Studies in Higher Education How do first-year university students experience inquiry and research, and what are the implications for the practice of inquiry- based learning?

Studies in Higher Education

ISSN 0307-5079 print/ISSN 1470-174X online© 2012 Society for Research into Higher Education

http://www.tandfonline.com

How do first-year university students experience inquiry and research, and what are the implications for the practice of inquiry-based learning?

Philippa Levya* and Robert Petrulisb

aInformation School, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK; bOffice of Program Evaluation, College of Education, University of South Carolina, Columbia, USATaylor and FrancisCSHE_A_499166.sgm10.1080/03075079.2010.499166Studies in Higher Education0307-5079 (print)/1470-174X (online)Original Article2011Society for Research into Higher [email protected]

First-year undergraduates on degree programmes in the arts, humanities and socialsciences were found by this qualitative study to experience inquiry and research infour distinct ways. Research as ‘gathering information’ and ‘exploring others’ideas’ was associated with learning by engaging independently with a knowledgebase. Research as ‘evidencing and developing students’ own ideas’ and ‘makingdiscoveries’ was associated with an emergent sense of participation in knowledge-building, understood as the potential to bring something personal or new to an areaof study. Students described opportunities to frame their own lines of inquiry, andinquiry experiences with an open-ended, knowledge-building orientation, asespecially empowering in their intellectual and personal development. They alsohighlighted their need for support in carrying out research and inquiry. The authorspresent a conceptual framework for inquiry-based learning that was developed onthe basis of this study, and that has been found useful for pedagogical design andresearch/evaluation.

Keywords: inquiry-based learning; enquiry-based learning; learning to research;first-year students; teaching–research nexus

Introduction

This article discusses findings from a qualitative study of students’ experiences ofinquiry and research during the first year of their degree programmes in arts, human-ities and social sciences disciplines in one UK research university. The study fed intothe development of a conceptual framework for inquiry-based learning (IBL) that hasbeen found useful for pedagogical design and research/evaluation (Spronken-Smithand Walker 2010; Webber 2010; Wood and Levy 2009), and that is presented here asa key outcome. The findings of the study suggest that, with the development ofstudents’ higher-order intellectual and personal capabilities in mind, there is value inmoving beyond framing IBL as ‘active learning’ to a more inclusive conceptualisationthat also encompasses ‘real’ research.

The study was carried out in the context of considerable international interest instrengthening the role of inquiry and research in the undergraduate experience, boththrough provision of extra-curricular student research bursary schemes of variouskinds, and through the development of inquiry- (or enquiry-)based learning pedago-gies within the curriculum. In large part, the stimulus for this trend can be traced back

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Vol. 37, No. 1, February 2012, 85–101

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2010.499166

to the Boyer Commission’s critique of teaching in American research universitiesmore than 10 years ago (Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in theResearch University 1998). Arguing that the didactic style of much teaching in theseinstitutions was failing their students in terms of adequate preparation for the chal-lenges of professional life or graduate study, the Commission proposed a far-reachingblueprint for change to be based on making opportunities for student learning throughinquiry central to undergraduate education from the first year.

Boyer’s principal concern was with the closer integration of learning, research andteaching in research universities, but advocates of the inquiry approach to undergrad-uate education argue that it should be ‘mainstreamed’ to all students, whether basedin research-intensive or teaching-intensive institutions (e.g. Jenkins and Healey 2007).In the UK, a policy recommendation from the Higher Education Academy calls fornew models of undergraduate curriculum that should all incorporate ‘research-basedstudy’ in order to ‘cultivate awareness of research careers, to train students in researchskills for employment, and to sustain the advantages of a research–teaching connec-tion in a mass or universal system’ (Ramsden 2008, 11). The implication is that, whilepreparation for research careers is relevant to only a minority of students, all can bene-fit from a greater emphasis on inquiry and research in the curriculum. Recent nationallearning and teaching enhancement initiatives have provided a supportive frameworkfor the development of this agenda, including the Research-Informed Teaching Initia-tive and the Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) programme,both funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England. A number ofCETLs at the universities of Gloucestershire, Manchester, Reading, Sheffield,Sheffield Hallam, Surrey and Warwick have, over the last five years, taken forwarddevelopmental and research activities relating specifically to undergraduate inquiryand research, and to the enhancement of research–teaching linkages. The projectreported in this article was undertaken under the auspices of one of these CETLs (theCentre for Inquiry-Based Learning at the University of Sheffield), and was motivatedby our interest in the conceptualisation and development of IBL in the undergraduatecurriculum. In what follows, recognising that the terms ‘inquiry’ and ‘research’ aresubject to differing interpretations, and that this is a complicating factor in definitionsof IBL, ‘undergraduate research’ and the relation between these (Healey and Jenkins2009), for convenience we use inquiry and research interchangeably or in combinationto refer inclusively to all forms of scholarly exploration and investigation carried outby students as part of their studies. Where a specific meaning is attributed to the termused, we signal this.

A number of different perspectives on the desirable outcomes of higher educationidentify a central role for student inquiry and research in the achievement of higherorder goals for both the individual and society. For example, the values and practicesof inquiry are key points of reference in Barnett’s conception of a ‘pedagogy of jointdiscovery’, put forward as the means of fostering in students the critical, reflexiveand other qualities needed for positive agency in a profoundly uncertain, supercom-plex world (2007, 159). Brew (2006) similarly argues that student inquiry andresearch, carried out in partnership with academic staff, fosters dispositions, andintellectual and practical capabilities, of particular importance to life and work incontemporary society. Goodyear and Zenios (2007), proposing that higher educationshould be seen as preparation for knowledge work, see students’ engagement incollaborative inquiry as the means of developing their capacity to understand andparticipate in different ways of creating knowledge in different contexts, or their

P. Levy and R. Petrulis86

‘epistemic fluency’. Neary and Winn (2009), seeking to ‘democratise the process ofknowledge-production at the level of society’ (132), propose a critical, emancipatorypedagogy rooted in research-based collaboration between students and academicstaff. Inquiry is also central to the model of undergraduate education put forward byBaxter Magolda as the means to support students on their developmental journeystowards ‘self-authorship’ – a position of epistemological, intra-personal and inter-personal maturity characterised by awareness of knowledge as constructed andcontextual, belief in oneself as possessing the capacity to create new knowledge, andthe ability to play a part within knowledge-producing communities (e.g. BaxterMagolda 2004, 2009). Albeit from differing standpoints, perspectives such as theseshare the view that students’ engagement in inquiry and research is essential fordeveloping their self-belief and capabilities as active participants in the (co-)creationof meaning and knowledge.

