Community of inquiry
The community of inquiry (CoI)
A useful parable
The Buddhist parable of "The
Applications
While Peirce originally intended the concept of the community of inquiry as a way to model the natural sciences, the concept has been borrowed, adapted, and applied in many different fields. This article touches on the contributions in the fields of education and public administration.
Education
According to
Lipman's paradigms
Lipman defined community of inquiry as a rigorous, democratic and reflective form of discussion built up over time with the same group of learners. Lipman also provides a useful set of
The standard paradigm poses the following:
- education as knowledge transmission
- knowledge as unambiguous, unequivocal and un-mysterious,
- knowledge is divided into non-overlapping disciplines
- teachers as authoritative sources of knowledge.
The reflective paradigm, in contrast, poses the following:
- education is the outcome of participation in a teacher-guided community of inquiry
- teachers stir students to think about the world when teachers reveal knowledge to be ambiguous, equivocal, and mysterious,
- knowledge disciplines are overlapping and therefore problematic,
- teachers are ready to concede fallibility,
- students are expected to be reflective and increasingly reasonable and judicious
- the educational process is not information acquisition but a grasp of relationships among disciplines (2003, pp 18–19).
A community of inquiry can be seen to exist to the degree that it avoids the qualities of this standard paradigm and shows the qualities of this reflective paradigm.
Online learning
Lipman's and Dewey's ideas were expanded and applied to online learning contexts in a Canadian project that originated in 1996 at the
Central to the work is a model of community inquiry that constitutes three elements essential to an educational transaction - cognitive presence,
This project led to production of many scholarly papers, a book and replication of the Community of Inquiry model by distance education researchers globally.[9][10] The Community of Inquiry model is also used to conceptually guide study research and practice in other forms of mediated, blended and classroom education.
Public administration
Patricia M. Shields has applied the community of Inquiry concept to the field of public administration. The community of inquiry is not defined by geographic location, rather a common desire by its members to resolve a problematic situation using a scientific attitude to assess evidence and guide action. The community is also defined by participatory democracy. "The parameters of the problematic situation and approaches to resolution are shaped by the interaction of the community and the facts".[11] The democratic community may consider ideals/values such as equality, freedom, effectiveness, justice as it considers goals. There are three key ideas – "problematic situation, scientific attitude, and participatory democracy".[12] Shields depiction is similar to Lipman's in that she refines the term inquiry by focusing on the problematic situations and scientific attitude (both concepts developed by Dewey in his book Logic: The Theory of Inquiry.[13] Community is refined as participatory democracy. The two definitions are essentially the same. Shields draws heavily on John Dewey's insights into democracy[14] and inquiry[15] to refine the concept and apply it to public administration.
See also
Notes
- ^ "The Community of Inquiry". Athabasca University. Retrieved 1 April 2014.
- ^ Peirce, C.S. "The Fixation of Belief". 1877. Wikisource. Retrieved 4 June 2012.
- S2CID 145345936.
- S2CID 146759673.
- S2CID 144576719.
- Buddha. Tokyo: Society for the Promotion of Buddhism, p. 148
- Public Administration, Administration & Society35(5): 513.
- ^ L H Ling, Community of Inquiry in an Online Undergraduate Information Technology Course, Journal of Information Technology Education, Volume 6, 2007
- ISBN 978-1-59311-863-1.
- ^ Community of Inquiry Community of Inquiry Research Archived 2009-02-02 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Patricia M. Shields. (2003). "The Community of Inquiry: Classical Pragmatism and Public Administration", Administration & Society 35(5): 511.
- ^ Patricia M. Shields "The Community of Inquiry: Classical Pragmatism and Public Administration, Administration & Society 35(5): 511.
- ^ John Dewey. (1938). Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. New York: Hold Rinehart and Winston
- ^ John Dewey (1954) The Public and Its Problem. Chicago: Swallow Press (original work published 1927). John Dewey (1998) Creative Democracy: The Task before Us. In L. Hickman and T. Alexander (eds.) The Essential Dewey: Volume I Pragmatism, education, democracy (pp. 340-344. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Shields also draws on the ideas of Jane Addams, John Dewey's friend and confidant. Addams developed her ideas while living and working at the settlement house (Hull House) . For a discussion of Jane Addams theory of democracy see Patricia M. Shields. 2006. Democracy and the Social Feminist Ethics of Jane Addams: A Vision for Public Administration Administrative Theory and Praxis 29(3) 418-443.
- ^ John Dewey. (1938). Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. New York: Hold Rinehart and Winston
References
- Garrison, D. R. and Anderson, T.. (2003) E-Learning in the 21st Century: A Framework for Research and Practice. London: Routledge/Falmer, 2003.
- Garrison, D. R., T. Anderson and W. Archer (2000) Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education. The Internet and Higher Education 2(2-3): 87–105, 2000.
- Dewey, J. (1902). The Child and the Curriculum. Chicago; University of Chicago Press.
- Lipman, M. (2003). Thinking in Education. (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Further reading
- Howard-Watkins, Demetria C., "The Austin, Texas African-American Quality of Life Initiative as a Community of Inquiry: An Exploratory Study" (2006). Applied Research Projects. Texas State University. Paper 115.
- Johnson, Timothy Lee, "The Downtown Austin Planning Process as a Community of Inquiry: An Exploratory Study" (2008). Applied Research Projects. Paper 276.