​What Does Genuine Inquiry Look Like When the Teacher Steps Back?

Most classrooms have inquiry-shaped activities but not genuine inquiry. The difference is who owns the question. When the teacher owns the question and students investigate it, that is structured discovery. When the learner owns the question and the teacher's job is to resource, provoke, and get out of the way, that is genuine inquiry. These look similar from the outside. They feel completely different from the inside.

I chose the image above, because it makes me happy and sad at the same time.  There is a something within the child's eye in the upper left hand corner.  He is genuinely curious.  He wants to paint like everyone else, so he ventures to look around the group to see what everyone else is doing.  He is not creating for himself, but for approval. His teacher owns the quesiton and he does not have the answer. 
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This means we have to take a step back, so learners can choose the pathway for their inquiry.  This is very difficult for us, because we don't want anyone to fail.  I get it.  I am have warm and fuzzy heart too.  But, the teacher who steps back from inquiry is really guiding from afar.  This is a chance for learners to really show us what they know and do not.  This is not about replication. 

What does this mean for you and me?  It means that we have to resist the urge to direct our learners when the inquiry goes somewhere unexpected, asking questions  and not answering them, making resources available without prescribing which ones to use, and tolerating the visible messiness of genuine thinking without tidying it into a neat product.

Teachers often make the mistake of stepping back in the moment the learning looks most alive.  They get fearful, because chaotic learning is messy, loud, and usually off course of curricular objectives.  What they don't know is this is the point where real learning happens.

When did you last let go of the set objective and allow your learners to create for themselves?