The rationale for pedagogies based on inquiry and research also finds support inconstructivist educational theory, and the extensive body of research that demon-strates that students are more likely to adopt deep learning strategies when engagedwith tasks that are authentic to their field, using its techniques and tools (e.g. Duffy,Lowyck, and Jonassen 1993). Whereas student inquiry typically plays a supportingrole in knowledge-transmission models of undergraduate education, the term IBL isin increasing usage to describe a range of pedagogical approaches that, with modernorigins in the ideas of Dewey and Bruner, place student inquiry at centre-stage, and inwhich all learning tasks, assessments, resources and guidance are designed to supportthe inquiry process. Some forms of IBL aim to engage students with established,‘certain’ knowledge, but this approach frequently is conceived as a means ofhighlighting contestation and the challenges of authentically messy, open-ended prob-lems and lines of investigation. IBL has been described as a form of active learning(e.g. Spronken-Smith et al. 2008) and, since tasks designed to stimulate inquiry mayinclude problem or case scenarios, fieldwork investigations or experiential learningprojects, as well as research projects of different kinds, it is sometimes regarded as anumbrella term for a variety of related approaches (Hutchings 2007). However, concep-tualisation of IBL varies and is seen by some as requiring clarification (e.g. Savin-Baden, McFarland, and Savin-Baden 2008). One area of differing interpretationsrelates to the question of what is meant by the intention to enable students to ‘experi-ence the processes of knowledge creation’ (Spronken-Smith et al. 2008). In someconceptualisations, IBL is presented as a powerful means of engaging studentsactively with an existing knowledge base: for example, Elton (2009, 138) defines IBLas ‘research-like’ learning that differs from experiences in which students ‘actuallyconduct research’ leading to ‘outcomes of interest and value to the research commu-nity’. In others, IBL is taken to encompass the potential for students to participate inthe production of genuinely new knowledge or meaning (e.g. Hodge et al. 2008). Wesuggest that Bereiter’s (2002) distinction between ‘knowledge construction’ and‘knowledge building’ – the former understood as personal conceptual development(learning) and the latter as contribution to the improvement of ideas in a domain – isa useful one for distinguishing between different modes and experiences of IBLaccording to intended or actual outcomes, and this distinction is reflected in our anal-ysis of the research findings reported below.

Principled advocacy of undergraduate inquiry and research is supported by thegrowing evidence base on the student experience, although, despite the extensiveliterature on the broader theme of ‘the first-year experience’, there is little reported

Studies in Higher Education 87

research on this theme that focuses in detail on the first year. In a recent summary offindings, Healey and Jenkins (2009) point to a large number of evaluations of extra-curricular research enrichment programmes (usually in the sciences) that have shownpositive impacts on students’ intellectual, personal and professional development.These include greater self-confidence and independence in learning, increased episte-mological sophistication (in terms of a move from understanding knowledge as abso-lute towards understanding it as constructed and contextual), enhanced identificationwith departmental research cultures, more collegial relationships with academictutors, improved critical thinking and problem-solving skills, improved understandingof how research is carried out and development of the ability to assess research as acareer (e.g. Baxter Magolda et al. 1998; Blackmore and Cousin 2003; Hunter et al.2010). Evidence of the positive intellectual and practical impacts of inquiry andresearch within the undergraduate curriculum includes findings from the large-scaleUS College Student Experience Questionnaire research programme, leading to learn-ing activities involving inquiry and research being identified as ‘high impact’ in rela-tion to several indicators of intellectual and personal development (Hu, Kuh, and Li2008; Kuh 2009), especially for middle and high performing students. Positiveimpacts are also reported in the burgeoning literature of single case evaluations ofIBL initiatives across the disciplines, including some that focus on the first under-graduate year. For example, Justice and colleagues (Justice et al. 2007a, b; Justice,Rice, and Warry 2009) report that participation in a first-year social sciences inquirycourse consistently has led to improved student grades, development of a range ofmetacognitive and academic skills, and transfer of inquiry skills to other courses. Coxet al. (2008) report enhanced student engagement resulting from a first-year IBLcourse on information management. Sambell (2008) reports that a first-year interdis-ciplinary IBL course moved students beyond a ‘transmission’ conception of learningand teaching to a more participatory conception, and towards conceptions of researchthat went beyond either ‘research as information retrieval’ or ‘research as the exclu-sive preserve of the specialist’. From a broader perspective, evidence gathered as partof a national teaching enhancement initiative for Scotland leads Land and Gordon(2008) to suggest that involving students from the start in research-type activities anddeveloping their research-mindedness improves the experience of transition fromsecondary education.

There is also a growing literature on students’ perceptions of engagement ininquiry and research, although once again little that focuses specifically on the firstyear. Studies that have examined undergraduates’ attitudes suggest that many perceivethat they learn best when undertaking their own research project (Turner, Wuetherick,and Healey 2008), and that first-years typically may be favourably disposed to theprospect of doing research as part of their degree programmes (Smith and Rust 2007).However, undergraduates often perceive themselves to be recipients of research-basedknowledge rather than authors in its production (e.g. Brew 2006; Breen and Lindsay1999; Jenkins et al. 1998; Lindsay, Breen, and Jenkins 2002; Turner, Wuetherick, andHealey 2008). Zamorski (2002) found that even final-year undergraduates may notgenerally regard their own research as ‘proper’ research. Disciplinarity may be a keyfactor influencing variation in students’ perceptions of what constitutes research andwhere they stand in relation to it: on the basis of a small-scale comparison of students’experiences, Robertson and Blackler (2006) found that those in lower paradigmconsensus social science and humanities disciplines (English literature and geography)were more likely to perceive themselves as participants in a research community from


the first or second undergraduate year, while students in a high paradigm consensusdiscipline (physics) were more likely to report a sense of remaining at the peripheryof the disciplinary research culture throughout their undergraduate careers.

