Implementing the Stripling Model for Student-Led Inquiry

If there is anything certain about the world that today’s students will grow into, it is the certainty of unabated change and the importance of teaching lifelong learning skills such as inquiry. In A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas, Warren Berger shows that the rate of students asking questions in classrooms “falls off a cliff” between preschool and middle school. Too many schools condition children to assume a passive, incurious role in classrooms, resulting in boredom and an inability to realize how education could transform their lives.

The Stripling Inquiry Model

Inquiry learning exemplifies a student-centered approach to teaching, providing opportunities for self-directed study. The Stripling Model of Inquiry, created by former school librarian and past president of the American Library Association Barbara Stripling, offers a step-by-step research procedure adaptable to any classroom or topic.

In a middle school where Seth served as principal, all sixth graders were taught this inquiry model. In eighth grade, prior to graduation, every student conducted a capstone project, focused on a research question they developed and investigated using the Stripling approach. 

Students pursued varied and intriguing interests: social justice (e.g., animal rights, the glass ceiling in technology companies, stereotyping of Asian Americans), inventions (e.g., converting an acoustic violin into an electronic instrument, designing a concussion-proof football helmet based on principles of physics), and personal challenges (e.g., the impact of divorce on children, whether or not homework is beneficial).

Whatever the focus, all projects were framed as research questions meeting three criteria:

1. The question must spark genuinely felt curiosity and passion in the student.
2. The information must manifest a meaningful purpose in the wider world. (Staff debated whether one student’s love for Twinkies regardless of health implications represented a meaningful purpose.) 
3. Conclusions must be evidence-based and documented.

The Inquiry Model in Action

Once the inquiry question was aptly defined, each student’s project followed the steps of the Stripling Model.

Connect: In the initial stage, students garnered background knowledge by gathering basic information and forming connections with their interests and prior knowledge. A student exploring the subject of automobile safety, for example, might begin by reading articles and browsing websites describing advances in vehicle design, technological advances, and proposed laws, such as lowering the speed limit or raising the minimum driving age. The student might also discover trends in automobile safety statistics.

Wonder: As students conduct preliminary research and draw connections in the Connect phase, they process specific and probing questions. In the automobile safety example, after a cursory study of safety-related innovations and possible legislative reforms, the student might wonder whether innovations in automobile design or technology or new legislation met the three-part criteria of a worthy inquiry question (i.e., stir authentic personal interest; exhibit a “So what?”; and present opportunities for evidence-based study). A middle school student studying the glass ceiling in the technology industry, for example, was motivated by her desire to pursue a future career in game development.

Investigate: This is the step traditionally associated with research. Students deeply and widely seek information, then evaluate the findings in relation to their starting question and hypothesis. If the student in our example chose to focus on innovative safety-related automobile design, research would include reading related articles, consulting reports available on insurance and government websites, and interviewing experts from automobile safety organizations, such as the American Automobile Association and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or the sales manager of a nearby automobile dealership to consider whether customers are willing to pay more for enhanced safety features.

Construct: This phase is likened to connecting the dots. Information gathered in the Investigate phase is compiled and then examined with the objective of making meaning and drawing conclusions. Thus far, the inquiry project has been personal because the topic was selected by the student, but now the student begins to own the outcomes as well—both the learning and, later, the presentation.

Young students believe the development of knowledge is strictly the province of experts. The Construct phase results in students putting their own stamp on learning: deriving personal meaning and a sense of its significance. Our hypothetical student might determine that a key design change would be a lower center of gravity to prevent rollover accidents. For the student, inquiry resulted in mentally constructing a new understanding of both the problem and the solution, and feeling a sense of ownership.

Express: Now it’s time to share with others, applying the student’s new learning. In our automobile safety investigation, the student might design a futuristic vehicle with a lower center of gravity, perhaps fashioning a clay model accompanied by a one-page text explanation, or maybe create a video demonstrating that a clay model with a lower center of gravity is less prone to roll over.

Reflect: The final step is to reflect on and assess the inquiry project. There is a dual focus on the particular project (e.g., What did I learn about automotive safety?) and also the inquiry process (e.g., What did I learn about learning through an inquiry approach?). In middle school capstone projects, students maintained a journal to record their ongoing observations and reflections on the inquiry process. In the end, they responded to prompts—for example, “What were some of your ‘Aha!’ moments?” and “What obstacles did you encounter and how did you overcome them?” 

Implementing the Inquiry Process

It is important to realize that an inquiry project is not as sequential as it may appear above. Inquiry is more iterative, jumping backward and forward. The final Reflect stage generates new questions, leading back to Connect and Wonder. Reflection itself is ongoing. Investigate might cause the student to revert back to Wonder, as new questions continuously emerge. 

For student-centered inquiry to succeed, teachers must be prepared for the different types of roles they must now play. Typical interactions included recommending questions students could consider, suggesting primary and secondary potential sources of information, and helping students recognize when they were ready to advance to the next Stripling stage or if they needed to revisit an earlier step in the sequence. Perhaps the teacher’s most important influence was to encourage the qualities of independence, ownership, and passion. Once inquiry projects commenced, the staff discontinued employing the term “teacher” in favor of “guide,” emphasizing the empowerment of students in the inquiry learning process.