EMPOWER your teaching: Inquiry as Cognitive Apprenticeship ......Inquiry and the ,Power of PleasurepresentedbyJeffreyD.Wilhelm 3 Here is the pattern of apprenticeship-style teaching,

Inquiry and the Power of Pleasure, presented by Jeffrey D. Wilhelm 1

EMPOWER your teaching: Inquiry as Cognitive Apprenticeship

to Promote Powerful Reading, Composing and Social Action!

Jeffrey D. Wilhelm Boise State University

The mental model of EMPOWER captures the major findings from a wide set of research into effective teaching and learning, cognitive science, educational psychology, development of expertise, motivation and optimal experience, etc.

Two categories of the EMPOWER framework


Here is the pattern of apprenticeship-style teaching, captured by EMPOWER: Offstage, effective educators ENVISION a destination for learners and then

MAP out each step of the journey, including the knowledge, tools, and mental models (strategy) required for achievement of mastery.

Once onstage, educators build motivation PRIME students by activating and

building background knowledge and ORIENT them towards the new destination: a learning outcome phrased in terms of what students will be able to do independently by the close of the unit.

With motivation built, students now require mentorship. At this point,

educators WALKTHROUGH new skills and concepts and engage students in extending their expertise in a variety of guided and collaborative practice tasks that increase in challenge/complexity and decrease in scaffolding/support over time. This is the time for modeling, coaching, and feedback as students rehearse, practice, and scrimmage. They are purposeful, contextualized, lower stakes learning experiences that exist to develop students’ abilities.

With their skills and knowledge built, it is then time for students to put their

learning to the ultimate test. Educators challenge students to EXPLORE new territory, and EXTEND learning, transferring what has been learned into a novel situation that presents the possibility of failure. This is very much like the “call to action” found in the hero’s journey, the build-up to the “big game” in sports, or an opening night performance in the arts.

At this point, though, the educator is in the audience or on the sidelines. Their

job is to step back and let students triumph or struggle, intervening only at the point of need, so students learn to independently apply what has been taught.

Throughout this entire process and especially at the end, with the big game,

opening night performance, or dragon slaying behind us, we collectively REFLECT. What was learned and how? Why is it important and how does it connect to our future goals? How can we use it now and in the future? What are our individual and collective strengths and struggles? What are our next steps?

EMPOWER

PBL Integrated Inquiry (IB)

UBD SiOp 6E’s Teaching for Understanding

Envision Key knowledge

Transdisciplinary theme

Stage 1: What is worthy and requiring of understanding?

Lesson Prep ___________ Building background ___________ Comp. input Strategies Interaction

Engage Use topics that engage and connect to other subjects Map Tuning In

Prime Challenging problem or question and student voice

Stage 3: What learning, exp, teaching promote understanding interest and excellence?

Create coherent goals

Orient

Walk Through

Sustained inquiry, authenticity

Finding out, sorting out, going further, making conclusions,

Explore Explain

Create engaging learning experiences Extend,

elaborate, apply

Public Product

Going Further Taking action

Stage 2: What is the evidence for understanding?

Practice / Application

Elaborate Extend

Lesson delivery Review and Assessment

Reflect Reflect Evaluate Develop formative and summative assessments that deepen understanding


Flexibility of the EMPOWER canvas

EMPOWER canvas for the throughline unit on civil rights

The Inquiry as Cognitive Apprenticeship Process:

1. ENVISION GOALS AND OUTCOMES: Threshold knowledge that is conceptual and procedural

2. MAP the learning Journey: Identify the readings, lessons and activities that will build new threshold knowledge and expertise step by step

3. PRIME and ORIENT to prepare for success: Essential Question- guiding question/problem orientation

4. PRIME AND ORIENT: Frontloading Activities to activate and build background knowledge

5. WALKTHROUGH/APPRENTICE AND EXTEND: Sequence of Activities that provides deliberate practice necessary for developing new conceptual and strategic required for expert understanding and performance, step by step

6. Culminating Project/Social Action Projects that provide proof positive of progress and use of threshold knowledge applied to real world contexts

7. REFLECTION on learning occurs throughout the process to develop conscious competence and the capacity to build on what has been learned.

Effects of missed steps in EMPOWER


Envision Threshold Knowledge: Conceptual and Procedural Knowledge that counts . . . now and forever! Conceptual: Exploring the big ideas

• What you want the students to know in terms of “declarative” nameable concepts? • Exploring the big disciplinary ideas • Big understanding goals: can be phrased as sub-questions of the inquiry

Procedural: What you want the students to be able to do • Skills, tools, strategies, procedures.

