Professional Development Reflection - Concept Based Inquiry

 

Professional Development Reflection

By: Michelle Hobbs

Currently I am engaged in an 8 week long Professional Development course called “Concept-Based Inquiry in Action.” The course was developed by Rachel French and I am currently taking the course with Michelle Simpson, who trained under Rachel French. This course is being taken alongside many people at my current school, TIS Macao. Friday March 7, 2025 was the first ZOOM call and calls will continue for the next 8 upcoming weeks. 

So far, I have read the introduction and first two chapters of the course book, “Concept-Based Inquiry in Action: Strategies to Promote Transferable Understanding” by Carla Marschall and Rachel French. I have also completed the first three course modules, along with all associated work, have made a post on the course forum, and have gone to the first ZOOM session.

During our ZOOM call our main task was to work in groups to create a definition of student agency. While I am familiar with constructivist theory / constructivism, I had never done this type of activity before. At first, we had 5 minutes to create a definition of the term on our own. After that we were placed with a partner in a break out room. We both had to share our definition and we had to collaborate to create a new definition. After that we were put into groups of 4 and then 8. Each time the same thing occurred and we were asked to create a new shared definition. It was meaningful to see the definition evolve over time with input from more and more colleagues. In the end my group of 8 came up with this definition, which had been built individually, and then in 3 groups, 

Student agency is when students feel empowered to take authentic ownership of their learning by making meaningful choices about how they express their knowledge and gather information. It emphasizes the importance of their voice in shaping their educational experiences, ensuring they feel respected and valued. In this process, teachers facilitate authentic opportunities by providing necessary tools and strategies to support independent thinking and collaboration.

 

Given my current position, teaching grade 4 (upper elementary) for the first time, I think that this strategy would be useful. It can also be utilized both at the beginning of learning as a formative assessment and closer to the end of learning about a concept to see what students have learned, and how their definitions have evolved over time. It would be useful too, if done twice in a unit, for students to evaluate their learning in an “I used to think / now I think” sense. With the upcoming unit which focuses on resources and waste management, these are broad concepts I may want to consider having students define, through this strategy. If students can see very clearly how their learning grew over the course of the unit, this also helps them to think reflectively. 

As I teach at a tier 4 province of Alberta overseas school, which is also PYP accredited, there has been a big challenge at my school of taking such a standards heavy curriculum and applying it alongside the PYP. I feel like this concept-based approach will help us out a lot as we can look at the standards, the central idea that currently exists, pull out concepts and try to bring everything together. From there, we can use concepts to form Generalized conceptual understandings and questions. We can then consider which facts and learning engagements support the driving of students towards forming that particular conceptual understanding. Under this approach (inductive) students will be provided with many examples, examine patterns, and then the students themselves will form the generalization. It’s a new way of doing things for me, as in the past, when I was teaching PYP the central idea would be posted on the wall from the start or near the start of the unit. Students would already know the Big Idea from the start / near the start and then we’d build into that understanding, versus students constructing their own understanding. I think that this new way of doing things will allow students to think more critically and go deeper with their learning. Since students are finding the patterns themselves and figuring out the conceptual understanding / big idea based on those patterns, hopefully the learning will stick with them more. 

One activity I developed recently, though I have not done it in the classroom yet, involves children developing their own understanding of the fantasy genre. In the activity students would get the excerpts and a list of 20 popular fantasy books, but the excerpts would not state which books they originated in. Students would also get a list of the 20 books that the excerpts are from. The first step for students would be to read through the excerpts and to see which passages they could figure out without any research, simply based on what they know and from inferencing. The next step would be students researching, first using the novels and later using the Chromebook if necessary. Not only would they need to identify which book they think the excerpt comes from, but also justify why they think that is true. In terms of the Concept Based Inquiry course, this fits right into the idea of being “Evidence minded.” Once they were done looking at all the excerpts, I wanted them to look for common themes such as magic, witches / wizards, dragons, talking animals, fantasy worlds, etc.