Research questions and methods

Against this background, the questions explored in our study are:

(1) How do students in arts, humanities and social sciences disciplines experienceand understand curriculum-based inquiry and research in their first undergrad-uate year?

(2) How do these experiences and understandings relate to desirable outcomes ofundergraduate education – in particular as related to their developmenttowards active participation in knowledge building as well as in knowledgeconstruction – and are there implications for the conceptualisation and practiceof IBL?

The study is part of an ongoing longitudinal project investigating a cohort of students’inquiry and research experiences as they progress through the full three or four yearsof their undergraduate programmes. Annual cycles of three interviews – comprisingtwo group interviews (one held towards the start of the academic year and one towardsthe end) and one individual interview (held approximately halfway through the year)– are being undertaken with the aim of following the evolution of experiences fairlyclosely over time. This article is based on analysis of data derived from all threerounds of interviews with these students during their first academic year.

The profile of the cohort was established with the aim of exploring variation andcommonality among experiences within two broad discipline areas (arts and humani-ties, social sciences). The composition of the sample was in part self-selecting. From60 responses to an email invitation sent to all first-year students enrolled on degreesin these disciplines, we selected a purposive sample including roughly equal numbersof students from each of the two discipline areas. Of 30 who initially agreed, 29 partic-ipated fully in the first year of the study, all of whom were recent school leavers whohad embarked on programmes immediately following secondary school education orafter a ‘year out’. Twelve were taking degrees in the arts and humanities, includingnine on single-discipline and three on dual-discipline programmes. The disciplinesrepresented were: biblical studies, English language, English literature, history, music,other modern languages and philosophy. Fourteen of the students were taking degreesin the social sciences, including 13 on single-discipline programmes and one on adual-discipline programme. The disciplines represented were: geography, humancommunication, international relations, journalism, law, management, politics andsocial work. Three of the students were taking dual degrees across the humanities andsocial sciences, with combinations of law, modern languages, philosophy and politics.

Reflecting the gender bias towards women students in the volunteer group, 20 ofthe participants were women and nine were men. Six international students wereincluded in the cohort; all had a first language that was not English, with five comingfrom European countries and one from an African country. In presenting the qualita-tive data below, participant identifiers (P1–P29) are supplemented with identifiers ofdiscipline area (AH = Arts and Humanities; SS = Social Sciences) and internationalstudents are identified additionally as INT. Gender is indicated by pseudonym.


The interview approach adopted for this project was guided by the principles ofthe constructivist research paradigm, which holds that meaning is constructed activelythrough interpretation of experiences within situated contexts of interaction (Lincolnand Guba 2000). In this context, the research interview is conceived as a partnershipin which an informal conversational style is engaged to elicit descriptions of howinterviewees understand their experiences. We chose to conduct a mix of focus groupand individual interviews in order to benefit from the advantages of each.

Our aim was to explore experiences of student inquiry and research as studentsthemselves understood these, whether labelled as IBL or not, and in relation to theirwider expectations and experiences of university study. A strategic focus on IBL wasa feature of the institutional context in which the study took place; this meant thatparticipating students might have encountered the term ‘IBL’ before entering thestudy. We told the students that we were interested in their experiences of inquiry andresearch, and introduced the term IBL into interviews from the outset, offering a broadexplanation of what we meant by that. Interviews were loosely structured, based onopen questions to allow for mutual exploration of emerging themes. Across the seriesof first-year interviews we explored students’ reasons for entering higher education;how they experienced and understood university learning, inquiry and research; whatthey perceived they gained from inquiry and research, and the challenges they experi-enced in relation to these. By asking students to provide concrete examples of inquiryand research activities in which they had participated, and to explain what these meantto them, we gained a picture of diverse experiences and perspectives. Individualinterviews typically lasted for around an hour and focus group interviews, conductedwith groups of four or five, a little longer than this. All students participated in twofocus groups and one individual interview.

The first phase of data analysis was based on a systematic, iterative process of‘code, retrieve and conceptualise’, using the qualitative data analysis softwareprogram, Atlas-ti. Descriptors of categories (concepts) embedded in the data wereassigned to segments, and related (similar and contrasting) passages brought togetherfor consideration and investigation of the relations between them, at the level ofindividual transcripts and the data set as a whole. In a second phase of analysis weconsidered emergent patterns and concepts in relation to themes from the literaturerelating to IBL.

Findings

In what follows, we present the main themes that emerged from the study. We beginby briefly contextualising responses to questions about inquiry and research in relationto students’ purposes and aspirations as university students. We then describe theways in which they reported their experiences of inquiry and research, in relation tolearning and knowledge building, and what they said about the developmental benefitsand challenges relating to these experiences. Drawing on these findings, we discussimplications for the design and practice of IBL.

Purposes and aspirations

In early interviews, all students were asked about their reasons for enrolling at univer-sity. Most emphasised their desire to pursue interests in their chosen discipline(s)while at the same time describing university as a route to improved life-chances.


Future employability usually was a key consideration and some of the students alreadyhad specific vocational goals. Typically, they also described university as an impor-tant opportunity for development in their personal lives and some emphasised theiraspiration for greater intellectual independence and self-confidence. Expressing asense of having entered a privileged transitional life-stage that would offer freedom to‘grow up’ – as several put it – in a protected environment, the students often describeda desire for what we labelled ‘bounded independence’, in which opportunities forautonomy in both learning and life would be balanced with support and guidance.

Inquiry and research

From the outset, all the students readily identified engagement in research as part ofthe first-year experience, and many described this as a central and defining character-istic of university learning as compared with learning at secondary level. Question-oriented lectures, seminars and online discussions, and tasks including essays, casestudies and small-scale empirical investigations were cited as stimuli for activeinquiry.

