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You
are here: The Future: Young Scholars' Inquiry
An Engaging Community of Inquiry
by Paula Fraser and Rich Henry
Abstract
The purpose of The Future: Young Scholars' Inquiry program is to engage students in creating realistic and hopeful visions of the future through a Community of Inquiry. This Community of Inquiry is based on cultivating the intellect of all students through scholarship; critical, ethical, and creative thinking; dialogue; action; and hope.This article describes the pilot program that comprised four seminars, two for fifth grade students, and one each for middle school and high school students. The essential elements of the program are identified, "lessons learned" are shared, and potential future directions are discussed.
This Young Scholars' Inquiry program integrates two critical elements into a powerful, synergistic whole; it combines a very effective methodology, the Community of Inquiry, with a crucial and engaging topic, issues critical to our human future.
Note: An earlier article, "The Future: Young Scholars' Inquiry Seminar Meets the Special Needs of Highly Capable 5th Grade Students," describes the first pilot seminar in greater detail for both the logistics, and the philosophical and methodological foundations of this program. It's available at: http://www.newhorizons.org/spneeds/gifted/fraser henry.htm.
Needs Assessment
Humanity is facing many issues that are on trajectories leading to potential catastrophe. Most of these issues are global issues and the outcomes will affect all of Earth's inhabitants. At the same time, human creativity is leading to better understanding of intricate interrelationships, and human ingenuity is constantly creating new solutions to complex problems.
As stated by the World Future Society (http://www.wfs.org), "By studying the future, people can better anticipate what lies ahead. More importantly, they can actively decide how they will live in the future, by making choices today and realizing the consequences of their decisions."
If humans are to survive and thrive, we must cultivate responsible, competent, ethical citizens within a global community. The Future: Young Scholars' Inquiry program is a "call to action" to engage young minds in understanding global problems and thinking about positive solutions that will contribute to a world and future that work for all.
Tomorrow's leaders and citizens are in school today. This Young Scholars' Inquiry program provides a direct experience of thoughtful engagement around real, critical issues in a collaborative Community of Inquiry. This experience will give students a foundation that will support them in becoming better students, better global citizens, and better leaders.
The challenges are daunting, and yet, the human story is a story of continual breakthrough, meeting challenges with creativity and invention. If we are to successfully meet the global challenges humanity faces, we must foster these capacities, and that calls for better education. This Young Scholars' Inquiry program integrates two critical elements into a powerful, synergistic whole; it combines a very effective methodology, the Community of Inquiry, with a crucial and engaging topic, issues critical to our future.
Program Overview
The Foundation For the Future (FFF) in Bellevue, Washington is dedicated to the increase and diffusion of knowledge concerning the future of humanity. Humanity 3000 is a FFF program of seminars and symposia designed to convene scholars from diverse backgrounds and challenge them to debate the factors affecting the long-term future of humanity. The Future: Young Scholars' Inquiry is adapted from the Humanity 3000 seminar format. (http://www.FutureFoundation.org)
The Inquiry -- Three Essential Questions: These three questions guide the entire inquiry process for The Future: Young Scholars' Inquiry program (adapted from the FFF Humanity 3000 Seminar)
• What are the factors that are critical to the long-term future of humanity?
• What do we know about the past and present of these factors and their most likely trajectories?
• What are the problems and opportunities associated with these factors as they relate to the long-term future of humanity?A Community of Inquiry (definition): Within the classroom context, inquirers co-construct meaning through dialogue and decision-making based on informed critical, ethical, and creative reasoning.
This Community of Inquiry is supported by three fundamental elements: the Content of study - our human future; the Criteria by which we operate - critical and ethical reasoning; and the Process - the path or journey through the program.
Content: As Pogo (created by cartoonist Walt Kelly) said, "The future ain't what it used to be." And, as technologist Alan Kay has said, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." The human story is entering a period of unprecedented change and challenge, and thoughtful engagement with future issues is one of our most important areas of study.
Criteria: Many issues concerning the future are inherently controversial. Most are highly complex, and at the very leading edge of science, so clear cut consensus has not yet been reached. Many are politically charged, with changes in public policy clearly favoring or disfavoring different interest groups. It is essential to have ways of considering and evaluating alternatives that can constructively move us beyond mere opinion.
