be dealt with beautifully, because the class is held by a sense of structure.

When I work in a school and I’m teaching, people often say, “Oh, there’s actually quite a lot of structure here, isn’t there?” Absolutely there is.

So: routines, clear structures. I think the other thing that avoids that sense of chaos or feeling out of control is working really hard, particularly early in the year, on building agreements with students. Here are the agreed ways that we learn and work together. This is what it means to be a functioning member of this classroom community. And I’m not talking so much about rules, but agreed behaviors for learning and for being with each other — co-constructed and regularly revisited.

The third thing I would say is that I am a big fan of the circle. The lessons I do always begin in a circle and end in a circle — that’s one of our rituals. We learn how to have — and we have to learn it, even more so now — sustained, respectful dialogue with each other. If we can develop that kind of deep, respectful discourse, we’re holding the students in this beautiful community of learning and inquiry. It’s highly intentional. I don’t want the kids to feel like they don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing. So we do a lot of co-construction and a lot of clear intention-setting.

Paul Beckermann 42:01 Yeah, that’s fabulous. I can see that classroom in my mind — students in a circle, all communicating and working on the same or similar problem.

Kath Murdoch 42:13 It does take time, though. It doesn’t happen overnight. People need to feel comfortable and comforted. In that regard, it takes time.

Paul Beckermann 42:23 Well, we could take a lot more time talking about inquiry in this conversation, but I think we need to jump into our next segment, which is our toolkit.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 42:32 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 42:42 All right, it’s toolkit time. We’re going to have Winston go first, I’ll add something, and then Kath, we’ll let you follow up. Winston, what would you like to drop in our toolkit today?

Winston Benjamin 42:54 For me, the thing I would like to drop in the toolkit is: know your curriculum, so that you can know when to bend it and when to adjust in order to fit the needs of your students. The more you know it, the better you can serve your students by making adjustments and the right teacher moves.

Paul Beckermann 43:13 That’s great. And I like the idea of picking a strategy — it can be a small strategy, but some kind of process that you teach your students and can reuse in different situations. Maybe it’s a question-asking routine. There’s the Question Formulation Technique, the QFT, from the Right Question Institute. That’s one; there are many out there. Pick something you want to try, implement it, teach it to your students, and use it consistently so it becomes a habit — just part of how you do things in the classroom. All right, Kath, what would you like to add to the toolkit?

Kath Murdoch 43:52 Oh, it’s just like asking me to choose my favorite child — I can’t do it! There are so many. But the one I keep coming back to, having just come off the back of a little moment in the forest yesterday, is this: if you can learn to slow down and notice when you are teaching, that is the best gift you can give yourself — even purely for assessment purposes. Deliberately say, “I am going to talk less. I’m going to observe and listen. I’m going to design a task, and for ten minutes, I’m just going to really tune in to my students and see what I notice.” Do what the very best early years educators do, and learn to listen — be the researcher, be the observer in your own classroom. It is so rich with reward when we do that.

Paul Beckermann 44:57 That’s great.

Transition Music 44:59 And it’s time for that one thing. It’s time for that one thing. That one thing.

Winston Benjamin 45:11 It’s time for our last piece of conversation for the day. What’s rolling around in your mind, Paul? And then I’ll jump in and ask Kath.

Paul Beckermann 45:23 I’m going to go back to one of those misconceptions — that inquiry learning is just a free-for-all, just chaos in the classroom. It is not. I love the idea that we’re having students do things not by themselves, but for themselves. I think that sums up a lot of it. We’re offering guidance, but they’re doing it for themselves, and they’re developing those skills. I really like that.

Winston Benjamin 45:52 I’m going to piggyback off of that with the idea of guidance. There is a sense of leadership and authority that is valuable in being a guide to students’ learning. When teachers remember that they have a role even when students are learning on their own, it’s still very important. Reminding teachers that they are a guide is so valuable.

Paul Beckermann 46:19 All right. Kath, your turn. What would you like to leave our listeners with as a final thought today?

Kath Murdoch 46:25 When we were speaking toward the end there about developing those skills and dispositions — those things that are assets to you as a learner — I was thinking about how, for me, an inquiry-based approach is like two arrows: one going outward and one going inward, simultaneously. For a teacher, it means yes, I’m outwardly teaching my students, but simultaneously I’m also noticing and recognizing and being fascinated by what’s happening in me as a teacher — how I modify my moves in response to what I’m noticing. And for children too, I see it as very much an approach that helps them learn about the world around them, growing as scientists and mathematicians and writers and artists, but also growing the world within them — understanding themselves as learners and as people. So it’s inquiring out and inquiring in, simultaneously. If we can slow down enough to recognize and cultivate that in our classrooms, I think we’re doing our children a real service. I hope we are.

Paul Beckermann 47:55 That’s beautiful. We want to thank you, Kath, for joining us today. Thanks so much for being with us.

Kath Murdoch 48:02 Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Paul Beckermann 48:05 And one last thing — if somebody is listening and their inquiry mind is turned on and they want to learn more from you and check out some of your books, where would they go, and what might be a good starting point?

Kath Murdoch 48:21 They could jump on the website. I’m going to apologize upfront that I’m not very good at keeping it up to date, but there are blog posts, and I think some of the books are mentioned on the site. I’m sure if you just Googled, you’d find them. But there are an abundance of resources — not just by me. You’ve heard me mention some really incredible educators that I’m so lucky to collaborate with. So I just encourage people to read, and not rely on a TikTok or Instagram reel to learn about inquiry. Go read a book. That’s my grumpy old lady moment for you right there. But read a book. Get in deep.

Paul Beckermann 49:13 All right. Well, we better go do that then — go pick a book and dig deep. Thanks again so much for joining us. We appreciate it.

Kath Murdoch 49:21 My absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Rena Clark 49:24 Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 49:27 We invite you to visit us at avidopenaccess.org, where you can discover resources to support student agency and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 49:40 We’ll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode.

Rena Clark 49:45 And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 49:49 Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 49:51 You make a difference.