This activity was developed before I began taking the course, but based on my emerging understanding of the content, it’s easy to see how it could fit into students developing a conceptual understanding about fantasy. My next intentions were then to take excerpts from various fantasy books, alter the reading level using AI, and then to have students study these passages through guided reading and comprehension tasks. My current thinking is that at the end of this short fantasy unit, students could create their own generalized conceptual understanding of the topic. I was thinking something like, “Fantasy books take readers on thrilling adventures in imaginary worlds where anything is possible,” may be one possibility.

In terms of planning using Concept Based Inquiry, that began in our planning meeting for our current unit “How the World Works” in which we delve into many space-related concepts such as “Non-contact forces,” “Earth systems,” “Space Navigation” and “Space technology.” With so many concepts that we needed to focus on for that unit, we really dug deep in considering some key concepts, guiding questions and conceptual understandings. More recently we were planning for our “Sharing the Planet” unit about resources and waste management. This time around we took a similar pathway in our planning, looking at our concept of matter and considering Waste Management and resources from a science-based concepts perspective and a more social-studies based perspective. Many of our concepts, for example “hazardous materials” also came directly from our Alberta standards.

Within the course I had the opportunity to develop a generalization on my own using the specific strategies suggested by Rachel French. During the first step I brainstormed a variety of different concepts related to global pandemics such as: disease, fear, protection and preparation. In my first step I wrote, “Global pandemics affect human response to disease.” The second step involved changing the statement into a how or why question and then answering that question with the conceptual understanding so I wrote, “How do global pandemics affect human response to disease” and I answered with, “Humans respond to global pandemics through protection and fear.” Step 3 is not always applicable; however it was practiced here to go deeper, and that is, asking, “So what?” So, I did that and eventually through re-working I came up with, “Responding to global pandemics involves both protection and fear as human responses.” While I am not teaching anything related to Global pandemics this year, I saw this as a great opportunity to practice writing a generalization on my own, and after I wrote it I posted the entire thinking process, and steps into the forum for peer feedback.

The first time I saw Rachel French was at the Toddle Japan PYP Meet session "Exploring the Power of Concept-Based Inquiry in the PYP" online, in 2023. A recording of that session can be found in the resources list at the end of this paper. At the time I was interested in what Rachel French had to say and started to unpack the concepts and conceptual understandings of the unit I was teaching at the time, which was a Grade 2 “Who we are” unit about Balanced Lifestyle. I discovered that over my 3 years of having taught and developed this unit, there were many concepts and generalizations I could find about health and balanced lifestyle that I taught throughout the unit. At that time, however, with only a 1 hour talk to refer back to, there was only so far, I could go. I ordered Rachel French, Lois A Lanning and H. Lynn Erickson’s book “Concept Based Curriculum and Instruction for the Thinking Classroom” with the best of intentions, however, unfortunately was only able to find time to read a very small part of it. Suffice to say, Rachel French and this course about Concept Based Inquiry has been at the forefront of my mind for a long time, so when I found the chance to take the course with my school, I jumped on it. It’s great to be within my school learning community, as I delve into these concepts.

Those who would benefit from this course are any teachers or administrators looking to enhance their curriculum design and instructional strategies, particularly as it applies to inquiry-based learning. Additionally, those who work in curriculum, such as PYP coordinators or anyone in curriculum development leadership positions looking to develop educational programs that value critical thinking, inquiry and conceptual understanding would benefit from this professional development. Lastly, educational researchers who want to know more about effective modern teaching methodologies or about the evolving history of inquiry-based teaching, may find value in this course. 

Resources

French, Rachel. Concept-Based Inquiry. Professional Learning International. https://cbi.prolearnint.com/

French, R, Lanning, L. A., & Erickson, H. L. (2017). Concept-based curriculum and instruction for the thinking classroom. Corwin.

French, Rachel & Marschall, Carla. (2018). Concept-based inquiry in action: Strategies to promote transferable understanding. Corwin.

Toddle. (n.d.). Inquiry through concept-based learning: Japan PYP meet. Toddle. French, Rachel. Exploring the Power of Concept-Based Inquiry in the PYP https://www.toddleapp.com/learn/talk-post/concept-based-inquiry-pyp/