BASIC ASSUMPTIONS & THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF

INQUIRY AS ATEACHING STRATEGY

IN THE STUDY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Dewey and Reflective thinking■The expository approach to teaching history was

in popular use until the introduction of the so called New Social Studies.

■In contrast to the expository approach, the new history gives emphasis on giving the students not the conclusions of the scholars but the raw materials on which the scholars work, asking him to formulate the questions and work his way through to conclusions, and in so doing, develop a sense of structure of the discipline.

■The goal is to get the student to develop his critical and conceptual faculties, to give him some sense of the nature of facts, of the limits of generalizations, and of relationship between hypothesis, evidence, and proof; in short, to encourage him to relate knowledge to inquiry and to help him develop the intellectual tools of inquiry.

■This approach to the teaching of history may not be applied only to the fast learners or to the older students. Raw materials can also be handled by the slow learners and the children of elementary and primary grades. This is so, because the act of inquiry is possible in all age levels.

■According to Dewey, every unit of thinking has two limits- a perplexed, troubled and confused situation on one end and a dispelled and satisfied situation on the other end.

■According to Dewey, reflection has five phases or aspects.

1. SuggestionThe confused, troubled situation in which one finds

himself temporarily, halts the development of thinking. The urge to move, however persists and is diverted to some thoughts which Dewey calls suggestions.

2. IntellectualizationThis is a translation of what is received emotionally

as perplexed situation into something intellectual. The uncomfortable situation becomes more identified and well defined. The child therefore identifies what the problem is and what is causing the problem.

3. HypothesisNew knowledge and perspectives are created

and what originally is simple suggestion becomes a definite supposition.

4. ReasoningThrough this process, the ideas in the mind of

the child are refined. Suggestions which seem far –fetched sometimes become meaningful and are found to be a great use in the final analysis.

5. Testing the hypothesis by actionThe verification of the hypothesis is the last phase of the

process. Verification may be done through experimentation.

■According to Dewey, verification does not always follow. Sometimes the corroboration of ideas is obviously a failure then it must be accepted as such. However, such kind of failure is instructive. Through reflective thinking, the child sees what went wrong and what is needed to counter the failure in the future. Indeed, to him, the failure is a learning experience.

Bruner and Discovery Learning■Jerome Bruner’s study on discovery in man’s intellectual life

was inspired by Maimonides’ book entitled Guide for the Perplexed.

■Maimonides said that there are four forms of perfections which one can desire for. *The lowest of these is the perfection of worldly possession. The second is the perfection of the body. The third is moral perfection and finally, true perfection of man which is the possession of the highest intellectual faculties.

■According to Bruner, it is very important that we encourage young minds to know more about discovering because of the opportunities the experience avails the students.

He sees the ff. as possible benefits which can be derived from the experience of learning through discovery:1. The increase in intellectual potency.2. The shift from extrinsic to intrinsic rewards.3. Learning of the heuristics of discovery.4. The aid to conserving memory.

1. Intellectual PotencyThe increase in intellectual potency is manifested through the

development of the child’s ability to gather information, sort them, organize them into a structure which can be easily assimilated and remembered. The child’s ability to ask questions indicates a sharpening of his intellectual potency.2. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motives

Some students behave according to some external expectation, usually set by the parents and the immediate environment. They over achieve because of the external stimuli. According to Bruner, those who belong to this type are those who develop “rate abilities” and are always dependent on their ability to give back. They are those who tend to exhibit a lower ability in developing thought structures.

The heuristics of discovery

One learns the arts only by doing it. As the child is exposed more and more to the process of reflective thinking and discovery, he acquires the skill which are necessary to use the process. He will know how to work and what to work on. His satisfaction will be derived, not only, from the knowledge that he developed a thought structure but more from knowing that he did it by himself, using work models which he himself constructed.

Conservation of memory A well structured body of knowledge is better remembered than fragmented ones.The discovery of associations among facts and principles greatly reinforces the capacity of the child to remember.

Piaget and Concrete Operational Thinking

Learning is basically an internal process that takes place when the child is able to assimilate and accommodate something knowledgeable into his own knowledge system and thus create a meaningful conceptual structure.

According to Piaget, a child’s mental development, during the ages 7 to 8 which is prior to the formal operations is a landmark achievement.

“Its significance lies on its1. Current contribution to the organization of mental actions in

operational thinking capacities of the individual as applied to concrete objects

2. The antecedent experiences that have prepared the child, as it were, to construct understanding of reversibility, reciprocity; and constancy

3. The child’s grasp of relationships between parts and wholes, the structuring of which enables him later on to perform the mental functioning known as formal operations” Mills, 1956.

Six Characteristics of Concrete Operational Thinking

1. Groupings - refers to the starting point of all the other operations. It is the process from which the other operations spring.

Piaget classifies groupings into2. Those that pertain to identity.3. Those that refer to the logical system of classes, two classes may be included in the

other or may partially overlap or maybe mutually exclusive,4. Those that refer to relationships between parts and whole of a concrete object or a

collection of objects or persons.

2. Classification – this is manifested in the ability of the child to observe similarities and differences. Thus a child may classify objects through similarity of shapes or color or weight. As the child gains more experiences, the child develops several ways of classifying the same set of objects. Thus, the child will begin the use of qualifiers-one, some, all.

3. Seriation – This process refers to the ability of the child to arrange elements according to some given criteria.

4. Conversation – develops simultaneously with the aforementioned. This is the child’s ability to develop a system of regulations that enables him to compensate internally for an external change.

5. Numbers – the child’s understanding of numbers is a synthesis of the operations of class inclusion and seriation. The child, during the ability to ignore differences in ascribing numbers, as 1 desk is equivalent to 1 chair or 1 book, in so far as the number 1 is concerned. But he must also understand that numbers are seriable and that he should not count the same object twice in a series. Given objects, the child should understand the logical mathematical relationship that exists among them.

6. Space – This enables the child to develop the relative position of one thing to another

Although to most strategy planners, Piaget’s concept of learning is more applicable to Math and Science, it can also be a basis of planning social studies strategies.In disciplines of History and Civics, Geography, Music and Arts, various methods and techniques are used to develop the child’s mental, social as well as manipulative skills.