Inquiry Vs. Direct Instruction

It's the fight that doesn't need to be a fight, the debate that is solved in the classroom (as so many classroom strategies are) by finding balance between various techniques rather than an absolute victory by any one.

Are we supposed to use direct instruction, with teachers dispending and explaining to students, or should we use inquiry, letting the students search and find and assemble meaning for themselves? 

In the seventies, in teacher school, we were taught about being the guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage. Which was fine, except...

Have you ever been in a meeting or professional development session, and the leader asks a question as if this is an open-ended inquiry moment, except that it clearly isn't. The presenter either wants you to provide the One Correct Answer so they can move on, or they're expecting another answer only so they can pounce on it with a big gotcha to set up the answer they really want to present.

Or maybe it's one of those staff meetings at which the administrator sets it up as a chance for the group to pick a direction and answer (because then you'll be buy in and be invested) only after some preliminary discussion, it becomes clear that administration is only going to accept one particular answer that they've already decided upon.

Don't you hate that? Guess what. So do students.

If you know what answer you want to hear, just say it. If you aren't really open to students inquiring and discovering their own answer, don't waste their time pretending otherwise.

If you don't know more than the students, why are the taxpayers paying you (I am not a fan of "You know, I learn just as much from the students as they do from me"). Do not leave students wandering in the dark in hopes that they will trip over some insight at some point.

On the other hand, if your classroom involves students sitting like potted plants day after day, like receptacles waiting you to pour forth smartitude, God help you and your students both. If every class is 45 minutes of your voice or copying notes from the board, that's a dry, empty, uninspiring, and ultimately not very fruitful method. 

Trying to discover learning without a foundation of basic facts and knowledge is hopeless, even frustrating. But trying to convey that foundational material through discovery can be tedious and painful.

The answer, as is so often the case in educational X vs. Y debates, is either or both, depending.

Jill Barshay published a great piece in Hechinger looking at a big meta-study of inquiry vs. direct instruction, and I recommend that you read it. Here are some critical points from the piece.

The debate is often marked by people talking past each other. When fans of inquiry and direct instruction argue about which is more effective, they're really arguing about what "effective" means. Barshay also notes that for all the noise, everyone essentially agrees that both are necessary. I also like the caveats she pulled from inquiry defenders about when it works best (nobody thinks fumbling in the dark in an unstructured discovery lesson is a good idea).

Caveat 1: Students need a strong foundation of knowledge and skills before inquiry will work. Soi maybe some direct instruction before launching the inquiry.

Caveat 2: Inquiry works best with lots of feedback and guidance from teachers. I agree completely. Research projects were a regular feature of my classes, and they always worked best when I backed students up with feedback; just a simple "you're on the right track" or not was helpful, and you can do it without trying to force the student to a particular conclusion. This is admittedly a tricky area (Barshay confessed to getting a headache) that can lapse into direct instruction, and lord knows it's hard sometimes to resist the urge to wrest the steering wheel out of the student's hand and declare "Just do THIS!" The right amount of guidance will vary from student to student. 

Barshay points out that low-achieving students need more guidance. I'm not sure how true that is (for most of my career, I taught the top and bottom level courses). Low achieving students have often been subjected to more direct instruction and so have been conditioned to think that's what school is--people tell you what you're supposed to say and do and then you get graded on how well you regurgitate it. Therefor, doing discovery lessons may require more teacher creation of an environment where the students can believe that this is really what they're being asked to do. Conversely, top achieving students are often very good at regurgitating and may get frustrated with inquiry lessons ("Just tell me exactly which hoop to jump through to get my A").

Whether their teacher school taught you to be a guide or a sage, most teachers learn pretty quickly that they have to be a mixture of both, and that the mixture depends on the students, the teacher, the material, and the conditions on any given day (every teacher has had that special day when a roomful of students broadcast the clear message "we are not in the mood to discover anything today"). Meanwhile, I guess the academics can continue to debate.