C3 Pedagogy and Student Motivation

The critical issue of student motivation continues to drive teaching strategies and reward programs in K12 education. With increasing technology advancements it seems that a student without a device in their hands is essentially bored. As a teacher in the middle of his ninth year in education, I increasingly see the glazed over looks of students when they take notes and sit through unfocused discussions. I wonder if the “tech generation” has ended traditional pedagogy as we know it.

The Inquiry Design Model (IDM) has allowed me to provide students opportunities for self-discovery. I put this to the test in an inquiry I recently taught. Using the New York Toolkit Is Greed Good inquiry to conclude our unit on the Gilded Age, students had to compare and contrast the positive and negative effects of Industrialism in the United States. I basically threw students to the wolves with an entire inquiry to find out how they would react. Initially the majority of students were understandable overwhelmed, but after a couple days of trying to decipher the process they began to catch on. I did end up using technology to present the information, but the ability to understand the sources within the IDM allowed me to witness the rawness of inquiry learning. The plan now, is to go back to the beginning and scaffold upward by breaking inquiries into parts, and show them piece by piece how the process works to its entirety. Briefly I saw clear eyes, even when students were overwhelmed. It reminded me of why we teach.