- What aspects of IB learning do students find most enjoyable?
- How do students see the connection between English lessons and their future careers?
- What challenges do students face when engaging in inquiry-based learning?
- In their own words, how do students make sense of inquiry-based learning?
- What inquiry-based or meaningful experiences do students remember from English lessons?
- What conditions shape how teachers approach inquiry-based learning in vocational English?
- What have teachers noticed about student participation and learning during inquiry-based lessons?
What aspects of IB learning do students find most enjoyable?
Group work was fun!
It was fun to look at symptoms and figure out what’s wrong with the patient.
I liked searching for diseases and being a detective.
Talking in front of people was fun! I liked using like medicine language in English.
It was more practical, not just reading all the time, but kind of useful.
I liked learning more about communication in English, how I should speak with others.
How do students see the connection between English lessons and their future careers?
We want to be more active in class and learn speaking about our job.
We want more subject-specific language, not just general English.
The English we have now isn’t really relevant for becoming an electrician.
Generally speaking English is useful, but we want to learn more subject language in English.
I want more classes like today; otherwise, it gets boring. What should I do with things I won’t work with? I already speak everyday English.
We learn English but not much subject language.
We need more subject-specific language!
It could be a little more useful for the future!
The English now… We pass the English exams, but it doesn’t make us ready for the actual work.
We do some practical things in other subjects, but not so much in English.
What challenges do students face when engaging in inquiry-based learning?
Figuring out how to tell patients information in English was hard.
Talking in front of people made me uncomfortable.
It’s difficult to come up with ideas during group work.
The creative part was hard because we had to choose what was important ourselves.
In their own words, how do students make sense of inquiry-based learning?
Inquiry-based means like ‘explore,’ like when we had to find information ourselves instead of just listening to a lecture.
I’m don’t know what inquiry-based learning means; maybe like finding other ways to learn?
It’s good to learn by yourself, but it depends on the topic, some things we need the teacher to explain, but not all day.
Exploring different topics and figuring things out yourself.
Trying different things, not just listening to the teacher all day.
What inquiry-based or meaningful experiences do students remember from English lessons?
I learn better by figuring things out myself, teacher lets us do that a lot.
Formal vs. like informal exercises help me learn a lot, learning how to be professional.
We do things in the kitchen, making food, writing and speaking English about recipes, talking about things, and doing assignments.
We watch films, do assignments, make videos and practice job interviews.
We know some machine and tool names in English and have had conversations in the workshop in English.
We’ve talked about pulse and things like CPR in health once.
Once we looked at pictures of tools and had to say their names.
What conditions shape how teachers approach inquiry-based learning in vocational English?
I don’t know electronics, so that’s a challenge.
It’s important to balance exploratory learning with enough structure.
Little collaboration with other electrical teachers; it’s limited since I don’t know the subject, more about putting Post-its on tools and matching them.
Not all students are strong in English, so that is difficult.
I don’t have health education, but we try to talk about health when we can.
Because of limited subject knowledge, we mostly just place Post-its on things and talk about them.
What have teachers noticed about student participation and learning during inquiry-based lessons?
Inquiry-based learning went very well. I want to do something similar myself. It’s inspiring!
The class was fun! One student who usually doesn’t say much participated a bit today, that was good.
We used what they will work with in everyday situations; they had to find the words and how to use them.
They had a goal and had to find the solution themselves, leading the conversation.
It was a loose setup giving independence. Very exploratory.