
Self-Regulation & Inquiry-Based Learning

The Project
This research project shows how inquiry-based learning enables children to become self-regulated learners, which is so important for school success. The research involved an ethnographic case study with multiple sites. The sites were four primary classrooms in the Greater Toronto Area. There were 8 educators and 103 children from racially diverse backgrounds who participated in the research. I observed the teachers and children working together during four emergent curriculum inquiries. I found that when teachers co-construct emergent curriculum inquiries with the children in their classrooms, this teaching practice supports the children’s ability to self-regulate.
Self-regulation can be understood as a reflective learning process where children become aware of what it feels like to be overstressed, recognize when they need to up-regulate or down-regulate, and develop strategies to reduce their stress and restore their energy. While the sources of stressors can be biological, cognitive, emotional, social, or prosocial, the underlying mechanisms for self-regulation reside in the biological domain. Too much stress is an important explanation for why a child might be having difficulty paying attention, ignoring distractors, inhibiting impulses, modulating their emotions, or staying calmly focused and alert. Inquiry-based learning is an approach to teaching and learning that places students’ observations, questions, ideas, and theories at the center of their learning experience. It encourages active learning and critical thinking through collaborative student-led investigations guided by interesting questions or problems.
Emergent curriculum inquiries are a particular kind of inquiry-based learning. They are sustained investigations that emerge from either the children’s or teachers’ interests, encounters with materials in the classroom, or unexpected events. The curriculum is co-constructed between the teachers and children as the inquiry unfolds. In my research, I found that what makes emergent curriculum inquiries unique is that they contain four core components: inquiry design, design of the environment, conversation, and documentation. These components are interwoven and reciprocal throughout the process as documentation informs conversation, conversation informs documentation, and design provides the structure for the inquiry to grow. Aspects of these components provided evidence to show how teachers can help children become self-regulated learners.
My research findings supported four compelling insights about the relationship between self-regulation and inquiry-based learning in primary classrooms.
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Children learn how to self-regulate during inquiry-based learning in the same way that they do during play. Like play, inquiries support the children’s ability to self-regulate because they emerge from the children’s interests, are enjoyable and intrinsically rewarding, and there is a sense of control over the activity.
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Teachers use scaffolding strategies during inquiry-based learning to support children as they become self-regulated learners. Scaffolding reduces the children’s stress levels and their aversion to risk-taking so they can move to a higher level of cognitive functioning.
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Inquiry-based learning promotes positive emotions, which are important for the development of social and emotional learning (SEL). A central finding from the field of SEL is that positive emotions such as elation, inspiration, pride, and curiosity generate energy while negative emotions such as fear consume energy, making it difficult for students to concentrate and pay attention (Jones & Kahn, 2017).
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During inquiry-based learning, children use oral language as a self-regulatory tool to help them regulate their own emotions and behaviours. Oral language enables thinking to become more complex and flexible. It allows children to imagine, manipulate, and create new ideas, as well as to share their ideas and theories with others. When children express their thinking during inquiry-based learning, speech is used to help them understand, clarify, and focus their thoughts.
Research and Educational Impact
The findings of this research project were published as a book, Self-Regulation and Inquiry-Based Learning in the Primary Classroom (Canadian Scholars Press, 2022). This book fills a gap in the empirical research on self-regulation, as other scholars have not considered nor shown the connection to inquiry-based learning. My book shows clearly why emergent curriculum inquiries should have an important place in the primary classroom. It is intended to be a foundational text for students in Education and Early Childhood Education and for pre-service and in-service teachers alike that takes deeply complex ideas and pedagogy and translates them into actionable frameworks, learning outcomes, and tools. This book also provides guidance about how to do inquiry-based learning in virtual classrooms.
An unexpected insight of my research is that the teachers awareness of their own self-regulation was elevated through our conversations. Participants came to recognize that their ability to self-regulate affects their teaching. When teachers are cognizant of what is causing them to feel stressed, they can reduce those stressors and develop strategies to alleviate them. It is important for teachers to know how to regulate their own emotions and behaviour so they can cope with children’s anger, anxiety and frustration. Further research on how to support teacher’s self-regulation in the classroom would also benefit the children as they learn how to self-regulate.
Brenda Jacobs, Self-Regulation and Inquiry-Based Learning in the Primary Classroom (Canadian Scholars Press, 2022)