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Phase 5: Reflect: Written Reflection

Assessment Criteria / 5

Air Pollution is an important topic that everyone has to be well aware. Air Pollution can cause harm to human health. As the topic here has been chosen by considering its importance in the current scenario. From an intellectual standpoint, an essay on air quality is a critical subject for students. Furthermore, an essay is one of the most important ways to teach students about the state of the environment and the consequences of human actions. If we want to reverse decades of denial and indifference, we must raise consciousness for future generations.

Assisting students in developing skills procedures and attitudes will allow them to conduct their own inquiries using scientific methods. Students cooperate, investigate, solve challenges, invent and learn using analytical thought and their latest scientific understanding. Students will have the opportunity to gain personal knowledge of their environmental positions and responsibilities. Students may recognize chances to apply their skills in their daily lives or contribute to research in their future careers by developing a passion for the field of science.

The main challenge I encountered during this project was to create activities that included individual needs of the learner. As a result, a mix of community and individual tasks have been planned where students can focus on their work while also respecting peers’ input through reflections.

A welcoming learning atmosphere caters to the needs of the learner, allowing for open discussions and the development of positive relationships between teacher and pupil, student and peer, and student and self. As a result, if I were given the opportunity to prepare the project again, I would attempt to change the tasks based on the students’ prior experience to set a pace that makes learning more experiential.

This inquiry project has provided me with opportunities to better understand and focus on core concepts relevant to the inquiry process, such as what inquiry is and why it is necessary. Using an Inquiry approach will develop critical thinking ability among the learners and hands on activities will foster experiential learning where learners will indulge in team work, problem solving and creative thinking by giving solutions to the ongoing environmental problem. I can conceptualise and apprehend aspects of life and the world, self and other, than how I took things previously when I was presented with them as ‘normal’, ‘natural’, ‘inevitable’, ‘factual’, ‘objective’ and ‘true’? (Bai,2005). Views on Inquiry from where I started to where I am now, I have learned that the inquiry approach not only aids holistic growth but also assists learners in identifying their talents and opens doors to an innovative environment where learners can realize their full potential without fear of failure.

After completing this inquiry project, I understand that to carry out a successful learning experience for both teacher and students, inquiry is the major goal of 21st century education, where the students become better questioners as ultimately questioning is central to meaningful learning and intellectual achievements at higher levels. That is why, an effective learning experience make students want to actively pursue inquiry and willingly learn content along the way within the inquiry (Wiggins and McTighe, 2013).

What piqued my curiosity in the later stages of the inquiry project was the question of what appraisal method is best for inquiry-based learning? When we speak about introducing changes in evaluation strategies in the framework of inquiry-based schools, we look forward to assessment practices that rely on intellectual understandings, problem-solving capacity and a sense of curiosity. The tools for assessing the learners’ ability should be reliable and authentic such that the students can reflect or trust themselves in acting on their implications. Hence, inquiry-based classrooms have to involve thoughtful professional judgement on performance relative to what is expected within a particular discipline.

This inquiry project aided in the achievement of the goal of cultivating a creative temperament in accordance with mind-sets by including students in work as action researchers for their own creative production through these challenges and being accountable for their own developmental progress. The learning improves when teacher leadership receives consistent support, and teachers have opportunities to learn from one another ((McKinsey & Company, 2007).

It’s crucial to stay up to date with your peers’ work, but getting positive input from peers and mentors helped me obtain new perspectives on the tasks I prepared, and organised group discussions strengthened my plans to the point of successful implementation. Finally, the whole investigation project gave me a thorough grasp of the inquiry-based methodology and its methods. If we want students to have a life-long learning experience, we must cultivate maturity in them so that they can acquire profound understanding of ideas, and the work must instil academic rigour while still connecting them to their environment within and outside of education.

Inquiry Based Learning encourages science ideas to be contextualised by applying them to personal experiences. It leads to more formal understanding of a domain as well as increased skills and competencies in conducting effective and communicable research.