"Designing Collaborative Inquiry: Creating Learning that Improves Society"

2023/09/15

Since 2020, new Academic Advisory Board Guidelines have been introduced sequentially, and the word "inquiry" has come to be used frequently. However, teachers in the field feel anxious about why inquiry is necessary and how to put it into practice.

The word meaning "inquiry" frequently appears in Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" in ancient times. Furthermore, pragmatism lies behind inquiry in the context of education. This "inquiry-based learning" with such a lineage has spread throughout the world in various forms. This book introduces representative examples of such learning while considering their common structures and differences.

Why am I, who is neither a teacher nor an educational scholar, writing something like this? I believe its roots lie in my first year of university. Entering the Faculty of Letters in 1989 with a desire to study archaeology, I went to Pakistan in August of that year and encountered the nature of Islam and the extreme gap between rich and poor. In November, the Berlin Wall fell. I transferred departments and began studying in the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law, from my second year.

However, although I remained at Hiyoshi, I did nothing but sleep at the stadium. It was a tragedy that the only seminar I wanted to join was that of Professor Hiroshi Tanaka, who taught Public Choice—a subject in which I had received a D. Naturally, I was rejected at first, but I negotiated directly with the professor and was allowed in. In the seminar, we read books on the theory of justice, and I wrote my graduation thesis on Plato's "Republic" while half-crying. I went to graduate school at Cornell University but faced setbacks there as well. Fifteen years later, I became involved in education through the experience of raising children.

What surprised me then was how close my current work is to what I did during my undergraduate years. While writing my previous book, "Creating 'Inquiry-Based' Learning," about a school curriculum centered on fairness, Plato's concept of justice kept pressing in on me. This time, as I thought about collaboration among teachers, it felt as if Rawls was by my side. How people with diverse perspectives can achieve reconciliation has now become almost a lifelong theme for me.

I have heard that what one encounters around the age of 20 influences the rest of one's life, and that is exactly the case. I felt as though I was wandering aimlessly, but I am simply overwhelmed by the wonder of returning like this.

"Designing Collaborative Inquiry: Creating Learning that Improves Society"

Sato Fujiwara

Heibonsha

304 pages, 2,860 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.