Can be phrased as objectives: “students will be able to . . .”

Example: Can whaling be justified in this modern age? Conceptual

� What are the global ramifications of whaling?

� What the various points of views of whaling?

� What are the arguments for and against whaling?

Procedural

� Students will learn how to develop an argument using a clear claim, evidence/data from research and warranting of the data

� Students will be able to express both practical and ethical dimensions of the issue in a variety of modalities

Example: How can freedom and security be balanced?

� How can freedom be defined? � What different perspectives are there

on freedom? � How do historical and cultural

situations affect security policies?

� Students will analyze the structure

and format of informational documents through Directed Reading and Thinking activities (DRTAs) and Directed Writing Assignments (DWAs)

� Students will evaluate the comprehensiveness and validity of evidence in an author’s argument (DRTA)

� Students will explain the author’s point of view and interpret how this influences the text (critical theory, questioning the author, questioning hierarchy)

A scaffolded GEM organizer

G GOAL

E EVIDENCE

M MEASURESOFSUCCESS

Research and critically analyze information related to social justice issue

Research portfolio

• Pulls from credible sources • Information organized with appropriate

mind map (i.e. step-by-step boxes for sequences, columns for categories, etc.)

Make a defensible argument on a researched topic

Op-ed-style editorial

• Informative: The point of view should be thoroughly expressed and explained.

• Engaging: The writing should capture and keep attention.

• Widely researched and evidence-based: The op-ed should draw from multiple worthy sources.

• Conventionally sound: The op-ed adheres to norms of this genre in published forums.

ENVISIONing the destination with GEM


MAP the PROCESS FOR TEACHING THROUGH INQUIRY AS COGNITIVE APPRENTICESHIP

1. STANDARDS (OR STOPPING POINT/STOP) Map out Goals: Threshold Knowledge to be achieved MULTIPLE MODALITIES AND MEASURES – Provide multiple ways for learning and demonstrating learning of the standards/end goals/ enduring understandings through independent culminating projects 2. SET UP (START) MOTIVATE / aka Prime and Orient– with Essential Question and Frontloading, personally connect kids to content 3. SEQUENCE (SCAFFOLD) aka Walkthrough and Extension through Deliberate Practice MODEL – for – Teacher does/students watch MENTOR – with – Teacher does/students help and students do together/teacher helps MONITOR – by – Student does/Teacher assesses and helps as needed 4. REFLECT – embed formative assessment and reflections every step of the way! The process of breaking down a learning goal

1. Essential Question Criteria • Engaging. That is, it offers potential for intriguing students and

motivating student learning • Endurng. That is, it leads to learning big disciplinary ideas that have

value beyond the classroom • It leads to new understandings and being, i.e. to personal

transformation and social action • In need of uncoverage. That is, it involves a background of

foundational principles, rich concepts, theories and procedures that require unpacking.

Useful Tips for Generating Essential Questions

Tip: Put Standards into Question forms Tip: Reframe a required text, topic or standard by focusing on why it matters! Tip: Ask questions of application! Tip: Inquiry and Design – What questions drive the disciplines? What problems inform current research? Tip: Consider the heart of the matter. What is the true importance of this curricular topic? Why do I love teaching it? What must kids remember and carry away regarding it? Tip: Look around the community for issues that intersect with the topic.

Tip: Ask questions about quality that require students to make a judgment

Tip: Ask Ethical questions – what should we pursue? What should we do


with the knowledge we have?

Essential Questions Not Essential Question How do the arts shape, as well as reflect, a culture? How do the arts contribute to social change?

What common artistic symbols were used by the Incas and the Mayans?

How can we effectively prepare for the next Pandemic?

What were the causes of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic?

How is the food industry affecting our health and our environment?

Why are humans attracted to fat, sugar and salt?

What are the causes and effects of poverty and what can we do to address it?

What key event sparked the Depression?

How can we best protect and promote civil rights? What are the water problems in our community and how can we help address them?

What was the importance of Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech? What is the water cycle?

What makes someone a true friend? Who is Maggie's best friend in the story?

Activity: Brainstorm possible essential questions for your students, reframing a curricular topic or text as a problem to be solved. Turn and Reflect: What is “understanding”? What would constitute student “understanding” of your essential question? Sub-questions: What would learners need to know, be able to do, and be willing to undertake to demonstrate understanding? How do we help our students deliberately practice to achieve and demonstrate deep understandings? How do we tap students’ personal/cultural experiences as a resource for understanding? How do we stretch our students’ ways of thinking, perceiving, valuing, being?

