Looking ahead
A
Mind Map |
A good journey begins by collecting information, and how the final destination is experienced can be altered and enriched by the kinds of information obtained. As in a traditional sense, a traveller might consult maps, guidebooks, people who have been there before, histories and cultural information to determine sights worth seeing, places worth staying, food worth eating, and possible dangers or problems, so should an inquiry learner access quality information through a number of sources.
To inform my journey, I used expert search techniques and advice from fellow travellers - each on their own journey - to access the information needed to inform me of my destination. A valuable tool to begin this search was a mind map of search terms. |
Beyond the search terms, it also helped visualise one of the striking complexities of my journey; the juxtaposition of a learner-centred approach in a traditionally teacher-centred context. Being new to inquiry learning myself though, I decided to follow up on the first question as being the more general and introductory of the three. The other questions I kept in the periphery of my mind in case I came across anything useful.
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Must-sees
Search Strategies
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These then were the essential characteristics of the sights I wished to see:
1. They should pertain to inquiry learning. 2. They should pertain to learning languages in a foreign language context. 3. They should provide valuable insights into effective pedagogical practices that could be used with secondary school students. 4. They should have an essence of quality that renders them authentic and trustworthy. As part of my own inquiry approach, I tried a number of different search strategies to ensure I found what I wanted and to explore which strategies are effective. For each search engine, I started with simple combinations of terms, then increased the complexity.
By using these strategies, I found a number of leads but many were either an inappropriate context or weren't of good quality. These included articles about inquiry learning in foreign language classrooms but did not emphasise how it assisted language acquisition. This led me to use some additional strategies:
One problem I found though, was that I could not remember which terms and operators I had used, and it often seemed I was covering the same ground. |
Google
& Google Scholar |
These search engines actually resulted in similar findings, possibly because of the same keywords used by both academics and educators. I did notice that by changing my question into the more informal title "How I use inquiry in my second language classroom" brought two of the more useful non-academic sources to the top.
Using the same search terms without quote marks or Boolean operators resulted in similar hits, with the exception of some very big English language teaching sites and some irrelevant material (narrative inquiry in foreign language settings). This demonstrated the usefulness of these operators. |
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ProQuest
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In ProQuest, I selected databases related to education and humanities. I then consulted both the thesauri for ProQuest and ERIC, and found that in ERIC "inquiry based learning" or "active learning" and "second language (learning OR teaching)" were search terms for my primary keywords. In ProQuest however, "foreign language instruction", "second language learning" and "inquiry method" were used. Knowing that each database used different words was enlightening but it also complicated my search as I then had to cycle through each variation. Actually, I'm not sure that using those keywords actually improved my searches significantly, possibly because 'second language' includes learning language in many contexts. I also tried limiting my searches by subject which was somewhat useful.
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Social Media
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To search social media I used Tweetdeck, setting it up with combined keywords such as "inquiry" and "foreign language". While I found some interesting resources, they were mostly generic inquiry resources posted by foreign language teachers. It was interesting to see this, as it is evidence that inquiry learning is being considered in these contexts, but they were not the specific sights I wanted to see. Additionally, there were some resources that did not match the particularities of my own context; they were English as an additional/second language, and mostly for young learners. As such, no resources found exclusively from this search made it into my curated collection.
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Detours along the way
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Every good journey has unexpected detours caused by chance encounters or further thinking. Often the journey itself changes the ideas you have, which in turn changes the course of the journey. My research question itself changed in response to the information I was finding; it became more focused on my particular context.
At one point, when I was having a hard time finding just a few more articles, I began to follow up on some potential leads. These included web quests and project-based learning, and I wondered how each one fit, or could fit, into the inquiry approach. Each opened up a whole new vista though, and while I will travel those paths one day, for now, I decided to continue on the path I was already on. As for surprises, I was intrigued that a large proportion of the articles I found, and chose, were from Colombia. I wonder why? Anyway, while I believe this material relevant to my first question, it possibly necessitates further inquiry into my third. |
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Lessons learnt
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It is probably the case that using all of the approaches I did (not all are documented) was not entirely 'expert'. I could draw parallels to many of my wanderings; not booking ahead, walking down little lanes, covering the same territory repeatedly for not having a map. I remember once, I left my hotel in a disorienting Middle Eastern city, forgetting to make note of the hotel name or address, and became completely lost. Only, once I had eventually found it again, I knew I could never be lost in that city again. I know that's not the preferred approach to academic research. I know it because of the time I lost by doing it; seeing the same Google results repeatedly is not the same as the sights, smells, and ever-changing details of a foreign city.
So, besides becoming more familiar with a range of search strategies, this journey has taught me two main lessons: 1. Plan searches ahead and check them off so that the same ground is not covered more than once. 2. Use results from successful searches to refine future searches. |