5 Survey Modes and Their Effect on Student Ownership

Student ownership is the degree to which a learner feels a natural sense of responsibility and curiosity about their work.

Unlike mere compliance or vague commitment, ownership involves something larger and more cohesive – a tone of interaction between a student and their work that is meaningful and enduring – something bigger than the mission itself.

The above framework from Sundberg & Moncada (1994), Ohlhorst (1995), D’Avanzo (1996) and Grant & Vatnick (1998) takes this idea of ​​ownership and applies it to inquiry-based learning. The result is a kind of spectrum analyzing the nature of research teaching, moving from closed demonstration to open research and even to collaboration with the researchers themselves.

And perhaps most helpfully, the framework illustrates how different learning approaches have different goals, tactics and “controllers”.

What are the different types of surveys?

At the top of the board, most of the components of inquiry-learning – the questions, the research system, the methods of data collection, and the forms of presentation and publication – are all given by the teacher to the student. . As students increasingly take ownership of teaching in pursuit of more open inquiry, the teacher gives less and is instead ‘owned’ and supplied by the students.

Mode of inquiry: Demonstration closed

Mode of inquiry: Guided inquiry

Mode of inquiry: Limited survey

Mode of inquiry: Open investigation

Mode of inquiry: Collaboration with the researcher

Apply research in your classroom

It would be easy to confuse this with “for” high-level research at the end of high school and at the college level. Yet the general spirit parallels the general model of release from responsibility, or the concept of scaffolding, where students get a lot, then less, then only as much as they need.

It also usefully details the purpose of learning in different areas: developing a skill or bringing knowledge to a given discipline.

In this way, in its most favorable and restrictive form (top, left), students participate in a closed investigation with elements provided by the teacher. In a less supportive and less restrictive approach, students learn about the process of building knowledge rather than the content (bottom right), or even connect directly with content experts and researchers themselves.

So what do you take away from how you think about your units and how students interact with your classroom content? Is this new? How have you always approached the investigation? A way to differentiate according to the range of student preparation?

A framework of inquiry: levels of student appropriation