A Review of Open to Question: The Art of Teaching and Learning by Inquiry

Abstract

A Review of Open to Question: The Art of Teaching And Learning by Inquiry Walter L. Bateman, Professor at Rochester Community College Exactly when I first realized that Socratic method was effective, and that I needed to incorporate more active question-based discussion in my classrooms, I cannot say, but beyond having read a few articles and having seen a few instructors use the inquiry method to facilitate active learning, I knew I had much to learn. As I cast about for other models from whom to learn, I encountered Walter L. Bateman, professor emeritus at Rochester Community College in Rochester, Minnesota. William Perry writes in the forward to Bateman's 220-pages, "This is a delightful book, and important. Learning through inquiry has been described before, but never so vividly. Open to Question is addressed to teachers...Walter Bateman writes to be read with ease" (xi). The tone of the book is comfortably conversational. In the preface, Bateman claims that his book is different from so many others in that it is readable. It is, indeed. If this is a teacher's first search for ways to incorporate inquiry teaching and learning, this book is a great first step because the lessons are complete, the examples clear, current, and concise, and the motivations are logical antecedents of the chapters that follow. "The problem with the method of inquiry is that not enough teachers use it, not enough understand the power inherent in provocative inquiry, not enough see their jobs as other than transmitting knowledge. They have knowledge; students get it. Teachers know; students learn. Teachers talk; students listen and once in awhile even take notes" (xv). The rationale continues with Bateman's further admonition of the passive role students often take in the classroom when they simply act as "soakerfs] up of information, new vocabulary, correct interpretations and the Truth" (xv). His second justification is that the book "uses the method it describes" (xvi). In order to move students into a more active role, Bateman suggests that teachers consider why they should use inquiry. In his opening is one letter from a continuing conversation between the author and a colleague, who does not agree about using inquiry method. Bateman uses illustrations of the differences between merely lecturing and the resulting cynicism and burnout Jack feels, and the excitement generated in the instructor using inquiry as the students engage. "What I have called inquiry teaching is sometimes called inductive teaching or discovery teaching. And it is tightly overlapped with what we call teaching critical thinking" (;. 33). Rather than resorting to critical analysis of his colleague's work, he merely asks more questions, often of himself, in order to reach a different place in his understanding, which is one of the main objectives of inquiry learning. Slowly and patiently Bateman exposes his teaching methods to Jack, with the invitation that he "have fun tearing them apart" (p. 12). His humility, however, can be misleading. Some examples of Bateman's version of inquiry teaching are based on the work of John Dewey, and some on the work of Chet Meyers and Robert Karplus, former dean of the graduate school at Berkeley (p. 32). He cites Karplus' "three-stage learning cycle" (p. 32) as a way creating lessons of inquiry. The three stages allow students to look at some material the instructor provides and question the material, only to discover that "some of the data upset their ear lier blueprints" (p.33). The next thing the students do is "invent concepts, generalizations, or principles in an attempt to garner some meaning out of the materials-they build abstractions" (p.33). Bateman warns that this is the most difficult for teachers. "They must not rush to draw conclusions for students, but rather let students struggle with the trial and error and the discomfort involved in developing new ways of thinking" (p. …