Abstract
The Courses of Study set “Sophistication” and “Autonomy” as the objectives of the “Time for Integrated Inquiry” (abbreviated as “inquiry learning”) implemented in high schools from the 2022 academic year. In order to examine the feasibility of these objectives, this paper analyzed recorded data of instruction given by doctoral students at a public high school in the Tokyo metropolitan area during inquiry learning sessions in which each student sets his/her own theme.
The first question is, what are the characteristics of the sequence of actions in the conversation in the instructional situation? Second, what kind of content do the instructors communicate to the students?
For the first issue, the following findings were obtained through conversation analysis of recorded data. (1) Students respond to the instructors’ questions in the form of a manifestation (M) of their intention. (2) The instructors respond to the student’s manifestations with an orientation (O). (3) Instructors’ remarks also include suggestions (S), and both orientations and suggestions are accompanied by further questions. (4) At the end of sessions, the instructors encourage students by open promotions (P). These sequences of actions are aggregated as I-M-(Q-M-) (OQ-M-) (SQ-M-) ...P.
With regard to the second issue, the results of the coding analysis indicated that the instructors ask questions and make suggestions to clarify (1) motivation, purpose, and interest of students, (2) subject of inquiry, (3) methods and data, (4) queries, hypothesis, and stance, (5) existing research, and (6) students’ experiences and skills. (1)-(6) often mutually conflict; the positive and negative expressions by the instructors are sensory; the differentiation from “investigative learning (shirabe-gakushu)” is indistinct; and the resolution of these problems is left to the responsibility of the students themselves.
These findings suggest that the objectives of inquiry learning as stated in the Courses of Study is overly idealistic.
