backwards helped each teacher achieve their desired results. It is also important to note that these groups of students had conducted at least one student-centered investigation prior to this, so they were all familiar with the investigation process.


Integrated Teaching: The Student-Directed Investigation


by Jillian Whitehall A


s educators, our goal is to increase the growth of each of our students, foster their passion for learning, and best prepare our students for the real world. While there are many different pedagogies aimed at achieving these goals, I would argue that one of the most important factors is integration. In the context of this paper, integration describes four main elements. The first of which is integrated curriculum, which is a more applicable style of learning that shows students how to connect and apply concepts across various subjects to solve everyday problems (Beane, 1997). In this sense, skills and facts are only taught when they are needed to solve the problem. The second component of integration is in relation to student ideas. It is important that the central topic or problem addressed in each lesson, is rooted in the students’ interests or issues that are relevant to their lives because it makes the lesson more engaging. It is also important that students are able to arrive at their own ideas or conclusions independently of the teacher. Thirdly, integration emphasizes experiential learning. Theorists such as Dewey, Lewin, and Piaget, have all argued that experiences are a central role of the learning process because they help students to: apply their knowledge and understandings to authentic experiences, reflect upon how their mind processes information, and engage socially, mentally, and physically in an activity. Finally, to achieve these factors of integration teachers are best to design their lessons backwards, with the desired result at the forefront. This creates much more intentional lessons that often give students accountability for their learning. A student- directed investigation is a clear example of the elements of integration at work. Thus, I will outline three case studies to show how to facilitate a student-directed investigation and as well as how each incorporated the factors of integration.


Within a student-directed investigation, the students create the investigation question as well as the procedure. Putting this much responsibility into students’ hands can be intimidating, but by preparing scaffolding questions and allotting sufficient time, any group of students can take on the challenge. From the three examples that I will present, one can see that there are different ways to facilitate a student-directed investigation. That said, the teachers in my case studies all noted that they focused upon their end goals before planning their assessments and activities. I believe that this commonality of planning


CLEARING Spring 2018


To start the investigation, teacher number one outlined what makes a question investigable; in other words, something that requires students to collect data and can be tested within a specified timeframe given the tools provided. She then let her students free explore and asked them to write down every investigable question they could think of. Teacher number two followed a slightly different process by picking a central theme for the students to focus on while free exploring, in this case it was water. She gave her students 10 minutes outside to write down everything they observed about water. Teacher number three also prompted her students to hone in on their observation skills while they free explored, but differed by providing the sentence stems, “I notice…” and “I wonder…” As one can see, all three of these teachers provided some sort of structure for their students to follow while exploring outside, whether it was with a theme or sentence stems, but also allowed their students to follow their interests. At this point all three of the instructors brought their students together to share what they had observed outside and started to form their investigation questions. Teacher number one put the students into groups of three and asked them to share amongst each other the investigable questions they wrote down while free exploring. They would them decide upon one question that they would investigate as a small group. Teacher number two brought her whole class together, outlined what made a question investigable, then gave them 10 minutes as a class to come up with as many investigable questions as possible, guided by what they had observed about water. She then asked them to decide upon one question to investigate as a class. Teacher number three brought her students together and asked them three consecutive questions in relation to their observations. “What do scientists do? What types of tools do scientists use? What can these those tools measure?” By the third question the students began to produce many investigable questions, of which the students were asked to narrow down the list to their top three choices and divide into groups of three or four to explore each question.


Each teacher elicited student ideas through scaffolding questions and prompts but allowed the students to guide the direction of the investigation questions. While all strategies required the students to work together, the students of teacher number one and even more so teacher number two, had more practice compromising given that they had to agree upon an investigation question once they were in a predetermined group, rather than being placed in group dependent upon...


This article can be read in its entirety on the CLEARING website at


www.clearingmagazine.org www.clearingmagazine.org Page 31


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