Inquiry and Integration in Education

Course details

It is important that school, college, and other curricula aim at:

i) an understanding of the concepts and propositions of knowledge; and

ii) the ability to apply (i) to a range of familiar (and novel) problems and situations.

This is hardly sufficient though. We believe that to qualify as 'high quality', curricula should go beyond (i) and (ii) to aim at:

iii) critical understanding: an understanding of the evidence and arguments for or against established knowledge as well as controversial concepts and propositions;

iv) the ability to think critically about concepts and propositions;

v) the ability to engage in independent inquiry; and

vi) the capacity for an integrated perspective on (i)-(v).

The aim of this course is to help the participants develop the capacity to design syllabi, teaching-learning materials, classroom activities, and assessment, oriented towards (iii)-(v), with some bit of (vi). The course will contain a mixture of recorded classroom sessions, other videos, as well as a significant amount of reading materials. This course is aimed at middle school, high school, and university educators, but other with an interest in education will also gain from this. The course is intended to be a 12 week course, with around 5 hours of work per week.