Students described experiencing inquiry and research in four main ways. Researchas gathering information or exploring others’ ideas was associated with learning byengaging independently with a knowledge base, from either a ‘knowledge-acquisi-tion’ or a ‘knowledge-construction’ perspective on learning. Research as evidencingand developing students’ own ideas or making discoveries was associated with anemergent sense of participation in knowledge building, understood as the potential tobring something personal or new to an area of study. Variation at the level of disci-plinary differences was not clear, with the exception that the experience of research asmaking discoveries was described only by students in social sciences areas. A smallnumber of students participating in the same inquiry activities on the same degreeprogramme interpreted these activities and their own roles as researchers differently,some describing them as primarily to do with gathering information and others asprimarily to do with evidencing and developing students’ own ideas. Some studentsseemed to experience research primarily as gathering information over the course ofthe whole year, whereas others experienced it in different ways as time went on. Someexplicitly contrasted doing ‘real’ research with ‘studying’, and very commonly theformer was associated with a strongly personal quality of engagement and motivation.For example:

The key thing for research is interest in the subject … If it’s something that you have todo, it’s not really research, it’s like an assignment. Does that make sense? Becauseresearch is something that you do for you to find out more about it, and you kind of stopwhen you’ve found out what you want to know. (Judith, P11/AH-SS)

Structured opportunities for students to frame their own lines of inquiry emerged asespecially powerful factors in descriptions of the positive impact of engaging in inquiry,whether experienced as oriented towards learning or towards knowledge building.

Learning

The research I’m doing is the background material for what’s covered in the lectures. It’snot my personal research, as in ‘I’m finding out something totally new that nobody else


has found out’, it’s research for my benefit so I’m learning stuff that other people havedone. (Kate, P17/SS)

All the students described inquiry or research as an independent approach toengaging with the curriculum of their first-year programmes. For example, inquirywas described as ‘finding things out for yourself rather than being given them, so it’slearning off your own back, not being spoon-fed’ (Rachel, P19/AH).

The experience of research as gathering information was the most commonlydescribed, and dominated many students’ accounts, especially during the earlier partof the year. The primary focus here was on locating and collecting information beyondwhat was made directly accessible via the university’s learning management system.Students reported intensive activity of this kind, typically describing informationgathering in preparation for seminars and essay-based coursework, guided by readinglists or pointers to information repositories. In some cases students described seekinganswers to specific questions, at other times a more open-ended process of explora-tion. Sometimes, they described information gathering in explicitly quantitative terms:‘it’s about finding as much [information] as you possibly can’ (Ingrid, P24/SS/INT).More often, they described the importance of identifying highly relevant and authori-tative information sources. Critical evaluation of information sources, to assess theirauthority, was a significant secondary theme in some students’ accounts of informa-tion gathering.

Information gathering was often described as a matter of identifying already-exist-ing answers to a question or problem set by academic tutors, with the broader purposeof acquiring a given body of knowledge; where students assumed, rightly or wrongly,that objectively correct answers were to be found, they conceived of their researchchallenge as identifying these. For example: ‘At the moment [my research] involvestextbooks and case reports. It’s finding an answer that you know is there’ (Keith, P7/SS). Students typically indicated that their academic tutors were mainly responsiblefor framing the focus and direction of their information-gathering activities, but somealso described taking some responsibility for this, pursuing sources of informationbeyond the immediate parameters of their reading lists, or in response to courseworktasks that had a built-in requirement to identify and assemble information resourceson a topic of students’ own choice.

Strongly informational perspectives on inquiry and research often were clearlyunderpinned by a reproductive, ‘knowledge-acquisition’ view of learning and a viewof knowledge as absolute. Students described learning as memorisation or absorptionof information from authoritative external sources, combined with the development ofa range of skills. Recall, replication, communication and application of acquired infor-mation were described as indicators of having learned. For example, one studentdescribed learning as ‘obtaining knowledge and being able to use it’, with the keyindicator of successful learning being ‘how many answers to teachers’ questions youknow’. Consistent with this, her view of research was: ‘it’s finding the right sources,trying to learn from them, answer questions’ (Brigitte, P14/AH/INT).

In contrast, a focus on exploring others’ ideas and the connections between them,from the position of a questioning or critical stance, was in the foreground of somedescriptions of inquiry and research as independent learning. Here, the focus was onreading, or active participation in seminar discussions, rather than information gather-ing per se, and these activities were associated with a view of learning as personalsense making rather than memorisation and recall. For example:


I suppose [research is] looking at other people’s opinions and their take on things, andcollecting ideas and putting them together so that you can stew it down and make yourown idea of it. (Harriet, P28/AH)

Learning is being told, or being told what you’re going to be reading [whereas] researchin my mind is the stuff you then have to do to make sense of things, to write essays, toactually have something to say, so you’ve actually got an opinion. You see the threadsyou can follow and you just follow them, it’s all part of the bigger picture, it’s the biggerpicture that’s important. (John, P25/AH)

In some cases students expressed a sense of the connection that exists betweenexploring others’ ideas and making new meaning, and a nascent awareness of them-selves as potential authors of new knowledge through the sense-making process:

[I see learning as] having an understanding of a subject that I didn’t have an understand-ing of before, I suppose, being able to make a useful contribution to it, not that you haveto write a book, but I always feel that to really understand something you really have toput your own ideas into it, yeah, I think learning is getting an idea and making it yourown. (Martin, P9/AH)

I like that [university is] not all about learning passively. That everything you learn, youlearn with a critical mind – even stuff from [academic tutors]. It’s always important tobe critical and think outside the box. You might be the next Marx or pioneering person.(Neil, P12/SS)

However, some accounts hinted at a mismatch with the way in which students’tutors might intend them to understand the connections between information gather-ing, exploring others’ ideas and knowledge building in their discipline. For example:

When we do a set subject I don’t really feel I’m researching something, I feel like I’mlearning it. I suppose [tutors in my] department do their own research and it’s findingtheir response to something … but I never feel like I’m doing my own research. Thethings we cover are like, I suppose, what the majority think, whereas I think research issomething new … the tutors say go and find a journal, that is research, but I don’t seethat as real research … I’m going to be learning whatever’s inside the journal, learningthat research, rather than me conducting my own research. (Sonya, P29/AH)

Open inquiry: towards knowledge-building

Research is delving into an area that hasn’t really been explored very fully, trying to findthings that are new, apart from just studying something, maybe a dissertation? (Vicky,P6/SS)

