CRITICAL INQUIRY

Level I

RATIONALE:  For many of us, our formal education experiences have often been ones in which we were simply expected to absorb knowledge as it was presented by “experts.”  In this type of educational environment, learning is seen as a search for correct answers and texts are regarded as authoritative and not open to challenge.  The role of the student is fairly passive -- receiving and repeating back information.In contrast, an active learning model places students at the center of the learning process.  Rather than simply digesting information that is presented to them, students are encouraged to draw upon their own experiences and perceptions to better engage and interact with the information they are working with to form new understandings.  In an active learning process, students can use newly acquired understandings to reconsider their own views and in turn pose new questions.  This approach to learning invites a deeper understanding both of new materials and of one’s own ideas about a particular issue.  Through this dynamic interplay, the boundaries of learning are expanded beyond the passive acquisition of knowledge.Active learning requires specific skills.  Central to this, students need to be able develop a strategy for inquiry into new areas of knowledge.  An inquiry strategy requires the ability to formulate probing questions, engage closely and critically with a variety of materials to answer those questions, and to reformulate questions for continued inquiry based upon newly acquired information. This competency is designed to help CPCS students solidify the foundational skills for becoming active learners.  Solidification of these skills will help students approach increasingly difficult material as they advance through the curriculum.  It will also help prepare students to become life-long learners.

COMPETENCY:  Can plan and carry out a focused inquiry, including: posing questions, engaging closely and critically with a variety of relevant materials, reformulating questions, and drawing upon appropriate information from sources to respond to the inquiry questions in a research essay.

CRITERIA:

1.      Explore and discuss readings or other source materials on a topic.

2.      Select a particular aspect of the topic that you are especially interested in learning more about.  (This will be referred to in this competency as the inquiry issue.) 

3.      Explain what you already know about this issue, and why you are interested in exploring it.

4.      Formulate an initial set of questions to explore the inquiry issue that you identified in Criterion 2.

5.   Using the questions developed in Criterion 4, engage in a critical inquiry into the selected issue.

6.      Using the materials that you located in the inquiry process, write a research essay that answers the questions that you posed.

STANDARDS:

1.   For Criterion 1, exploration of materials should involve close, critical, active reading of a sort that enables you to come to class with prepared questions and comments.

2.   For Criterion 2, the inquiry issue you wish to explore must be approved by the faculty evaluator.

3.      For Criterion 3, your explanation may be given in a short paper or in an informal oral presentation.

4.      The questions you formulate for Criterion 4 must be of sufficient scope to enable you to engage in a meaningful exploration of the inquiry issue, while not being so broad as to restrict the depth with which they can be explored.  They must also be well-focused and organized in a logical progression.

5.  The inquiry process for Criterion 5 must include the following:

1. the identification of at least five resources that will help you to answer your inquiry questions. These resources must be approved by the faculty evaluator.
2. a close critical examination of the selected resources
3. reformulation of your inquiry questions as needed to carry out the inquiry
4. a written record of the inquiry process.  The precise nature of this record is to be worked out by each student and faculty evaluator.  It might include some or all of the following:
   • documentation of the process by which sources were located
   • a brief response to the resources that were located and reviewed
   • a summary of each resource selected for use in answering the inquiry questions
   • explanation of the process by which inquiry questions were reformulated.

6.    Criterion 6 should be addressed in a research essay that integrates the resources examined in the inquiry process to present your own informed perspective on the issue you researched.  The sources should support the essay's unifying idea and should be coherently incorporated into the essay.  The essay should:

1. Focus on a unifying idea and demonstrate clear purpose or intent
2. Maintain an identifiable structure that includes an introduction, a body, and a   conclusion
3. Be organized into paragraphs that are developed sequentially and that include facts, details, examples, reasoning and/or evidence to support the essay’s unifying idea
4. Properly identify and cite all texts that are relied on in the essay, based on APA citation guidelines, with the student’s own ideas and words clearly distinguished from ideas and words taken from those texts
5. Demonstrate sentence structure, punctuation, grammar, and usage in basic conformity with the conventions of formal American English. 
   

EXAMPLE OF DEMONSTRATION:  It is expected that as part of their first semester experience at CPCS, students will demonstrate this competency in the context of the Critical Learning Seminar.