Week 8 – Connecting open and planned learning

What intrigued me from this week’s readings is the seemingly conflict between open and planned learning. Even in classroom, it is hard to have both. “Even in the best schools, what may appear to be genuie group debates about an issue are usually heavily controlled by the teacher … [who] already possesses the understanding of an issue that he or she wishes students to attain… Most often missing, even in the best of such ‘discovery-based’ pedagogies, is genuine, open debate of complex, unanswered questions.” — Kuhn 1992

How do we balance between leaving it completely open for students to explore in inquiry-based learning, and having a plan about what we think as important for them to learn? Or does there have to be a balance? If not, if all we want students to learn is the process of inquiry, how do we assess that, and how does it fit into school’s agenda?