Free Inquiry 101
“Free Inquiry” seems to be one of the latest — and vaguest — buzzwords in education. Here’s what it is, why it matters, and how you can adapt the process for your own students.
Inquiry, especially “free inquiry,” has taken my district by storm this year. What started with a single professional development seminar led by inquiry guru Trevor Mackenzie quickly spiraled into dozens of workshops on everything from provocations to performance criteria to furniture placement (seriously). But one aspect of inquiry that continues to befuddle my fellow educators involves the term “free inquiry.”
After six months of research and, more importantly, implementation in the classroom, I’ve come to define free inquiry as…
a process in which students collaborate to develop and present innovative solutions to real-world challenges of their choice.
This definition contains a few key terms and concepts that require closer examination.
- Collaborate: While students can individually engage in the free inquiry process, they are more likely to enjoy the experience when they’re encouraged to collaborate with peers who share similar interests.
- Develop and present: Students are tasked not only with developing unique solutions, but with effectively presenting those solutions to an authentic audience.
- Innovative solutions: The outcome of the free inquiry process goes beyond the traditional research paper. Rather than sharing the ideas and proposals of other change agents, students are challenged to innovate and create their own research-based solutions.
- Real-world challenges of their choice: In the free inquiry process, teachers are no longer the arbiters of research topics and strategies. Instead, they empower students to choose issues and pathways that are relevant and meaningful to them and their communities.
Together, these aspects of the free inquiry process promote what I call the “Triple A’s” of engagement: agency, or elevation of students’ voices; authenticity, or fidelity to students’ interests; and finally, applicability, or pertinence to students’ goals. But even when teachers understand the what and why of free inquiry, many are confused and even intimidated by the how.
Based on my experiences at the OpenCitizen Gathering and partnership with Beagle Learning, I implemented the following steps to lead my students through a nine-week free inquiry journey, which culminated in a competition attended by teachers and administrators, parents and caregivers, and community members — not to mention the actualization of students’ ideas to improve our campus. While you might not have nine weeks to devote to the free inquiry process, you can adapt these steps to create a timeline and process that fits the needs of your students.
Week 1
Students individually choose a topic that interests them.
Before students arrived, I wrote down the following topics on poster paper that I had distributed throughout the classroom: art, education, environment, health, justice, and technology. As I greeted my students at the door, I instructed them to sit by a topic that piqued their interest. If your students want to propose different topics, let them! After all, choice is an essential component of the free inquiry process.
Students individually list as many problems about the topic as they can.
Once students were gathered by their chosen topics, I gave them 90 seconds to individually list as many problems about the topic as they could.
Students individually turn each problem statement into a question.
I initially gave students another 90 seconds to turn their problem statements into questions, which turned out to be a huge underestimate. Going forward, I plan to ask my students how much time they think they need to complete this step before I set the timer — after all, this process involves empowering students to make their own decisions.
Students individually circle their favorite question from their own lists.
Some students chose to place exclamation points next to their favorite questions. The more excitement, the better!
Within each group, students share their favorite questions and why they chose them.
As students discussed, I sat down with each group to listen — just listen — to students’ questions and explanations. My goal was to reinforce the idea that 1) my students were in the driver’s seat of the free inquiry process and 2) their ideas didn’t have to be polished to be valuable.
Within each group, students vote on *one* favorite question to explore together and copy it onto their poster.
A few groups decided to create a new question that incorporated aspects of each group member’s initial question. What matters is that students end up with a question that interests every person in the group.
Within each group, students assess the “unGoogleability” of their “goal question.”
Before they ventured into the free inquiry process, most of my students had limited experience with generating — much less answering — what I like to call “unGoogleable” questions: those that are unique, meaningful, open-ended, and research-driven. I encouraged my students to evaluate their questions using these criteria and, if necessary, make changes.
Week 2
Within each group, students discuss the following questions to continue refining their goal question:
- What does our question assume to be true? Are these assumptions true? How do we know? If these assumptions aren’t true, how should we rewrite our question? (I want to thank the participants at my recent iConsortium workshop for helping me to adapt this question for younger learners by asking, “What do you think you know about this question?”)
- How else could our question be worded? Consider each word in your question: Are there synonyms that could be more precise/impactful? As an English teacher, I appreciated the authentic opportunity for students to expand their vocabulary and consider the nuances of word choice (e.g., “build” vs. “construct,” “foster” vs. “engender”).
