THE INFORMATION PROCESSING MODEL (INQUIRY TRAINING)

Presented By:

Abhimanyu Sharma

(MA Education Department, NEHU)

MODEL OF TEACHING

“A model of teaching can be used to design face-to-face teaching in classrooms or tutorial settings to shape instructional materials, including books, films, and computer media led programmes and curricula and long term courses of study.”

- Joyce, Weil and Shawers (1992)

CHARACTERISTICS OF MODELS OF TEACHING

• Systematic Procedure

• Criteria of Performance

• Specification of Environment

• Strategies of Teaching

• Presenting Appropriate Experiences

ASSUMPTIONS OF MODELS OF TEACHING

• Teaching is the creation of appropriate environment;

• Content, skills, instructional roles, social relationships, types of activities, physical qualities and their use, all form an environmental system whose parts interact with each other to constrain the behaviour of all participant teachers as well as students;

• Various combinations of the different elements of the environment create different types of environments and elicit different outcomes;

• Models of teaching create environment, they provide rough specification for classroom environment in the classroom teaching.

ELEMENTS OF A TEACHING MODEL

• Focus is the central intent of the model. Focal components revolve around the main objective of the model;

• Syntax describes the model’s structure and includes the sequence of steps involved in the organisation of the model;

• Principles of Reaction tell the teacher how to regard the learner and how to respond to what the learner does during the use of the model;

ELEMENTS OF A TEACHING MODEL

• The Social System describes the interactions between students and teacher as each model is viewed as if it were a mini society;

• Support System defines the supporting conditions required to implement the model successfully;

• Application is the utility of the model as it can be transferred to other situations.

FUNCTION OF MODELS OF TEACHING

• Designing of Curriculum or course of study;

• Development and selection of instructional materials;

• Guiding the teacher’s activities in the teaching learning situation.

CLASSIFICATION OF MODELS OF TEACHING

Bruce Joyce and Marsha Weil (1985) have classified the teaching models into four families, they are:

1. The Social Family

2. The Information-Processing Family

3. The Personal Family

4. The Behavioural Systems Family

THE INFORMATION PROCESSING FAMILY

“Information-processing models emphasise ways of enhancing the human being’s innate drive to make sense of the world by acquiring and organising data, sensing problems and generating solutions to them, and developing concepts and language for conveying them. Information-Processing Family consists of seven models, including Inquiry Training Model.”

INQUIRY TRAINING MODEL

This model was designed by Richard Suchman to teach students to engage in casual reasoning and to become more fluent and precise in asking questions, building concepts and hypotheses, and testing them.

Inquiry learning provides opportunities for students to experience and acquire processes through which they can gather information about the world. This requires a high level of interaction among the learner, the teacher, area of study, available resources, and the learning environment, students become actively involved in the learning process as they:

INQUIRY TRAINING MODEL

• Act upon their curiosity and interests;

• Develop questions;

• Think their way through controversies or dilemmas;

• Look at problems analytically;

• Inquire into their preconceptions and what they already know;

• Develop, clarify and test hypotheses;

• Draw inferences and generate possible solutions.

ASSUMPTIONS OF THE MODEL

• All knowledge is tentative;

• Most of the problems are amenable to several equally plausible explanations. There is no one particular answer to a problem;

• Inquiry is natural. All of us often inquire when confronted with a problematic situation or puzzle;

• An individual can be made amenable to the process of inquiry. He can be made to learn to analyse his thinking strategies;

• In addition to what is already known to an individual, he may be taught the new strategies to enquire and explore things;

• The inquiry process is a co-operative effort. It is always facilitated by the ‘give and take’ of ideas.

OBJECTIVES OF THE MODEL

• To develop the scientific process skills;

• To develop among students the strategies for creative inquiry;

• To develop among students independence or autonomy in learning;

• To develop among students the ability to tolerate ambiguity;

• To make students understand the tentative nature of knowledge; and

• To develop the spirit of creativity among students.

ELEMENTS OF INQUIRY TRAINING MODEL

1. Focus: The goal of this model is to help students develop the intellectual discipline and skills necessary to raise questions and search out answers streaming from their curiosity;

2. Syntax: the Inquiry Training Model has five phases-

Phase 1 Confrontation with the problem

Phase 2 Data Gathering (Verification)

Phase 3 Data Gathering (Experimentation)

Phase 4 Organising, formulating an Explanation

Phase 5 Analysis of the Inquiry Process

ELEMENTS OF INQUIRY TRAINING MODEL

3. Social System: Inquiry Training model provides high weight to the controlling of social system. Teacher and students, however participate as equals where exchange of ideas is concerned;

4. Principles of Reaction:

• Ensuring that questions are phrased so that they can be answered in ‘Yes’ or ‘No’;

• Asking students to rephrase invalid questions;

• Neither approving nor rejecting student theories (hypotheses);

• Pressing students for clearer statements of theories and more support for generalizations;

• Encouraging interaction among students.

ELEMENTS OF INQUIRY TRAINING MODEL

5. Support System: A set of confronting materials and resource materials bearing on the problem for inquiry are needed. Sometimes the materials are not available. Teachers will have to develop such materials;

6. Application: This model was developed for natural science to start with, but its procedures can be used in all subject areas. Any event topic from a curriculum area, which can be converted into a problem situation, can be selected for inquiry training.

ADVANTAGES OF INQUIRY TRAINING MODEL

• It develops the scientific process skills;

• It develops among students the strategies for creative inquiry;

• It develops among students independence or autonomy in learning;

• It develops among students the ability to tolerate ambiguity;

• It make students understand the tentative nature of knowledge; and

• It develops the spirit of creativity among students.

LIMITATIONS OF INQUIRY TRAINING MODEL

• This model does not help in teaching primary content or subject matter, for example, ne concepts and formula;

• If the information about the puzzle is not presented in the form of a problem requiring explanation, the student cannot effectively arrive at generalisation through inquiry. In such cases simulation may be more useful;

• It cannot be applied to puzzles which do not have a cause-effect relationship.

CONCLUSION

A model of teaching is basically designed to achieve a particular set of objectives. It is not a substitute to teaching skill; rather, it creates conducive teaching-learning environment in which teachers teach more effectively, by making the teaching act more systematic and efficient.

The Inquiry Training model promotes the processing skills which are helpful for inquiring. The process skills therefore include the observing, collecting and organising data, identifying the variables in a situation, formulating hypothesis based on cause-effect relationship, experimenting or otherwise listing the hypothesis, inferring and drawing conclusions.

REFRENCES

• Chandra, SS & Advance Educational

Sharma, R.N Technology

• Joyce, Bruce & Models of Teaching

Weil, Masha

• Rather, AR Creativity: It’s Recognition & Development

• Singh, YK; Encyclopaedia of Educational

Sharma, TK & Technology: VOLUM- 1

Upadhya, Brijesh