Developing an “inquiry habit of mind”

For inquiry to become part of a practitioner's professional being (Reid, 2004), he or she needs to develop what Earl and Katz (2002) call an “inquiry habit of mind”. People with an inquiry habit of mind “develop a mind-set of being in charge of their own destiny and creating or locating the knowledge that will be useful for them along the way” (page 1010). They engage in questioning, reflecting, and decision-making, using data and evidence as critical elements in the process.

We consider inquiry to be a habit of mind; it is a dynamic iterative process with feedback loops that organize ideas towards clearer directions and decisions. By drawing on information in this way, inquirers move closer and closer to understanding the phenomenon of interest.

Earl and Katz, 2002, pages 1010–1011

A person with an inquiry habit of mind:

• values deep understanding
• reserves judgment and has a tolerance for ambiguity
• takes a range of perspectives and systematically poses increasingly focused questions (Earl and Katz, 2002).

Robinson (2003) argues that educators work from “implicit, yet powerful, assumptions that determine how [they] teach” (page 27). These assumptions constitute their “theories of practice” (Argyris and Schön, 1974). Spillane, Reiser, and Reimer (2002) explain this in terms of the sense-making process.

The fundamental nature of cognition is that new information is always interpreted in light of what is already understood (Brewer and Nakamura, 1984; Greeno, Collins, and Resnick, 1996). An individual’s prior knowledge and experience, including tacitly held expectations and beliefs about how the world works, serve as a lens influencing what the individual notices in the environment and how the stimuli that are noticed are processed, encoded, organized, and subsequently interpreted.

page 394

Robinson (2003) argues that because teachers’ theories of practice have such powerful consequences for students, they have a professional and ethical responsibility to investigate their adequacy.

Good practice requires the ability to interrupt automatic classroom and institutional routines in order to inquire, in a sufficiently rigorous way, into the adequacy of their assumptions about the nature of students’ needs and how to meet them.

page 28

Robinson also speaks of the need for educators to take on attitudes of openness, intellectual curiosity, and a willingness to see things in new ways, along with an understanding that all research and all practice proceeds from a particular frame of reference. These are all characteristics of a person with an “inquiry habit of mind”.

A number of researchers report findings that support Robinson’s contention that teachers’ assumptions can affect the evidence they notice, the way in which they interpret it, and the teaching experiences they provide as a result. This can have serious consequences for students. For example, Bishop, Berryman, Tiakiwai, and Richardson (2003) find that teachers’ deficit theorising about Māori students leads to low expectations and to teachers collecting evidence to confirm these beliefs. This creates a downward-spiralling, self-fulfilling prophecy of low achievement and failure for Māori students. Timperley and Parr (2004) note findings that many teachers, having perceived a child as a low achiever, will not change their teaching style or the nature of the conversations they have with that child, even when the child has achieved at a higher level.

All educators – not just teachers – share a responsibility to develop an inquiry habit of mind, including questioning their theories of practice, and so the inquiry process must begin with the inquirer critically reflecting on their own beliefs and assumptions. This involves asking hard questions about the lens through which they select and interpret data and the impact their decisions may have on the people with whom they work. It may also involve adding another lens, as Bishop et al. (2003) did when they interviewed Māori students about their thoughts on how best to improve their educational achievement.

While evidence must always be interpreted for the particular context in which the educator is working, Reid (2004) stresses the importance of inviting alternative perspectives by involving others.

Inquiry can be an exercise in navel gazing, or it can offer a powerful means to look outwards, engaging with the ideas, innovations and research that are circulating in the wider society. Questions such as: how do others see this issue? what are others doing? what does the research tell us? – are all ways of expanding the possibilities of inquiry.

page 4

Critical reflection and alternative perspectives may lead inquirers to make new interpretations from old data or to understand that they have been using the wrong measures. Reid suggests that critical forms of inquiry involve the following sorts of reflective questions:

• What am I doing in relation to this practice/issue/question/puzzle?
• Why am I doing this? (For example, what theories are expressed in my practice, and whose interests do these represent?)
• What are the effects of these practices? Who is most/least advantaged?
• What alternatives are there to my current practice? Are these likely to result in more just outcomes? What will I do? How will I monitor these changes in order to assess their outcomes? (Adapted from Reid, pages 3–4.)

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