Not all students were able to explain by the middle of the first year what researchentailed as carried out by advanced scholars in their disciplines, and typically theydescribed a sense of distance from the wider research culture of their departments.However, many described ‘real’ research in general terms as developing novelresponses within an existing area of open inquiry, or making discoveries in relation toimportant research questions or problems, sometimes also associating it with formu-lating one’s own questions. The theme of making a genuine contribution sometimeswas highlighted. For example:

It’s searching for answers to questions that haven’t been answered yet. Something I’dspend more time doing, something really needed – questions that require answers, really


contributing to the work, something new, really contribute, not just collecting facts andputting them together like I did [for an essay] more like, you really contribute, come upwith something new, something that’s yours. (Natasha, P2/SS/INT)

Most students did not describe their own first-year research as being orientedtowards original work, although two reported having experienced this at secondarylevel. Some did not expect to conduct ‘real’ research until much later in their under-graduate careers if at all. For example:

Eventually I imagine that the question [set] will become broader and the answer willbecome less easy to find because it is a broader field, to the point where perhaps evenfurther than that you start to formulate your own answer because there isn’t an [existing]answer. We’re not formulating the questions yet, and that would be my view of inquiry-based learning: I have a question and I find out the answer. It’s on the radar for the farfuture. (Keith, P7/SS)

But some on both arts and humanities and social sciences degrees did describeexperiencing first-year research in ways that implied their own potential for knowledgebuilding. The context for these experiences typically was small-scale opportunities forstudents to respond to, or formulate, open-ended lines of inquiry in relation to a themeor a real-life setting of social or professional action. Students sometimes explained thisexperience of research as evidencing and developing their own ideas. For example,‘We’re told to find evidence to back up our own arguments … researching is findingmore information to add to your idea’ (David, P8/AH). The primary focus of thisconception of research was not on gathering information or exploring others’ ideas(though these activities clearly were involved), but on finding justification for, andgrowing, the students’ own, potentially original, interpretive insights and arguments.This view in some cases was underpinned by a strong sense of research as developinga very personal perspective on a question or theme, or of presenting an opportunity toengage in active contestation – perspectives that were rejected explicitly by those whoargued that in their disciplines the purpose of student inquiry in the first undergraduateyear was to identify and analyse others’ views rather than develop their own.

A different experience of engagement in open inquiry was to the fore in a smallnumber of social sciences students’ descriptions of projects that took them out of theclassroom ‘into the field’ to gather and interpret primary data, typically on introduc-tory research methods courses. The focus here was on making discoveries through theapplication of systematic procedures of disciplinary inquiry. However, where studentsunderstood these activities primarily as the means of learning about researchtechniques, they did not appear to perceive them as examples, albeit small scale, of‘real’ research. For instance:

We did collect our own [observational] information and nobody else would have got thesame results that we did. We’ve got to process those and come up with a report for nextweek. I didn’t think of it like that! I think we’re all programmed to think that research isgoing away and reading all this stuff, at this level anyway, it’s not what we’re doing. Butyes, for that module, I think we are doing our own [real] research, yes! (Kate, P17/SS)

Developmental journeys and challenges

Students often expressed excitement about engaging with a knowledge base throughinquiry, citing benefits such as enhanced motivation and interest in subject-matter,


improved retention of information when they had found something out for themselves,skills development in finding and evaluating information sources, and a rewardingsense of achievement. Tasks that provided opportunities to pursue their own lines ofinformation gathering and exploration of ideas were welcomed as affording a strongsense of ownership of the learning process – ‘you can find out different things about[the topic], it’s more individual’ (Martin, P9/AH). Some students reported thatengagement with diverse information sources challenged their prior assumptionsabout trusting to single authorities, and that they were learning to develop their powersof judgement in the evaluation of knowledge claims – suggesting that conceptualchange was occurring at the level of personal epistemology.

Experiences of research as evidencing and developing students’ own ideas or asmaking discoveries seem to have been especially stimulating and powerful in fosteringstudents’ emergent sense of intellectual freedom, personal authority and identificationwith their academic or professional discipline. They challenged students’ view of theirrole as learners, and were explicitly welcomed as supporting development towardspersonal and intellectual ‘growing up’, as described in early interviews. For example,one student described the beginnings of her repositioning as a more empoweredlearner through an inquiry project that she interpreted as an opportunity to build andevidence her own ideas:

What I liked about this [inquiry project] was that I got to do – I mean I was freer in away. I didn’t know that you as a first year, or a student at all, could refute arguments putforward by academics … I encountered a theory that I really disagreed with and I hadbrilliant examples of it not being true at all, and I got to do that by myself. I built myown arguments, and that was really, really good for me. I really enjoyed that, because itwas free. I had no idea that you could do that, and I don’t think that you can do that tothe same extent in an essay because that mode often is a set question that you have tohave – of course you can say if you agree or not agree to what it states, but the questionoften is based on certain concepts or certain theories, while in this [inquiry] project wecould choose our approach by ourselves. That was really good. (Kelly, P1/AH-SS/INT)

Another student expressed similar enthusiasm about a small-scale empirical projectfor which she had established a research question on the basis of personal interest, andgathered and interpreted data from the field. Her account pointed to a connectionbetween the opportunity to carry out a small-scale, authentic research project and thestart of developing her identity as a practitioner of a professional discipline:

I think doing something that, this is your project, do what you want with it, it’s scary but… it’s my, my thing … I feel like a grown-up person, going into [the professional field],I like being able to do your own thing. And that reminds you that you’re not just astudent, the more you go into [the field] the more it reminds you you’re becoming thatrole. (Liz, P13/SS)

However, students did not by any means always experience engagement in inquiryand research as easy, and over the year their accounts illuminated challenges in fivekey areas: information literacy; personal beliefs about learning and knowledge;personal self-confidence; inquiry framing and direction-setting; and peer collabora-tion. Many described struggles and anxieties about using library services and theInternet effectively, especially toward the start of the year, at which stage they mostoften emphasised difficulties with foundational information literacy capabilities asso-ciated with locating and sifting sources. At the same time, the purposes of open-ended


exploration could be puzzling and unsettling to students who held strongly reproduc-tive conceptions of learning, and the freedom to engage in student-framed inquirybrought anxieties about personal intellectual capabilities and being ‘on the righttrack’. The dynamics of working collaboratively with peers on research-based assign-ments were frequently cited as problematic. In sum, while most students were positiveabout the role of what they defined as inquiry and research in their experience, theneed for plenty of guidance and formative feedback was emphasised strongly. Encap-sulating a commonly-expressed view, one student said midway through the year:

