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In-service program documentation
Identifying characteristics of math inquiry experiences (D5.1)
Facilitator's plan (by Raffaella Borasi)

Rationale for this session: after the participants have become more familiar with our three illustrative units, and had an initial follow-up discussion on each of these units, we want now to help them "generalize" from these specific examples and recognize some important aspects of an inquiry approach to mathematics instruction that cut across all these units; more specifically, in this section we want to:

• to highlight and discuss the common "inquiry framework" that characterizes all the units we have prepared, despite their different content;
• to raise and discuss some general issues about the radical change in instructional goals that these units imply.

NOTE: This session is actually planned as the continuation of the follow-up discussion on the participants' readings on the Area and Remodelling units (Friday morning); the facilitator will try to make a smooth and "natural" transition from that discussion by building on comments from the participants that seem to cut across the three units and/or raise some more general issues about the teaching approach we are promoting.

Highlighting of common elements in the units and first discussion of nature and goals of an inquiry approach.

• Point out that they will have noticed by now, after reading the 3 overviews, that despite their differences in content, these three units have a common structure
• show slide with key components of inquiry cycle, pointing out it is not a linear, step-by-step approach and going over (or asking the participants to articulate) the function of each of those components and why they are important

Slide:

• Setting the stage
• Defining the scope of the inquiry
• Modeling the process
• Gathering the necessary mathematical tools
• Carrying out the inquiry
• Culminating experience
• Reflecting on the experience

Follow-up reading assignment:

• Borasi (1993). "Major assumptions and implications of an inquiry approach"
• (NOTE: With more recent implementations we havesubstituted this reading with Borasi & Fonzi's "Characteristic features of teaching mathematics through inquiry" (1998).)

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