Suyu Gong

Dr. Amy Stornaiuolo

EDUC6306

Oct 16th, 2022

Inquiry essay

Before pursuing the RWL program, “inquiry” was just a simple word like “question”

and “investigation.” However, now I believe the word “inquiry” is complicated, including

many critical ideologies and educational implications. The inquiry definition provided by

Wells (1999) is: it is not a way of teaching or strategies, but “rather, it indicates a stance

toward experiences and ideas - a willingness to wonder, to ask questions, and to seek to

understand by collaborating with others in the attempt to make answers to them” (p. 121, as

cited in Maloch & Horsey, 2003). For educators, inquiry is a significant stance for them to

question the teaching practice and education system and take action. So, next I will talk about

that educators also have the responsibility to implement the inquiry stance in the curriculum

cultivating students to reflect on their experiences, realize the inequity around them and

challenge the status quo.

Inquiry as a stance can benefit teachers in the education field. It provides teachers

with three main ideologies helping their learning and professional development, according to

Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2021). The first is that the daily built local knowledge of teaching

could relate to a larger social context. Under the stance, teachers could construct local

knowledge based on their regular classes and local school communities. Then by

experimenting it and discussing with other educators, this knowledge could be upgraded or

extended to apply at the public level. Therefore, their efforts and credit for the work are all

beneficial to the whole education system and society as well. The second ideology of inquiry

stance is viewing novice and experienced teachers as the same (Cochran-Smith & Lytle,
2021). It echoes the horizontal approach mentioned by Campano et al. (2010). In other words,

it is not a hierarchy system that separates teachers according to their experience. Still, all

these teachers work collaboratively for teaching and learning and could share different

viewpoints for questioning and challenging the current education practices. So, there is the

formation of inquiry communities, a platform for teachers to support each other. These

communities grant teachers power to pose questions and work together for change; they

create a base for students and teachers to have a more egalitarian classroom relationship; they

build solidarity among teachers to face various problems jointly; they motivate new teachers

to improve the study life for students; they encourage to switch the forms of accountability

from policy into a more valid one that considering both the students learning and teachers’

teamwork (Simon, 2015). In listing the implications of inquiry communities, Simon

highlighted the improvements, empowerment, solidarity, and equality brought by the

horizontal relationship between teachers in the communities. The last ideology addresses the

incorrect notion that only “practice is practical” (Cohran-Smith and Lytle, 2021, p. 102).

Instead of avoiding theories and deeming them abstract and not useful, the authors believe

that one of the core concepts of inquiry as stance is to theorize constantly from what teachers

do in everyday classrooms, along with their inquiry exploration as the first step. Then

teachers need to figure out how to attach the theory to the larger social context and develop a

reform plan. These three ideologies are insightful for teachers who have the responsibility to

teach literacy for students.

Besides the benefits for teachers, critical inquiry is valuable to students’ literacy and

their social awareness, so it is necessary to use inquiry-based pedagogy to cultivate a sense of

inquiry. Critical inquiry is: “inviting children to explore and raise questions about broader

social issues, looking across individual experiences to investigate patterns of inequality they

might notice and consider how things could be changed for the better” (Ghiso et al., 2019, p.
97). It means children should be able to discern and detect injustice issues via their daily life

experiences, then relate to more significant social problems and think about solutions for the

augmentation. This idea is relevant to the notion: literacy is a social practice “conceptualizing

the link between the activities of reading and writing and the social constructors in which

they are embedded and which they help shape” (Barton & Hamilton, 2000, p. 7). The authors

illustrate the relationship literacy build between behaviours of reading and writing and their

related social knowledge gained from previous experiences and the powerful social influence

made for the future. Critical inquiry is a process that leads people to use their literacy to

reflect on their experiences, notice inequality, and find solutions. Not only is literacy a

weapon for discovery and revolution, but literacy is harvested during the whole process. To

equip students with more literacy skills, inquiry-based pedagogy is worthwhile for teachers.

