Inquiry-based learning: reconciling the personal with the public in a democratic and archaelogical pedagogy

This paper describes and explores the key elements of an approach to personalised learning which is rooted in student experience and choice. It is shaped by the learner’s interest, driven by her curiosity and purpose, yet is capable of supporting the delivery of the valued outcomes of a publicly accountable curriculum. It is an approach which enables a student to participate purposefully in the processes of learning, developing values, attitudes and dispositions for learning whilst at the same time acquiring and managing specialist knowledge, skills and understanding in the service of a personally chosen outcome. The journey begins with a particular, concrete place or object and moves through a developmental sequence of thinking and learning capabilities to a publicly evaluated outcome. It is a pedagogy which integrally supports citizenship education because it addresses questions of value and worth through the narratives uncovered in the world-as-it-is-experienced by the learner. It is an archaeological pedagogy in the sense that it begins with experience and observation, generates narratives and then re-constructs knowledge/s necessary to satisfy the original personally chosen quest, rather than beginning with pre-packaged conceptual expert knowledge, It creates a context for critical subjectivity and engagement with learning and with the world. It is a pedagogy which takes seriously the selfhood of the learner, and the formation of virtue in learning whilst at the same time not abandoning the rigour of specialist knowledge in a particular field.