TIPS FOR GENERATING CULMINATING PROJECTS • What’s it (the topic, central concepts, procedures) for today? • What’s it for tomorrow? • What “work” does it/could it do? • How do you foresee and want kids to use it? • When, where and in what situations can this knowledge be used? • What changes/transformations do you want to see in students and in the world and how can

you work for this? • Come up with a project that will capture (or be analogous to) these powers and purposes!

Brainstorm – Possible Composing and Multimedia/ Social Action Projects Composition Multimedia/ Social Action Service Projects

Culminating Projects: Where do you want your students to be? What do you want them to be able to perform, make and do?

� Usable Knowledge Artifact involving Authentic Intellectual Work � Designs and Represents knowledge and real world expertise � Personally Relevant � Socially Significant � Mirrors what real experts in the field do (meets the correspondence concept) � Requires students to demonstrate their threshold knowledge: conceptual and procedural

understandings in actual accomplishment � Bonus rolls: Each student’s project becomes a part of the entire classroom’s project, i.e.

distributed expertise is achieved. Share in community settings. Apply to service learning projects that address the problem at hand. (Issues 21 connection)


Meaningful Making Projects

Formal Writing Multimedia Compositions

Social Action Projects for Service

Arguments Video documentaries Show video documentaries publicly - discussions

Extended Definitions Hypermedia documentaries Host public debate Process Descriptions Video How-To Guides Volunteer work Classifications Websites Hot-line project Narrative Retellings Digital stories Peer Mediation Project Fables Multimedia Personality

Profiles Local Hero celebrations

Stories Digital scrapbooks Lake clean up project Picture Books Webquests Park clean up project Big Books Museum exhibits Create and maintain exhibit

in local museum Brochures Museum kiosks Senior Citizen visits/help

days Public Service Announcements

Public Service Announcements on Video or dramatized

Disseminate the public service announcements Better citizen/friend projects

Pamphlets Timelines Host or participate in community meetings

Dictionaries/Glossaries Video glossaries Picture dictionaries

Present proposals to school board, city council, service groups

Guides Murals Letter writing campaign Newspaper; articles News Show/Talk Show Thank you campaign Case Studies Dance performance Waste free school project Poetry book or cycle Computer programs Informational campaigns Multigenre research MTV videos of poems Build: Repair or Rebuild

something, e.g. engine; engine model, cabinet

How-to guides Multigenre compositions Career research: shadow a police officer, view medical procedures, compile interviews into manuscript

Travelogues Public performance: concert, recital, painting, living history museum, fashion show, meeting of minds

Physical experience or challenge: learn to scuba dive, run a marathon, lose weight

PRIMING AND ORIENTING through Frontloading: Preparing Learners for Success! Ranking Scenarios: What makes a good relationship and what screws them up? Each of the following scenes describes a relationship. Read each scene and rank them from the scene that describes the best love relationship (1) to the scene that describes the worst love relationship (3). Make sure you can support your opinions. You’ll be sharing them in groups and then with the whole class. _____ 1. Joseph always felt uneasy at parties, especially parties that included people from Forest View. Forest View was Elk Grove’s chief rival in every sport, and Joseph and his friends have been competing against kids from Forest View for as long as he could remember. And sometimes those competitions got pretty heated. So who could blame Joseph for saying his good-byes early. As he was headed out the door, however, Joseph caught a glimpse of Sara. Even all decked out in Forest View’s colors, she was, Joseph thought, the most beautifully girl he had ever seen. Screwing up his courage, Joseph went over to say hello. And it wasn’t long before he was involved in a friendly conversation with Sara and several of her friends. An hour flew by and Joseph really did have to go home. But he felt changed. Monday at school he confided to his best friend that he was in love, and with someone from Forest View on top of it. The kidding he got was intense; he and his best friend even got into a fight about it. But Joseph was sure. He couldn’t wait to see her again. He spent all week searching to find a party that she might attend. _____ 2. Mary and Martin have been next-door neighbors since the fifth grade and for seven years they’ve walked to school together. Since high school started, thought, once they got to school, they went their separate ways – Mary was an athlete and Martin a musician. But on that mile walk they shared a lot of talk about everyday events, hopes, dreams and heartbreaks. The senior prom was approaching and neither Mary nor Martin had a date. They decided to go together. It was funny, they broached the subject on the same day, and in fact, they couldn’t figure out who asked whom. The prom was great; they laughed and danced and kidded with their friends. They didn’t go on an after-prom trip though. They had decided that would make them seem too much like a couple, and they didn’t want any uncomfortableness to interfere with their friendship. That night both of them thought that the prom was one of the best dates they had ever had. It was too bad that their “real” dates never went so well. _____3. What a whirlwind of a romance, thought Amy. Ever since she had met Tom, things had been, well, fantastic. Nightly phone calls. Dinners at expensive restaurants. Gifts. She didn't mind that Tom insisted she spend all of her time with him. After all, her friends should understand, and if her grades slipped a bit, who cares? She'd always be able to get into some college. She had a bit of a twinge when he asked her not to go out for the musical, but the dozen long-stem roses made that twinge fade. What a romance!