Michael Scriven and Richard Paul, in a statement for the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking Instruction (http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/definingCT.shtml), describe critical thinking as
the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.
Critical and ethical reasoning skills are an essential skill for competent citizens of the future. This Young Scholars' Seminar emphasizes the development and application of these skills.
Process: This program follows a specifically designed path, with each student, individually and together, completing a "journey." In broad terms, the process is: 1) research deeply into a narrow topic, 2) present one's research to one's peers, 3) collaborate to synthesize, synergize, and understand how one's topic informs and is informed by a more comprehensive "whole" understanding, 4) reflect to maximize learning, and 5) share one's learning in outreach to "real world" leaders and policy makers.
Classroom Methodology and Students' Experiences
One-day Seminars serve as the focusing event for the entire program. Activities can be usefully categorized as 1) pre-Seminar, 2) the Seminar itself, and 3) post-Seminar.
Pre-Seminar: A foundation for the Community of Inquiry is built, including emphasis on critical, ethical, and creative thinking; interdisciplinary approaches; collaborative processes; sharing responsibility for individual and group learning; and strengthening elements of the affective domain. These tools are then applied to the specific topic of the program, the future.
Specific pre-Seminar activities include individual pre-assessments based on the three essential questions; conducting surveys in the larger community; collectively identifying major concepts relevant to a study of the future; and classroom presentations by experts and mentors. All of these activities set the stage for the major pre-Seminar activity, the individual research paper. After completing their research papers, including writing an abstract and bio, students create PowerPoint slides to accompany their presentations at the Seminar.
The Seminar: The Seminar is a day-long event, modeled closely on the Foundation For the Future Humanity 3000 seminars for eminent scholars. The day comprises four interwoven activities. First, each scholar presents the results of his or her research. Second, through a group collaborative process, including one-with-one interviews, small group process and plenary prioritization, all potential issues are prioritized to identify the three problems that the group considers the most important. Third, these issues are addressed in three rounds of facilitated fishbowl discussions. In each round, one-third of the scholars take a primary role in discussing the issue, while two-thirds listen, take notes, and join the discussion part way through. Fourth, all participants engage in reflection on the day and offer summary comments and observations.
Post-Seminar: Following the Seminar, students write reflective essays on the entire project. To extend their learning with outreach to the greater world community, student scholars send their research findings and reflective essays to leading scientists; state, national and international agencies and institutions; and private individuals. This educational outreach and advocacy has been very well received; in the past many recipients have taken the time to write lengthy responses to the students.
Program Highlights from Three Educational Levels
5th Grade
The Young Scholars' program was first piloted with a seminar in June 2005 with Paula Fraser's 5th grade class, 27 students, from Stevenson Elementary in Bellevue, WA. We repeated the program with Paula's current class, 25 students, in February 2006. Similar outstanding results were achieved, validating the impact of the program. Both of these seminars were held at Foundation For the Future offices. The professional and scholarly setting contributed to the "special" nature of the program for the students, and the quality of their interactions rose to meet and exceed high expectations.
One small, yet significant change was that students in the second seminar worked in groups of two or three to co-present their research, instead of individually as in the first pilot. This allowed fewer, longer presentations that could go into greater depth, and provided the added learning benefit of small group collaboration.
Middle School
The largest expansion of the program involved Debra Benzinger's three classes, thirty-five students each, of combined 6th, 7th, and 8th graders from Odle Middle School in Bellevue. These seminars met in June 2006.
The seminars were split into two days, with students making their presentations on Day One within their regular 110-minute double period. Although presenting in groups of two or three, it was very challenging to fit all presentations into the allotted time.
