Inquiry-Based Learning for Race, Racism, and Anti-Racism Education
Overview
Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) is a branch of active learning design which prompts students with questions or scenarios with minimal background information. Instead of receiving information via lecture, students are asked to practice deductive reasoning and problem-solving. IBL can be more rewarding and engaging than traditional teaching techniques. IBL is very effective for teaching certain concepts, but it is not universally applicable to all educational fields.
What does inquiry-based learning look like?
- Students are assigned a task (Construct a tower out of popsicle sticks and glue)
- They are given peramitters to guide their learning (the tower must be at least 1 foot tall and stand freely)
- They are given resources to experiment and uncover knowledge (popsicle sticks, glue, time, and collaboration)
With limited instruction, students are prompted to use their own research and experimentation to construct knowledge. By working together with other students sharing the same task, they can observe their approaches, learn from their techniques, and develop their own practical application of the assigned task. By the end of the IBL assignment, the students will have built a deeper understanding of the course content than if they had been simply told to accomplish the task. In the tower building example, students learned about structural design principles, and are more likely to want to learn further than if they had spent the same amount of time being lectured about the topic.
How might inquiry-based learning teach high-schoolers about race, racism, and anti-racism?
Inquiry-based learning can be highly effective for teaching hands-on topics like physics, chemistry, mathematics, and so on. While there is room for IBL in social sciences and humanities topics, there is a degree of sensitivity required when educating about a topic as politically contentious and deeply personal as racism.
The goal of this learning experience is to debunk some deeply ingrained myths about race, to explore the ways daily life if fundementally altered for racialized people and deracialized people, and to educate learners on the importance of practicing anti-racism.
IBL demands that students spend a significant amount of time developing a smaller range of knowledge. IBL is also best practiced in group settings with hands-on applications. These factors make IBL a poor fit for this education initiative, because there is a substantial amount of information to convey to learners in a limited time, and the means of this course make in-person activities impractical.
Optional reading: an example of IBL being used to teach about “race.”
I have linked an example of inquiry-based learning being used to debunk the myth that “race” is genetic. This video is an excellent resource to include in our unit of “the history of race”, but as it is only one unit of our ciriculum, the video itself would be a more adiquite source of education that the experiment being practiced within.
Citations
California Newsreel. (2014, April 24). Race – the power of an illusion [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8MS6zubIaQ
Friesen, S., & Scott, D. (2013). Inquiry-based learning: A review of the research literature. Alberta Ministry of Education, 32, 1-32.
Orosz, G., Németh, V., Kovács, L., Somogyi, Z., & Korom, E. (2022). Guided inquiry-based learning in secondary-school chemistry classes: a case study. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 24(1), 50–70. https://doi.org/10.1039/d2rp00110a
