UM-Dearborn Faculty Member Discusses “Emergent Inquiry” at National Conferences

Seong Hong, Associate Professor of Education, recently led two workshops on the topic of emergent inquiry at the Annual Conference of the Association for Constructivist Teaching in Chicago in October and at the Annual Conference of the National Association for the Education of Young Children in Anaheim in early November. Professor Hong used examples drawn from the work of teachers and students in the UM-Dearborn Early Childhood Education Center to illustrate the nature of children’s learning in and through play and the complex decisions that teachers must make in guiding children’s emergent inquiry toward fruitful outcomes. In one workshop, she also illustrated how an emergent inquiry cycle could be used to model the learning processes not only of the children but also the teachers, student teachers, and researchers. The notion of emergent inquiry is closely connected with the philosophy of the Reggio Emilia schools in Italy, and which is an undergirding educational foundation for the UM-Dearborn Early Childhood Education Center.