Within each group, students refine their goal question and discuss their question-writing experience with the class.
This gave students additional presentation practice and helped them to see some of the common challenges involved in “narrowing down” the scope of their research.
Within each group, students create “group norms.”
Throughout the free inquiry process, I encouraged groups to collaborate in ways that felt natural to them—in other words, I did not assign roles (if adults don’t work in teams with singular jobs like “speaker” or “recorder,” then why should students?). However, I did ask students to create group norms to guide their interactions throughout the free inquiry process. Here are some examples.
- Assume best intentions.
- Challenge thinking.
- Ensure that everyone’s voice is heard.
At the end of each week, I asked students to discuss their fidelity to these norms and how they could improve their collaboration for the week ahead.
Weeks 3–5
Within each group, students research their goal question.
This is where my students and I dove into the more traditional elements of a research project, including navigating scholarly databases, evaluating source bias and credibility, and summarizing key findings. Over the course of three weeks, students created (and received peer feedback on) multiple “research summaries” like the one below.
Individually, students synthesize their most important findings into infographics to share with their group members.
As an English teacher, I’m responsible for helping my students to acquire a multitude of reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language skills. In recent years, however, a fifth domain has emerged in which I want to assist my students in demonstrating competency: digital composition. Toward that end, I modeled how to use Canva so that students would be able to create infographics to more effectively share their key research findings with their group members.
Weeks 6–8
Within each group, students develop an innovative solution.
Once they shared these key findings, students had three weeks to create and delegate task lists, collect and analyze data, and speak with professors and subject matter experts to develop innovative solutions for their chosen problems. For many students, this stage of the free inquiry process turned out to be the most challenging.
After years of dutifully following step-by-step instructions and templates provided by their teachers, some of my students expressed confusion, annoyance, and even anger about our sudden foray into innovation. Instead of dismissing their concerns or stepping in to solve their problems, I responded by engaging them in conversations about “productive struggle,” the evidence-based notion that increased difficulty often leads to more efficient learning. Ultimately, students’ ability to normalize and reframe negative emotions will help them to overcome the inevitable setbacks they encounter when taking on new and challenging tasks.
Week 9
As a group, students present their solutions to stakeholders.
During the last week of the free inquiry process, students presented their projects to stakeholders (including teachers and administrators, parents and caregivers, and community members) at an after-school event. To demonstrate my commitment to the concept of “process over product,” I declined to grade students’ final presentations; instead, I recruited a panel of judges comprised of teachers and administrators to give feedback to each group on their data analysis, presentation, and innovation skills.
At the event, groups presented simultaneously to rotating groups of guests and judges so that they had multiple opportunities to “show off” their proposals and practice appealing to and engaging various audiences. This informal setup also enabled students to interact with audience members, many of whom asked questions, gave suggestions, and even offered to collaborate.
For many students, the opportunity to join forces with stakeholders and actualize their ideas mattered more than any grades or awards they might have earned — an incredible mindset shift that I’d spent months trying to accomplish. Here’s what a few groups are up to in the weeks after the event.
- Ben A., Elle, Emma, and Ben T. are collaborating with our school’s website manager to create a landing page with up-to-date information about all after-school clubs.
- Tyler, Brooklyn, Laynee, Olivia, Leah, and Dallin are developing a new curriculum for required digital citizenship lessons in tandem with our district’s educational technology department.
- Ali, Rhett, Adam, Boots, and Leslie are meeting with school administrators to give input on next year’s class schedule.
Individually and within their groups, students reflect on their experiences with the free inquiry process.
Because metacognition is a critical element of the learning process, I built in multiple opportunities for students to reflect on their experiences throughout our free inquiry journey. Here are some examples.
- In what ways have you grown as a reader, writer, and/or speaker and listener as a result of this process?
- What emotions did you experience throughout this process? Why?
- If you had the opportunity to continue collaborating on your project, what would you do next? Why?
If you’re not ready to commit to a weeks-long free inquiry process, you can start smaller — even giving students 15 minutes once a week to engage in free inquiry could be the spark that ignites their passion to do something that matters to them. I’ll be honest: scrapping nine weeks of a meticulously planned unit to let my students dive into the free inquiry process was far from an easy decision. But at the end of the day, it’s a risk I’m willing to take so that my students are engaged in doing meaningful work that has the power to change their lives — and the lives of the people around them — for the better.
