Inquiry vs Projects! The Cage Match of the Century

I got a feeling (ooh-ooooh) that a lot of people think of school wrong. Most people, when they think of school, inevitably find a child’s-eye view of their own experiences: the teacher speaks, the student listens, and learning happens. Except, it doesn’t. The lecture—the stereotypical teaching model—is almost shockingly bad at getting most people to learn. That’s why many schools are moving away from it, and into more interactive models.

            Two such types are Project-based and Inquiry-based learning.

            “Now, wait a second,” a reader might say, “what’s the difference?”

            Well, astounding person who is interacting with the text, the difference is this: Project-based-learning centers on the students learning through doing a project, while Inquiry-based-learning centers on the questions that students ask and want to learn about. There’s definitely some overlap between the two, but let’s look at some examples in a Social Studies classroom to figure them out.

Example 1) Trade Routes

         Let’s say that a history class is focusing on ancient trade routes. While the teacher could wax at length on the importance of the Silk Road and the trans-Saharan trade through Timbuktu, this particular educator finds that idea really dully. Truly tedious. Absolutely, incomprehensibly boring. Instead, our outstanding exemplar of modern educational principles decides to try out either a project-based or an inquiry-based lesson. After much research and thought, our pensive protagonist lists out his discoveries in hopes of deciding the best approach for the cerebrums of his classroom.

1)   The Project

a.    Students are given 20 trade-route cities. They must research each, place them on a map, draw a line between them to show the most common way of getting there, and write three facts about each.

2)   The Inquiry

a.    Students are given three short primary sources about the Silk Road. They will then be asked to come up with questions, and research the answers.

3)   The Combination

a.    Students will be shown a brief documentary about the trans-Saharan trade, and will then be asked to come up with their own questions about trade routes in general. They will then research the answers to their questions, and be asked to present their findings to the class in the form of a geographical map.

First, a round of applause for our brave explorer (thunderous applause)—now, as the casual observer might note, there’s a lot of difference between the three here. That’s kind of the point. After all, if you’re trying to convince someone that there might really be four species of giraffe instead of just one (http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/37328191), you’re not going to start by saying,

         “Well, they’re all giraffes, mammals, and have really long necks.” For one, you should have mentioned Lamark (I’m famous for being so close, but so wrong). For another, if your goal is to convince people how something is different, setting up the similarities is irrelevant to the end point, and might even be counter productive.

However, because I’ve set up the differences, a brief overview of the similarities: 1) Both methods involve a classroom…usually. Learning shouldn’t always involve a classroom, but let’s get real. 2) They both need context to work. It’s possible to drop a student into the middle of a lecture, and have them get just as much out of it as anyone else. Drop a student in the middle of a project, or—the horror—sit them down, and ask them what questions they have about the totality of human knowledge, and they’re liable to not get far. Context shows them where they need to work, and gives direction to the kinds of questions they have. Lastly, 3) they both involve a lot of student input. Students drive projects, while student interest powers inquiry like an RC car hooked up to a nuclear reactor. Even an inquiry-based lecture (my students like blood and guts, the Vikings tortured using blood and guts, therefore I shall lecture about Viking torture) requires some amount of student input to come to fruition. And student input drives motivation, which drives self-efficacy, which drives learning.

So, to summarize: Lecture bad, student involvement good.