For Day Two, all 105 students met in the library. We "shuffled the deck" so students worked mostly with others who were not their usual classmates, in three parallel groups of 35 students each. The plenary opening and closing activities involved all 105 students. For the rest of the day's activities, each group of 35 students acted as a single seminar. One-with-one interviews, small group discussion, and issue prioritization worked well. Even though it was a bit noisy in the library, these processes were highly engaging and effective. However, the fishbowls were not as effective as in prior seminars. We identified at least two factors. First, 35 students was simply too large a group for this format. One-third of the students, e.g. 12, was too large for an open discussion with too little time divided too many ways to ensure active participation by all. And the fishbowl was also less engaging for the 25 students not in the primary role. The noise level in the library exacerbated the situation. Although the fishbowl discussions were still quite good, they were less effective than with either the 5th grade or high school seminars.
High School
Also in June, we held a seminar with Lisa Dosset's Advanced Placement Physics class from Interlake High School in Bellevue. This was a very powerful seminar with the level of academic rigor and insight quite impressive. Because this was a small class, just fifteen students, every student was thoroughly engaged, and specific points or arguments could be given ample attention.
Intergenerational Dialogue
One of the high points of this year's program was our capstone event where all students from all three levels and their parents were invited to an evening of reflection and celebration. We began by showing Cosmic Origins, a 15 minute film created by the Foundation For the Future that captures the 13.7 billion year story of the universe, with humans at the "now" moment of that unfolding story. This film provided a common basis for the conversations that came next. (The film can be viewed on the internet: http://www.futurefoundation.org/videos/index.htm).
Adults and students then interviewed each other about their views on our future, using an interview process known as Appreciative Inquiry. (For more information, see "Leadership at Every Level: Appreciative Inquiry in Education": http://www.newhorizons.org/trans/henry.htm.) The dialogue was energetic, rich, and deep. A number of parents commented on the students' acumen, and how the conversation opened their minds to thoughtful consideration of issues that will affect all of our futures. One parent remarked, "[She] rides in my carpool. We've never had a substantive conversation before. We did tonight, and I know we will have more in the future." This created a great opportunity for meaningful conversations that span the generations and that can have real impact on how our future unfolds.
Future Directions
The pilot seminars have proven the effectiveness of this program with elementary, middle school, and high school students. Next steps include creating curricular support materials that will allow the expansion of the program to touch many more students.
Increasing emphasis on test score accountability often limits curricular flexibility, sometimes preventing the introduction of programs like The Future: Young Scholars' Inquiry, even though it's programs like this that engage students so deeply that are critical for real educational success. Our intention is to create a flexible framework that ensures inclusion of the essential elements while allowing maximum flexibility, so this program can be easily adapted and "fit in" to a variety of educational contexts.
Another model we are exploring is to use technology to create a "virtual" community of inquiry. Rather than limit the program to whole, intact classrooms, this model would allow individual students dispersed over a geographical area to work independently and together for pre-seminar and post-seminar activities, while coming together face-to-face for the actual seminar.
A small extension of the virtual seminar concept offers an international community of inquiry. Imagine classrooms across the Earth linked through asynchronous and synchronous technology for dialogue around our collective future. We are exploring these possibilities with groups such as UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation) and IEARN (International Education and Resources Network).
We are actively seeking grant support to allow these kinds of program extensions.
Conclusion
The Future: Young Scholars' Inquiry is a powerful, exciting, and effective framework for learning. It invites active participation, engagement, and dialogue among all participants, around a topic of great importance: creating a future that works for all.
Paula Fraser has been a teacher of middle level students for over twenty years. Her mission in the classroom is to assist students in creating a community of inquiry where academic excellence as well as critical and ethical reasoning are fostered. She has made many presentations nationally and internationally, and authored articles on this approach. She is the recipient of several educational awards including the Christa McAuliffe Award for Excellence in Education in Washington State and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Teaching. She may be reached at fraserp@bsd405.org
Rich Henry is founder and president of UnifiedField Associates, a consulting firm dedicated to helping organizations create their best possible futures through appreciative and strength-based approaches. He is especially interested in applying appreciative and strength-based methods for improvement of education. He is a national and international presenter and facilitator. He has taught at every level from 8th grade through graduate school and has significant experience in education administration. He can be contacted at RichHenry@uni-field.com, 425-452-1134, or UnifiedField Associates, 241 130th Ave NE, Bellevue WA 98005.
©July 2006 New Horizons for Learning
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