To be explicit or to inquire that is the question!

Here is my take on the latest maths wars. What do I mean? With the revised Australian Curriculum in the news, the war between the proponents of explicit teaching and inquiry learning has been hotting up. 

Personally, I do not see this as a dichotomy. Today there was an article in The Age written by Adam Carey. It outlines the two schools of thought and closes with a teacher describing how they ignited students’ interest through inquiry and plugged gaps in knowledge  using explicit teaching. This approach seems sensible to me. Below is my response to the article on The Age website.

In a classroom, many different types of pedagogy are used every day. A good teacher will tailor the learning to the students in front of them. They are teaching the same material in different ways. Some explicit teaching is always necessary, and some inquiry/investigation is also needed. For example, being flexible and thinking about numbers and number manipulation in different ways is essential to use numbers in everyday situations and at higher levels. But, in order to approach a new problem, you need to have the inquiry/investigation skills to transfer knowledge and think creatively. There are techniques that I feel are not used often enough in the classroom. These include: using physical objects (manipulatives), encouraging students to visualise and draw diagrams, and to estimate before they calculate. 

A curriculum should not be dictating a pedagogy. It should outline content to be learnt but not how it should be taught. 

We need to trust and respect our teachers to decide the best way to teach their students.

If you would like to delve deeper into these ideas see Bad Mathematics and Filling the pail for differing viewpoints.