Entry 7: Inquiry and Empowerment

As I have been reading and writing about inquiry in the visual arts, I have been inspired by the potential for the arts to generate powerful social and cultural change.  This has been encapsulated in Dewey’s vision of art and democracy (in Goldblatt 2006), in Chanda’s (2007) critique of art historical inquiry and in Lupton’s (2010) view of transformative literacy.  It has emphasised, for me, the importance of inquiry in encouraging questioning and critical thinking dispositions and in promoting empowerment.

After reading about Lupton’s (2010) GeST model of information literacy and pondering over the generic, situated and transformative windows, a day of regular supply teaching drove home the importance of embracing the situated and transformative windows and reinforced the value of authentic, contextualised inquiry learning for student engagement.

This realisation occurred as I went to my first supply lesson for the day - an English class - and prescribed the grammar worksheets that had been left for the students to complete.  The lesson consisted more of students’ whining ... “Why do we have to do this?”  “It’s so boring!”  This is just a waste of time!”  It was a battle trying to get them to complete the worksheets and I doubt they learnt anything that was meaningful or relevant.  Though I didn’t admit it to the students, I found that I was just as bored and unmotivated as they were!  This generic learning context was so uninspiring and disconnected!

My next class, senior physics, was the total opposite!  Students were continuing with developing, planning, writing up and safely carrying out their own “experiments”.  This enabled students to choose an area of interest to them and engaged them in questioning, formulating, devising and testing.  It was situated/transformative information literacy at its best and like the students, I was instantly engaged and intrigued in the learning process.

One student was testing the cleaning power/effectiveness of different brands of washing powder, another working on a recipe for an antibacterial hand-rub.  All were engaged and busy at work using a wide variety of resources and sources of information.  When I was questioning them about their work, one of the students commented that they may have to notify “A Current Affair” about some of the false claims made by the products they were testing.  Though all said in good fun, the realisation of the transformative power of their inquiry made their learning so powerful and empowering!


My own inquiry into this topic has had a similar transformational affect on my views and philosophy of learning and education.  While re-igniting my enthusiasm for teaching and my passion for the visual arts, this project has certainly inspired me to embrace inquiry learning wholeheartedly in my own teaching practice!  I do not think this project would have had such an impact on me and my own practice had it not been for the guided inquiry approach.