Autobiographical Writing Prompt Most young people want to have dating relationships that are fun, exciting, and long lasting. First, describe a healthy, lasting dating relationship that you've been part of or that you've observed. What does a relationship need to be like in order to grow and last? Why do some relationships seem to work well? Be specific, and remember to write about real relationships that you yourself have experienced or watched. (from Brian White, 1995) Opinionairre/Survey Identify whether you agree (A) or disagree (D) with each statement. Then choose one statement that you feel particularly strongly about and write a brief comment about what in your experience of the world leads you to feel this way. 1. Love at first sight is possible. 2. Love means never having to say you are sorry. 3. It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. 4. You are never too young to fall in love. 5. You can't expect a person to change his or her habits after you enter into a relationship with them. 6. Love takes a lot of hard work. 7. Opposites attract. 8. If you are really in love, physical appearance doesn't matter. 9. Teenagers are capable of true love. 10. The hottest fires burn out fastest. 11. If you are really in love with someone, then you won't be attracted to someone else. 12. Love is blind. 13. If someone does not return your affection, the best thing to do is to keep trying to change his or her mind. 14. You have to work very hard at love. 15. Love is a decision that you make, not something that happens to you. (original idea from Kahn, et al. Writing About Literature, 1984)

FRONTLOADING • �Activates and builds upon students’ prior knowledge and interests • �Motivates students to be interested in the new unit topic, activity or reading • �Creates a template for tracking the progress of student understanding

Mustapha Family, Dar es Salaam, Chad.

Revis Family, North Carolina, United States Pictures are from P. 10, 11 Food (Part of Issues 21)

See What do I see?

Think What am I thinking?

Wonder What am I wondering about?


FRAYER MODEL DEFINITION

CHARACTERISTICS

EXAMPLES

NON-EXAMPLES

Brainstorm Possible Frontloading Activities:

• How does the activity activate and build background?

• Motivate engagement with the inquiry?

• Provide a template for placeholding progress?

• Give a start towards the creation of culminating projects?

What is a Healthy Diet or Friendship or Poverty or?

Inquiry as Cognitive Apprenticeship Unit Template

Essential Question: Conceptual Knowledge:

Procedural Knowledge:

Frontloading Activity: Sequence of Activities providing scaffolds and supports for deliberate practice to develop threshold knowledge:

• Explore and deliberately practice using and developing expert concepts and procedures

• Move from where the students are to a place further down the correspondence continuum

• Use Modeling, Mentoring and Monitoring, moving from teacher directed work to teacher-student work, small group work, pair work and individual work

• Move to gradual release of responsibility • leading to culminating project that allows students to concretely and visually

show their procedural and conceptual knowledge in a various ways Activities Connection to

Knowledge

Assessments


Culminating Projects Project Description Composition Creative/Multimodal Service

Sequence of Project Preparation, Revision, Presentation and Use

Why Inquiry and Social Action/Service

• To help students develop deep, situated, and usable understandings • To promote literacy (as reading and composing are forms of inquiry best

learned in inquiry contexts) Inquiry that leads to social action is . . .

• Participatory and democratic • Based on real-life issues and problem-orientations • Encourages deep understanding and personal transformation, not rote

learning; social change and community commitments, not charity • Provides visible outcomes in actual accomplishment for students and the

community • Leads to independent use of both conceptual and procedural tools

OUTCOMES

• Student engagement • Student empowerment • Student social imagination: ability to enter and respect other perspectives • Student achievement and capacity • Situated Cognition and an immediate context of use • Promotes joy and wisdom • Promotes sense of agency and growth mindset • Promotes Community connections • Promotes Disciplinary expertise and deep understanding • Achievement of generative threshold knowledge: Generative Concepts and

Deep Procedural Knowledge, skills and values that can be developed throughout a lifetime

• The capacity to do deep and sustained work over time • TRANSFER • Builds stance of self-directed and ethical members of society • Builds democracy • Promotes responsible citizenry and civic action • World contributors

Documents

EMPOWER your teaching: Inquiry as Cognitive Apprenticeship ......Inquiry and the ,Power of PleasurepresentedbyJeffreyD.Wilhelm 3 Here is the pattern of apprenticeship-style teaching,