A lot of being at university is to kind of grow up and that stops you from being spoon-fed and makes you go out and do something for yourself, because you have to. That’sone of the best things about the course, that you have to do things on your own … but Ithink this being the first year, there should be more guidelines on how to do inquiry-based learning and your own research. (Judith, P11/AH-SS)

Conceptual framework and discussion

Before moving on to discuss the findings presented above in the light of our interestin the conceptualisation and practice of IBL, we should acknowledge the nature of thisexploratory study. For a qualitative investigation we did not seek to establish a statis-tically representative sample, and we did not aim to measure the pattern of students’responses on emerging themes in quantitative terms. We do not claim that thesestudents’ experiences and understandings necessarily are typical of those of others intheir disciplines, either at their own university or others. However, we believe that thestudy offers insights into students’ experiences that raise useful questions for thedevelopment of the inquiry-based curriculum in the first undergraduate year andbeyond in arts, humanities and social sciences disciplines, in particular as regardsthe design of inquiry tasks and strategies for supporting the process of inquiry(‘process support’).

The conceptual framework for IBL that grew out of this study (Levy 2009) can beseen as an extension of others that have been developed to portray different ways oflinking research and teaching in the student experience (Elsen et al. 2008; Healey2005). In an earlier version (Levy and Petrulis 2007) it informed related conceptualwork which associates ‘discovery-oriented’ modes of IBL with strong integrationbetween teaching and research (Spronken-Smith and Walker 2010). In it, key dimen-sions of undergraduate students’ experiences of inquiry, as these emerged from ourstudy, are represented as a matrix (Figure 1) that highlights three broad considerationsfor pedagogical design: the status of student inquiry in terms of epistemic orientation(vertical axis); where primary responsibility lies for establishing the inquiry questionor theme (horizontal axis); and the level of process support, or guidance and structure,provided (mapped on to each quadrant). In this way, four ideal-type modes of IBL areidentified, labelled here identifying, pursuing, producing and authoring. In each ofthese the level of process support may be higher or lower according to context; asalready noted, important considerations highlighted by our study related to founda-tional aspects of information literacy, formative feedback, students’ self-confidence,question-framing and direction-setting, and peer collaboration.Figure 1. Modes of inquiry-based learning.This conceptualisation of IBL encompasses curriculum-based undergraduateinquiry and research in different modes, and at different levels of sophistication,including at the highest level as typified by the undergraduate research dissertation.The dimensions on the matrix represent continua and, over the course of a given


inquiry, the dynamic of students’ activity may well involve both exploration ofexisting knowledge and a move towards the creation of new meaning or the makingof new discoveries. Questions in producing and authoring modes may be entirely newto the discipline or simply new to the student, but in either case are authentically‘open’ in the sense that definitive answers have not yet been, or cannot be, found, andtherefore offer possibilities for moving beyond active learning towards knowledgebuilding. In an extended inquiry process, students may be expected to move from amore to a less structured and supported experience.

With this framework we differentiate between inquiry for learning and for knowl-edge building, but make the link between them explicit, thereby moving conceptuali-sation of IBL beyond the framework of active learning to also encompass, potentially,‘real’ research – our argument being that this is important if pedagogical thinking andpractice are to be oriented towards the kinds of higher-order outcomes for undergrad-uate education that have been identified (Barnett 2007; Baxter Magolda 2004, 2009;Brew 2006; Goodyear and Zenios 2007; Neary and Winn 2009). The perspective weare advancing here, therefore, is similar to that of Hodge et al. (2008), who argue thata move needs to be made from a ‘learning paradigm’ to a ‘discovery paradigm’ inundergraduate education.

This conceptualisation of IBL offers a broad framework for planning progressionof IBL through successive levels of study. All four IBL modes are taken to be valu-able, depending on pedagogical purposes and context. There is strong theoretical justi-fication, and empirical evidence, in favour of providing more tightly structured andguided forms of IBL at less advanced levels of study, as corroborated by our study. Atthe same time, perhaps particularly in low paradigm consensus disciplines with rela-tively flat knowledge structures, there may well be scope to engage students in someinquiry activities with an open, knowledge-building orientation early in their under-graduate careers (e.g. as described by Webber 2010). Our study suggests that tasksthat offer first-year students experiences of ‘bounded independence’ in inquiry –tightly-structured, small-scale tasks in producing and authoring modes – may offerhigh-impact benefits in terms of engagement and motivation, and may powerfully

Figure 1. Modes of inquiry-based learning.


support students’ development in areas such as identity formation, personal epistemol-ogy and self-belief. Whereas ‘inquiry for learning’ afforded students in this study arewarding sense of independence, ownership and achievement, open inquiry wasassociated especially strongly with ‘growing up’. The study also suggests that tasksthat encourage students to frame their own lines of inquiry may have particularlystrong impact in terms of student engagement and empowerment.

In our study, undergraduates in the first year of arts, humanities and social sciencesdegrees most frequently experienced research as interacting actively with a knowledgebase in response to lines of inquiry framed by teachers. This often was describedprimarily in terms of gathering information, and often was associated with a view oflearning as ‘knowledge acquisition’ from an authoritative source and of knowledge asabsolute. The conception of research as gathering information features in a study ofpostgraduate research students (Meyer, Shanahan, and Laugksch 2005) as well as inSambell’s (2008) study of first-years’ experiences of IBL. It seems likely thatknowledge-transmission approaches to pedagogy reinforce this understanding ofstudent research. Since IBL for knowledge building engages students with informa-tion through the lens of open-ended questions, problems or case scenarios, it seemslikely by its nature to help them move beyond this limited understanding of the inquiryprocess.

