09/27/2025

This week’s read was an excellent way to follow up on last week’s interview and discussion with Jeff Hopkins about his inquiry-based school. Today, I will reflect on Christopher Andrew Paul Lister’s paper “A Framework for Implementing Inquiry-Based Learning in the Elementary Classroom” (2015).

In his paper, Lister makes a similar argument to Jeff Hopkins and the documentary Most Likely to Succeed about the outdated nature of our education system, and how student-driven inquiry-based learning is more enriching and effective in educating young students to be deep, critical, and resilient learners. This paper is meant to help guide elementary teachers (specifically in grades 4-6) in how to implement inquiry-based learning into their classrooms. Lister notes that inquiry-based learning is not meant to be an additional subject, but incorporated into the existing curriculum. 

In order to successfully implement inquiry-based learning into the classroom, Lister explains that students must be taught how to be Self-Regulated Learners (SRL). This means learners with the ability and agency to ask questions, set goals, self-monitor learning, and self-reflect. He gives teachers multiple examples of fostering this learning using questions, prompts, logs, checklists, etc. 

The inquiry itself is laid out as an 8-step process by Lister:

  1. Engage. Like Hopkins’ first inquiry step, this is the phase in which initial questions are asked and curiosity is fostered. 
  2. Generate. This is where the brainstorming takes place in many forms: research plans, lists, discussions, etc.
  3. Explore. Like Hopkins’ second step, this is where the initial research is done. 
  4. Question. Again, like Hopkins’ inquiry process, Lister’s guide includes a time for additional questions.
  5. Collect. Generate/collect data through various forms of research, experimentation, and creation. 
  6. Create. Produce – create products and solutions to your question(s)
  7. Share. Public presentation of your inquiry process and findings.
  8. Reflect. Self-reflection to assess the learning that has occurred. 

Each of these steps is meant to foster teacher-student cooperation and student autonomy. 

Lister’s description of assessment is very similar to Hopkins’s. The key focus is not the product but the process. Back to SRL, students should be assessed on their ability and growth in the areas of autonomy, responsibility, curiosity, critical thinking, problem solving, response to challenges, cooperation in group work, and self-reflection. 

Reviewing this paper made me consider my approach to my inquiry project for this class. As I have been attempting to learn to be a (hobbying) urban sketcher, the path has not gone as directly as I expected. To reflect on this, I am going to use Lister’s framework to compare my progress so far:

  1. Engage. My initial question was simple: How can I develop the skills to comfortably draw an urban scene on-site? 
  2. Generate. I devised several ideas for approaching this: online classes, books, YouTube tutorials, practice, etc.
  3. Explore. After spending several hours researching urban sketching, I learned that it has a lot more history and technique than I initially thought.
  4. Question. After realizing the many different steps involved in Urban Sketching, I came up with a new list of questions: 
  • How do I draw buildings in the proper perspective?
  • How can I create character in the details of my drawings?
  • How do I draw people at different distances?
  • How do I draw proportional people with detail?
  • How do I draw other objects so that they are recognizable?
  • How do I combine all these factors to create a cohesive scene?

I am now somewhere between steps 5, 6, and 7. Throughout the past few weeks, I have been researching my questions, drawing to practice each theory, and sharing my findings and products on my blog. One thing that has surprised me about this project is that I am actually enjoying it. Rarely in all of my schooling career have I been able to learn about something entirely of my choosing. I am not sure yet if I am learning better, but I am definitely feeling more personally invested in the learning process. I wonder how my future students would react if I implemented this inquiry-based learning process into my future classroom. 

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