Educators & terminology

Has your research ever got hung up on pointless clarifications of terminology ... so much that you wonder whether the labels serve any function other than justifying a rehash (or mashup, or "recontextualisation" :D ) of old ideas by giving them new labels?

Today I'm browsing in Second Life letting my recent readings and contemplations on "Information Literacy" (aargh: that terminology is another example giving me grief) moosh themselves around in the back of my head. Having rezzed at the Movie Theatre where I quit at 6am this morning: I was tossing up my somewhat infinite options feeling for a purpose/preference. That is: do I go somewhere to sort my inventory, review my "to do" list, pick an unfinished study topic to pursue, head back to one of the places I've slooged to explore in more detail, explore one of the interesting-sounding places or groups I've noted...etc.

Thankfully, and coincidentally, the Information Literacy Group cut off that random mental browsing with a notice for an upcoming session. Entering the event "From Library 2.0 to Library 3D – Participatory Libraries of Today" into my Magic Compass made me realise I haven't yet visited Infolit iSchool (which belongs to the University of Sheffield). Decision made.

After a broom tour which ended head first in the wall of a hut :D I flew around exploring. I happened upon a structure created during a discussion on the nature of Inquiry Based Learning at the LTEA2008 conference...



The sign offered a webpage (about the LTEA2008 session) that I viewed, and investigated the chat logs of discussion at the session.

Unfortunately I didn't come away with any better understanding of what was supposed to be significant about "Inquiry Based Learning" from any other instructional approach that aims to get students to develop their own questions, explore, discover, synthesise and develop their own answers, or new questions. Considering my own family unschools I was amused to see this comment:

What is Inquiry Based Learning? via kwout

Some glancing mention of assessment was made, but I didn't notice any discussion of whether the programs in which they use any of these "student-centered" approaches experience conflict with expectations in terms of assessment, or consequences or changes in the nature of assessment.

So, I googled elsewhere...

In the process of defining Problem based learning Savery (2006) distinguished it from inquiry-based learning and other experiential approaches to teaching. As he tells it:

In an inquiry-based approach the
tutor is both a facilitator of learning (encouraging/expecting higher-order thinking) and a provider of information. In a PBL approach the tutor supports the process and expects learners to make their thinking clear, but the tutor does not provide information related to the problem—that is the responsibility of the learners (p.16)

Which is not quite the sense I received from the session discussers at LTEA although it may be true. It seems like a rather odd distinction.

I *was* interested to discover a paper arguing "Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching [pdf]" by Kirschner, Sweller & Clark (2006).

but as the whole thing has begun to feel like a pointless diversion of my time (except to have developed an inkling that if I ever become involved in instruction I believe I will want to avoid using approach-labels; and I guess that could dry up funding opportunities) - I've decided to leave it there.