We are suggesting that opportunities for first-years to experience open inquirymight be seen as representing the beginnings of their participation in knowledge build-ing. However, our study indicates that students following the same programme maynot only hold differing conceptions of inquiry, but also may understand inquiry tasksin ways that do not align with the conceptions or pedagogical intentions of theireducators. This would seem to have important practical implications, highlighting theneed to help first-year students to situate and connect their own experiences of inquiryand research more clearly with those of more experienced researchers in the disci-pline, and to move students towards more advanced conceptions of inquiry and ofthemselves as student-researchers. With the aim of clarifying the purposes of inquirytasks and of developing students’ reflexive awareness of their own assumptions andpractices, as both learners and apprentices in knowledge building, there may be valuein incorporating into IBL pedagogy an explicit focus on the question of differingconceptions of student inquiry and research.

Conclusion

The outcomes of this exploratory study suggest a number of avenues for furtherresearch. This is needed to test and build on its findings in different contexts, forexample by exploring students’ experiences and understandings of inquiry andresearch at different levels of study within different disciplines. In terms of thedevelopmental impacts of different pedagogical interventions in IBL, the conceptualframework outlined may provide a useful basis for examining these, for examplewith a view to identifying interventions that help move students towards moreadvanced conceptions of inquiry and of themselves as learners and knowledge-builders.

Questions arise from our study about the relation between students’ conceptions ofinquiry, learning and knowledge. We did not set out in the first-year study reportedhere to investigate this systematically. However, our findings suggest that a relationexists, as might be inferred from evidence of links between students’ conceptions of


knowledge and of learning (e.g. Brownlee et al. 2009; Lonka and Lindblom-Ylanne1996). Moreover, it is well established empirically that students’ conceptions oflearning are related to their study approaches and outcomes (Entwistle and Ramsden1983); it seems probable that a similar relation exists between their conceptions ofinquiry and research, and their approaches to, and outcomes from, inquiry tasks. Itwould be useful to explore this.

We are cautious about drawing too-strong inferences on the basis of our studyabout the way in which individual and contextual influences on students’ understand-ings of inquiry, and of their own roles and potentials as student-researchers, interact.However, in that it revealed that students engaging in the same inquiry tasks on thesame programmes could interpret these and their roles differently, our study points toa complex picture in which disciplinary and pedagogical factors interrelate withothers, including students’ prior experiences of inquiry and research in educationalcontexts, and their beliefs about knowledge and learning. Situated studies of students’understandings and experiences in context will help illuminate the nature of thisinterrelation.

ReferencesBarnett, R. 2007. A will to learn: Being a student in an age of uncertainty. Buckingham: Open

University Press.Baxter Magolda, M. 2004. Self-authorship as the common goal of 21st century education. In

Learning partnerships: Theory and models of practice to educate for self-authorship, ed.M. Baxter Magolda and P.M. King, 1–36. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Baxter Magolda, M. 2009. Educating students for self-authorship: Learning partnershipsto achieve complex outcomes. In The university and its disciplines: Teaching andlearning within and beyond disciplinary boundaries, ed. C. Kreber. 143–56. London:Routledge.

Baxter Magolda, M.B., L. Boes, M.L. Hollis, and D.L. Jaramillo. 1998. Impact of the under-graduate summer school experience in epistemological development. Oxford, OH: MiamiUniversity.

Bereiter, C. 2002. Education and the mind in the knowledge age. Mahwah, NJ: LawrenceErlbaum Associates.

Blackmore, P., and G. Cousin. 2003. Linking teaching and research through research-basedlearning. Educational Development 4, no. 4: 24–7.

Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University. 1998. Reinventingundergraduate education: A blueprint for America’s research universities. Stony Brook, NY:State University of New York at Stony Brook. http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/pres/boyer.nsf.

Breen, R., and R. Lindsay. 1999. Academic research and student motivation. Studies inHigher Education 24, no. 1: 75–93.

Brew, A. 2006. Research and teaching: Beyond the divide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Brownlee, J., S. Walker, S. Lennox, B. Exley, and S. Pearce. 2009. The first year university

experience: Using personal epistemology to understand effective learning and teaching inhigher education. Higher Education 58, no. 5: 599–618.

Cox, A., P. Levy, P. Stordy, and S. Webber. 2008. Inquiry-based learning in the first-yearinformation management curriculum. ITALICS 7, no. 1. http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/italics/vol7iss1/pdf/Paper1.pdf.

Duffy, T.M., J. Lowyck, and D.J. Jonassen, eds. 1993. Designing environments for construc-tive learning. London: Springer-Verlag.

Elsen, G.M.F., G.J. Visser-Wijnveen, R.M. van der Rijst, and J.H. van Driel. 2008. How tostrengthen the connection between research and teaching in undergraduate universityeducation. Higher Education Quarterly 63, no. 1: 64–85.

Elton, L. 2009. Guiding students into a discipline: The significance of the student’s view. InThe university and its disciplines: Teaching and learning within and beyond disciplinaryboundaries, ed. C. Kreber, 129–39. London: Routledge.


Entwistle, N., and P. Ramsden. 1983. Understanding student learning. London: Croom Helm.Goodyear, P., and M. Zenios. 2007. Discussion, collaborative knowledge work and epistemic

fluency. British Journal of Educational Studies 55, no. 4: 351–68.Healey, M. 2005. Linking research and teaching: Exploring disciplinary spaces and the role

of inquiry-based learning. In Reshaping the university: New relationships betweenresearch, scholarship and teaching, ed. R. Barnett, 67–78. Buckingham: Open UniversityPress.

Healey, M., and A. Jenkins. 2009. Developing undergraduate research and inquiry. York:Higher Education Academy. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/resources/publications/DevelopingUndergraduate_Final.pdf

Hodge, D., C. Haynes, P. LePore, K. Pasquesi, and M. Hirsh. 2008. From inquiry todiscovery: Developing the student as scholar in a networked world. In Proceedings of the3rd Learning through Enquiry Alliance Conference, ed. P. Levy and P. McKinney, 3–18.Sheffield: Centre for Inquiry-Based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences, Universityof Sheffield.

Hu, S., G. Kuh, and S. Li. 2008. The effects of engagement in inquiry-oriented activities onstudent learning and personal development. Innovative Higher Education 33, 71–81.