For example, Campano and Ghiso (2011) suggested that “embedded reading within an

inquiry approach” could give the opportunities to understand themselves and their

relationship to the world “that are more conducive for ethical and intellectual growth” (pp.

171 - pp. 172). Also, there is some advice on inquiry-based pedagogy. For instance, teachers

should learn resonating things from students, give students enough space to develop deep

inquiry exploration, apply multimodal tools for students, and encourage them to discuss

inequality publicly (Ghiso et al., 2019). Another example is for picturebook reading

pedagogies, where scholars ask for agencies that position readers as co-authors of the book to

empower them and cultivate critical inquiry stance (Sipe & Brightman, 2009). All the

suggestions on pedagogies motivate students to have critical inquiry stance to be able to

question and evaluate what they notice around them and further consider how to change for a

better world.

Although “high-stakes testing and accountability are increasingly influencing writing

instruction” (Applebee & Langer, 2011, p. 117, as cited in Simon, 2013) and other teaching
practices, Campano et al. (2010) appealed to all teachers to provide “more culturally

responsive and engaging literacy curriculum during a period when the testing paradigm

predominated” (p.26, as cited in Simon & Campano, 2013). Therefore, inquiry as stance

empowers teachers to challenge the education policy and generate a better one, with inquiry

communities supporting our back. It also means it is our duty to cultivate critical inquiry by

using inquiry-based pedagogy, which could utilize current literacy and enhance literacy

levels.

References:

Barton, D. & Hamilton, M. (2000). Literacy practices. In D. Barton, M. Hamilton, & Ivanič,

R. (Eds.), Situated literacies: Reading and writing in context (pp. 7-14). London:

Routledge.

Campano, & Ghiso, M. P. (2011). Immigrant Students as Cosmopolitan Intellectuals. In

Handbook of research on children’s and young adult literature / (pp. 164–176).

Routledge,.

Campano, G., Honeyford, M. A., Sánchez, L., & Zanden, S. V. (2010). Ends in

themselves:Theorizing the practice of university-school partnering through

horizontalidad. Language Arts, 87(4), 277-286. Retrieved from

https://proxy.library.upenn.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest

com.proxy.library.upenn.edu/scholarly-journals/ends-themselves-theorizing-practice

university/docview/196874390/se-2
Cochran-Smith, M. & Lytle, S. L. (2021) Inquiry in the age of data: a commentary, Teaching

Education, 32:1, 99-107, DOI: 10.1080/10476210.2020.1868142

Ghiso, M. P., Martínez-Álvarez, P., Clayton, E., Álvarez, F., & Gutiérrez, M. (2019). Critical

inquiry in the literacy curriculum: The community as a transnational resource.

Language Arts, 97(2), 97-104. Retrieved from

https://proxy.library.upenn.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly

journals/critical-inquiry-literacy-curriculum-community-as/docview/2313021630/se-2

Maloch, B. & Horsey, M. (2013). Living Inquiry: Learning From and About Informational

Texts in a Second-Grade Classroom. The Reading Teacher, 66( 6), 475– 485.

10.1002/TRTR.1152

Simon, R. (2015). “I’m Fighting My Fight, and I’m Not Alone Anymore”: The Influence of

Communities of Inquiry. English Education, 48(1), 41–71.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/24570910

Simon, & Campano, G. (2013). Activist Literacies: Teacher Research as Resistance to the

“Normal Curve.” Journal of Language & Literacy Education., 9(1), 21–39.

Simon, R. (2013). "Starting with What Is": Exploring Response and Responsibility to Student

Writing through Collaborative Inquiry. English in Education, 45, 115-146.

Sipe, & Brightman, A. E. (2009). Young Children’s Interpretations of Page Breaks in

Contemporary Picture Storybooks. Journal of Literacy Research : JLR., 41(1), 68

103. https://doi.org/10.1080/10862960802695214