This week in EDCI 336, we had a guest speaker, Jeff Hopkins, from the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry, an alternative private school that focuses on inquiry-based learning. It was interesting to engage with a pedagogy that differs from what is traditionally offered in BC public schools. Students come in at the beginning of the school year and identify lines of inquiry that interest them. According to Jeff, they may have 3 or 4 lines of inquiry at a time. Teachers then work with students to devise learning activities and set class schedules in order to help students deeply explore their inquiry topic. Sometimes, this type of inquiry-based learning has a project component at the end, but not always.

One limitation that came to mind for me in considering this kind of an approach to education is how many students could a school like this serve? It seems as though the level of individualisation that goes into each student’s education at PSII would make it difficult to translate this system to a large 1500 student high school for example. I found a source online from the government of BC that states that in 2019, PSII only had 95 students ranging from grade 9 to 12. In comparison, Belmont Secondary on the Westshore serves the same grade levels but had a whopping 1410 students in 2019.

Student Enrolment Over Time at PSII – Taken from the BC Government Website “StudentSuccess”

# of Students at PSII by Grade Level – Taken from the BC Government Website “StudentSuccess”

I was also very interested in the fact that PSII students are able to get a dual dogwood degree. From looking at their schedule, I noticed that they have quite a few French conversation groups delineated by level (beginner, advanced) to practice using their oral French. I wonder, do students also engage with their inquiry topics on top of this? This would allow for them to be more immersed in the language outside of just their conversation groups. Jeff brought up that students at PSII play Dungeons and Dragons in French to immerse themselves in the language in a fun and entertaining way. That was an interesting idea for me that I’d never heard of before. I’ve previously played “Loup-garou” with French learners (an atmospheric conversation game similar to mafia) and I definitely found that students were extremely engaged in that game.

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Photo by Moren Hsu from Unsplash.