Hunter, A-B., S.L. Laursen, E. Seymour, H. Thiry, and G. Melton. 2010. Summer scientists:Establishing the value of shared research for science faculty and their students. SanFrancisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Hutchings, W. 2007. Enquiry-based learning: Definitions and rationale. Manchester: Centrefor Excellence in Enquiry-Based Learning, University of Manchester. http://www.campus.manchester.ac.uk/ceebl/resources/essays/hutchings2007_definingebl.pdf.

Jenkins, A., T. Blackman, R. Lindsay, and R. Paton-Saltzberg. 1998. Teaching andresearch: Student perspectives and policy implications, Studies in Higher Education 23,no. 2: 127–41.

Jenkins, A., and M. Healey. 2007. Critiquing excellence: Undergraduate research for allstudents. In International perspectives on teaching excellence in higher education, ed. A.Skelton, 117–32. London: Routledge.

Justice, C., J. Rice, and W. Warry. 2009. Academic skills development – Inquiry seminars canmake a difference: Evidence from a quasi-experimental study. International Journal ofthe Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 3, no. 1: 1–23.

Justice, C., J. Rice, W. Warry, S. Inglis, S. Miller, and S. Sammon. 2007a. Inquiry in highereducation: Reflections and directions on course design and teaching methods. InnovativeHigher Education 31: 201–14.

Justice, C., J. Rice, W. Warry, and I. Laurie. 2007b. Taking an ‘inquiry’ course makes adifference: A comparative analysis of student learning, Journal on Excellence in CollegeTeaching 18, no. 1: 57–77.

Kuh, G.D. 2009. High impact activities: What they are, why they work, who benefits. InImproving student learning through the curriculum, ed. C. Rust, 20–39. Oxford: OxfordCentre for Staff and Learning Development, Oxford Brookes University.

Land, R., and G. Gordon. 2008. Research–teaching linkages: Enhancing graduate attributes.Sector-wide discussions, vol. 1. Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. Enhance-ment Initiative of the Scottish Higher Education Enhancement Committee. Mansfield:Linney Direct. http://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/documents/ResearchTeaching/SectorWideDisc_vol1_final.pdf

Levy, P. 2009. Inquiry-based learning: A conceptual framework. Sheffield: Centre forInquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sheffield. http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ibl.

Levy, P., and R. Petrulis. 2007. Towards transformation? First year students, inquiry-basedlearning and the research/teaching nexus. In Proceedings of the Annual Conference of theSociety for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) 2007, Brighton, UK.

Lincoln, Y.S., and E.G. Guba. 2000. Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions and emergingconfluences. In Handbook of qualitative research, 2nd ed., ed. N.K. Denzin and Y.S.Lincoln, 163–88. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Lindsay, R., R. Breen, and A. Jenkins. 2002. Academic research and teaching quality – Theviews of undergraduate and postgraduate students. Studies in Higher Education 27, no. 3:309–27.


Lonka, K., and S. Lindblom-Ylanne. 1996. Epistemologies, conceptions of learning, andstudy practices in medicine and psychology. Higher Education 31: 5–24.

Meyer, J., M. Shanahan, and R. Laugksch. 2005. Students’ conceptions of research 1: Aqualitative and quantitative analysis. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 49,no. 3: 225–44.

Neary, M., and J. Winn. 2009. The student as producer: Reinventing the student experience inhigher education. In The future of higher education: Policy, pedagogy and the studentexperience, ed. M. Neary, H. Stevenson, and L. Bell, 126–38. London: Continuum.

Ramsden, P. 2008. Teaching and the student experience. Report presented to Department ofInnovation, Universities and Skills Debate on the Future of Higher Education. http://www.dius.gov.uk/higher_education/shape_and_structure/he_debate/teaching_and_student_experience.aspx.

Robertson, J., and G. Blackler. 2006. Students’ experiences of learning in a research environ-ment. Higher Education Research and Development 25, no. 3: 215–29.

Sambell, K. 2008. The impact of enquiry-based learning on the first year experience ofstudentship: Student perspectives. In Proceedings of the European First Year ExperienceConference, ed. J. Pieterick, R. Ralph, and M. Lawton, 184–88. Wolverhampton: Univer-sity of Wolverhampton.

Savin-Baden, M., L. McFarland, and J. Savin-Baden. 2008. Influencing thinking practicesabout teaching and learning in higher education: An interpretive meta-ethnography. Liter-ature review 2006/7. York: Higher Education Academy. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/ourwork/teachingandresearch/InfluencingThinking.pdf.

Smith, P., and C. Rust. 2007. Students’ expectations of a research-based curriculum: Resultsfrom an online survey of first year undergraduates at Oxford Brookes University. BrookeseJournal of Learning and Teaching 2, no. 2. http://bejlt.brookes.ac.uk/article/students._expectations_of_a_research_based_curriculum.

Spronken-Smith, R., and R. Walker. 2010. Can inquiry-based learning strengthen the linksbetween teaching and disciplinary research? Studies in Higher Education 35, no. 6: 723–40.

Spronken-Smith, R.A., R. Walker, W. O’Steen, H. Matthews, J. Batchelor, and T. Angelo.2008. Reconceptualising inquiry-based learning: Synthesis of findings. Wellington, NZ:Ako Aotearoa, The National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence. akoaotearoa.ac.nz/project/inquiry-based-learning/resources/books/reconceptualisinginquiry-based-learning-synthesis-fi.

Turner, N., B. Wuetherick, and M. Healey. 2008. International perspectives on student aware-ness, experiences and perceptions of research: Implications for academic developers inimplementing research-based teaching and learning. International Journal for AcademicDevelopment 13, no. 3: 199–211.

Webber, S. 2010. Investigating modes of student inquiry in Second Life as part of a blendedapproach. International Journal of Personal and Virtual Learning Environments 1, no. 3:55–70.

Wood, J., and P. Levy. 2009. Inquiry-based pedagogies in the arts and social sciences:Purposes, conceptions and models of practice. In Improving student learning through thecurriculum, ed. C. Rust, 128–42. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Develop-ment, Oxford Brookes University.

Zamorski, B. 2002. Research-led teaching and learning in higher education: A case. Teachingin Higher Education 7, no. 4: 411–27.


Copyright of Studies in Higher Education is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or

emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission.

However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Documents

Studies in Higher Education How do first-year university students experience inquiry and research, and what are the implications for the practice of inquiry- based learning?