Laying the Ground Work for Integrative Thinking

One of the challenges of shifting to Inquiry-Based Learning, is contending with students who hold a different model of school in their heads. For many years students have been trained to receive lessons, meet the expectations of success criteria and have teachers plan for them.  Some become uncomfortable  and uncertain when the rules of the game change and behaviours that have served them well in the past are no longer useful.

Given the tremendous success of last year, I was ready to begin this year by teaching the tools of Integrative Thinking right from the start.  It did not take me long to realize, however, that students cannot suddenly begin working in a new model.  Part of the success of Integrative Thinking last year was because it came at the end of the year after students had had extensive experience with Inquiry.  A great deal of trust had been established between students and myself through our year long exploration of what it means to be a learner. A colleague reminded me,  however, of my frustration at the beginning of  the year with the silence of those same children and their reluctance to engage. We had to ease into Inquiry and it took time for students to trust the learning environment we were co-constructing.

I should not have been surprised that when I introduced students to causal modeling,using the "How does homework not get done?" prompt,  they had difficulty moving beyond superficial causation. When I asked them the next day why this task had been so challenging, they suggested that they are not usually asked to think at a deeper level. They did recognize that the tool would be useful for digging deeper; they just didn't really understand how to use it. What I saw was that they didn't have the necessary discussion skills to persist. It was a huge moment of recognition on my part that these children need to learn the language of not merely group work, but collaboration and that they need time and experience forming and expressing complex thoughts.

And so we are beginning at the beginning. I have altered my intended path and am meeting students at their starting point.

I turned to a text that we'd used last year -  Gary Marcus'  Moral Machines.  This is a challenging text, written for adults, so pre-teaching vocabulary was essential.  I picked out words that might be barriers to comprehension and students worked in pairs to determine meaning. Then we read the opening paragraphs. Just as they did last year, students exploded into conversation.

My job at this point was to provide structure for the expressing of opinions so that the entire class's thinking is deepened. On opposite walls in my classroom is a Value Line. On one wall it says, "Strongly Agree". On the other, "Strongly Disagree".  I wrote a statement on the board - machines should be allowed to make life and death decisions for humans - and asked students to place themselves along the line. It is often surprising for students to see where their peers stand on the line. Students then had to explain their positions. As students listened they were free to change positions on the line as long as they could explain why. It was remarkable to watch the transformation of students as for the first time this year they began to think in greater depth and were willing to take the time to find the words to express those thoughts with greater precision.  We actually ran out of time, yet students weren't finished with the topic. I pointed out that they had maintained focus for over an hour. This surprised them.

The next day we had lab time and I introduced students to google docs and the commenting tool. They copied the article into a doc and had time to formalize their thinking in writing.

Now it was time to begin the process of learning to work in collaborative groups.  We used the next section of the article - military robots- as the entry point.

I wrote the following statement on the board: "Military robots should replace humans" and this time handed the value line out on paper. I asked students to mark their spots on the line with the date and explain their stances. We will return to this line frequently over the next few days so that as students construct knowledge they can mark their shifts in thinking. They need to become aware that as they learn, their stances will change. Students shared their positions with partners and then as a class.

Next I had students examine their schema. Students who were in my class last year were familiar with the term, but to others it was new. I was thrilled that last years students remembered not just the term but that drawing upon prior knowledge is useful. After clarification of the term, students took a few minutes to record their schema. Some students had no schema, some had extensive schema. This was difficult for some because not having any schema was stressful. They are so used to having to produce the expected answer so not having schema seemed like a failure. It took time for them to understand that all they are doing is becoming aware of their starting points. We discussed the differences between opinion, fact and the imaginary within their schema. We were ready to form groups.

Helping students understand the value and dynamics of collaborative groups is essential, particularly when there is a wide range of skills, learning and behaviour challenges. Students need to know that when they enter the workforce they will be expected to interact successfully with colleagues and clients and that they will have very little choice over who those people might be.

The first task of the groups was to identify reasons why conflict arises and to plan for how they will handle it. I want to them to understand that conflict is a natural part of of group process but that they have a great deal of control over how those conflicts get resolved.  I can tell that it is early in the year and that strategies for handling conflict are limited. As groups learn to work together they will become better at developing specific strategies.  When we discussed ignoring people who are arguing, some students realized that that is not really a strategy. The conflict won't be resolved and the group goals won't be met.

That process took one 50 minute period. It was the next day that we returned to our topic: military robots. We discussed some of the implications of  military robots and at the end of 5 minutes, all students were curious and were ready to begin finding answers to their questions. They moved to computers, tablets and books to begin constructing knowledge.

After 40 minutes they returned to share what they had learned with their groups. The entire point of this process of course, was not to learn about military robots - that was merely a vehicle for learning collaboration skills. When we discussed how well the groups had functioned, students realized that they were not that good at working with each other:  off-task behaviours, interrupters, lone-wolfs and silent group members were a problem. Each group agreed on a goal for the next day.

Finally I gave students copies of the Learning Skills section of the Ontario report card and asked them to select one statement from the Independent Work section and one from Collaboration and explain how the work they had completed today developed those skills.

Over the next few weeks we will continue to use curriculum as a tool for developing Learning Skills.