Inquiry in Education: Overcoming Barriers to Successful Implementation

Twenty-seven academics, teachers, and school psychologists from Canada and the U.S. contribute 14 chapters describing barriers to inquiry they have encountered in the classroom and other settings, and how those barriers were overcome. Each chapter is characterized by a particular barrier or barriers, and each has a primary focus on learners, teachers, or the curriculum. The set of stories reflects highly varied learning contexts ranging from infancy to university, from the classroom to the science fair exhibition, and even to the concert stage. The barriers discussed are lack of strategy skills, lack of prior knowledge of the field, insufficient knowledge of how to co-construct curriculum with the teacher, lack of skills to avoid trivial noninquiry projects, cheating or plagiarism arising from a focus on the end product, the challenges of collaborative learning, working with creative variability, and reconciling differences in learning goals and outcomes. For teachers, administrators, policymakers, and parents. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)