Teaching, and subsequently learning is not a perfect science, there are flaws with any system of teaching. In this post I will describe potential issues with the direct instruction style of teaching, and why I think it is the most popular mode of teaching. Then I will describe an alternative teaching method which is based around inquiry, and its strengths and weaknesses.

This week we learned about inquiry, a couple of things that stood out for me in Week 3: Inquiry Process, & SIFT Methodology was the contrast between teaching methodologies. The direct instruction system is setup such that students are expected to do well on exams and assignments, but the means to achieve the ends, are not accounted for when graded. Essentially the teacher gives the student material and it is in the students hands to do anything in their hands to do well on the test/assignment, with no weight given to the process of learning. The curriculum is mapped down onto the student which can lead to a mismatch in: interest (the student may not be interested in the subject), and difficulty (the content may be too easy or too hard for the student). In some cases, this teaching structure can cause students to only learn the bare minimum, and memorise rather than deeply understand topics and build mastery. I argue that the main reason that this structure is most commonly used in schools is that its resource efficient. Meaning that the ratio between student learning over resources consumed is high, meaning that, an adequate amount of learning can be achieved by students without the school using many resources.

The other teaching method is called inquiry based learning (IBL), it is based on how people naturally learn. For example children try to atomise (take something complex and reduce it to its most simple parts) anything that they are curious about, they would ask their parent a string of questions about something, or experiment with a thing to better understand it, then apply that knowledge to their understanding and build upon it, this is synonymous to learning using inquiry. This form of learning gives the freedom to the student to map their learning up to the curriculum, which leads to higher quality learning, mastery, and retention of both information and skills. I would argue that inquiry based learning is objectively better than direct instruction because it promotes deep learning, competence, and process over strictly getting good grades. The potential downside to this approach is the expense, the ratio of teachers to students, equipment cost, and work space could all add to the cost to IBL.

Given the pros and cons of each teaching style, I propose that schools should implement aspects of IBL into their courses, or offer some fully IBL courses. Doing so would make students more valuable to the work force by enabling them to obtain mastery, competence, and experience in a specialised field of their interest. This would make it much easier for students to find a high-paying job soon after graduating high school.