You show up to class the next day feeling cautiously optomistic. The teacher takes the class through an activity that helps each of you to identify your research topic. This is a little confusing to you. You've spent all your time trying to figure out what you are going to make, not thinking about what you are going to research. You aren't the only one who is struggling with this activity and you start to wonder if your teacher was lying to you about getting some ideas for the product.
You all wrap up the identification activity about half way through the class and he turns the conversation to the end product. He explains that he hopes that now that you have a better idea of what your story might be, you might have some ideas about how you might tell that story. A light bulb goes off and you understand that maybe you've been putting your energy in the wrong direction. You see how some stories might be better told through some mediums and others might be better through other mediums.
He goes on to show you some examples of what others have made in the past. He makes the connection between the story and the medium in each and you get a clearer idea of how these two concepts are related. He gives you the last few minutes of the class to write in your Inquiry Journal and you jot down some ideas that have occurred to you through the course of the class and a couple of thoughts about the direction that your project might take.
From here you are able to go home and refocus. You turn toward the exploratory research again so that you are in better shape to identify your research direction. You worry less about what you are going to make knowing that that will be easier when you have started your research. It takes a few days, but you get a research question that you are happy with. The information that you gather to support that question starts to give some structure to the story that you see yourself telling. Sure enough, the deeper you go, the more evident the nature of the end product becomes. You do drop in to see your teacher from time to time to make sure that you are in the right track and he is always full of good ideas for you.
At a certain point, you feel that you've gathered enough information to tell your story. There have been a couple of classes where you have gathered in smaller Inquiry Circles to discuss your research. Through these sessions, you got to check in with your progress and as you explain your research to others, you saw where some of the remaining questions were. You are fully in create mode now. You have been jotting notes in your Inquiry Journal as you go and ideas for that final product have started to formulate. You assemble your project with few issues, although you do find that there are times when you are surprised by what you don't know about how to make your project.
You finally reach the project due date where you are expected to share your work with the class. This feels different, somehow, to how you've shared in the past. You know that everyone in the class has been researching similar topics to you, but the other students in your inquiry circle are researching topics much closer to yours and they've been part of your progress. It feels as if they actually care about your success and want to learn more about what you have been learning. You present and feel like the product that you've produced better tells your story than any essay or PowerPoint presentation that you've done in the past. The questions you get asked are really interesting. You surprise yourself by being able to answer so many of them confidently and those that you can't answer, you feel a need to find the answers. You feel like there might actually be another research project here...
In Guided Inquiry, we don't worry too much about the final product that we use to share our research until fairly late in the process. Having said that, there are times, either because of the needs of the curriculum or because of the needs of the student, that the create phase gets pushed forward. There are times when this is truly beneficial and the making has a strong influence on the research and conceptual learning. But there are times when focusing on the making can be putting the cart before the horse. In this particular scenario, the student was definitely confused by the reversal of the process. But, based on what he'd been asked to do in the past, this strategy made sense. When you are writing an essay, you know what the essay is on and how long it needs to be before you start researching. Why wouldn't you do the same here?
The teacher intervention where the connection was made between the medium and the message helped to clarify the process for this student. If the student was determined to make a certain kind of thing for his final product, he could have made the research and the story fit the medium. But in this case, the student didn't have clarity on either, so it was best for him to focus on the story first.