We questioned during discussion whether there is a connection between doing inquiry and reading apprenticeship and building student ability to deal with ambiguity. I think there is a strong connection:

  • To build inquiries you have to build your questioning skills which "uncovers" knowledge
  • A good inquiry has no right answer, so the time you spend helps you feel comfortable exploring a question with no answer
  • Building curriculum around inquiry shows students that their thinking is valuable and school is more than choosing the "rightest" answer on a multiple choice test
  • The apprenticeship model is based on understanding your own messy reading process which validates making guesses, testing them and working with the unknown
  • The apprenticeship model sets teachers in the expert role and then shows students the process that experts go through when they face amibiguity and so debunks the expert always knows the answer myth in favor of expert knows what to do about a question paradigm
  • The apprenticeship model values mistake-making and risk-taking which is part of problem-solving

This is one of the reasons I am so fired up to learn more. In my discipline, I've heard it said that the key skill missing is problem-solving, which I think is another way of saying "dealing with ambiguity." I think this is partly a result of the class-based educational programs our students come from. Students coming from poverty schools (and schools that embraced No Child Left Behind instruction) have been shut out of creativity and critical thinking for 12 years and when they get to us they need support for reclaiming their natural curiosity and problem-solving abilities.

The good news, I think, is that problem-solvng is what humans are hard-wired to do. It's what distinguishes us from other species. I see our role as giving students an opportunity to reveal their own problem-solving abilities. When you think of how many problems our students solve in a day, a month, etc. (financing school, juggling work and family, transportation issues, big life transitions, homeless, hungry, recovering from addiction, etc.) you know they have these abilities, but you can see in the classroom that they aren't yet able to transfer them to academic critical thinking.

Last modified: Saturday, April 19, 2014, 1:15 PM