Riegel 1

Sarah Riegel
Professor Jan Rieman
UWRT 1103
October 22, 2014
(10) Inquiry at Work
In his article Who Gets to Graduate?, Paul Tough explores the tough questions
investigated by various professionals at the University of Texas at Dallas. The beginning of the
inquiry process outlined in this article really starts with David Laude as he began to notice the
trend of there being a large clustering of students in the A to B range with a drop to a small
cluster of students in the D to F range in his chemistry class. After some thought about why this
might be so, he formulated a hypothesis that perhaps many of these students in the lower cluster
had the potential to be great in chemistry but were overcome by fear or anxieties. This idea
developed at least in part because of the rocky college career Laude had himself. This
demonstrates how inquiry can build on past experiences, not just new information.
Laudes first question was Who are these students? He started digging through student
records, and found that most of the students failing his class were from low-income families and
often fit into certain ethnic or geographical regions. Laude used secondary research as a starting
point to gain background information before conducting his primary research line of inquiry. His
primary research took place within the formation of the Texas Interdisciplinary Program (TIP).
He used this selective group of students from low-income families as an experimental group to
determine whether small class size and more focused attention could improve these students
performance. This program was centered around the questions of whether these students were
primarily being affected by a lack of resources and crippling anxieties surrounding beginning

Riegel 2
college, and what could be implemented to support them and improve their performance. Similar
to a crowd sourcing exercise, Laude had an Institutional Research team develop an algorithm
called the Dashboard to predict which students were most likely to be at risk.
Paul Tough also introduces psychologist David Yeager who is also focused on
answering, How, precisely, do you motivate students to take the steps they need to take in order
to succeed? This shows the interdisciplinary nature of inquiry as a process dedicated to making
connections across the board. Yeager built off of the work done by Stanford psychologists who
had come before him, and in collaboration with Greg Walton, to understand how to counteract
feelings of anxiety about ability and belonging. This demonstrates two important principles.
Firstly, it demonstrates a need for a starting point, whether that be primary or secondary. In
Yeagers case, this was secondary research. Secondly, this shows the need for collaboration
between sources, people, and disciplines to conduct sound inquiry.
One can see Yeager moving through stages of developing and refining his research
methods and using previous discoveries to fuel new research. In his most recent study, Yeager
targeted a much larger audience, keeping in mind what he had learned from his somewhat similar
studies on self-persuasion for African Americans in an Ivy League university and then remedial
math students at a community college. He was able to draw on past experience to apply the basic
principles of self-persuasion while developing ways to better appeal to students at UT Dallas,
particularly through online methods.
As both of these professionals worked through their lines of inquiry, perhaps the two
most exercised habits of mind were curiosity and engagement. It is clear through their
experiences that inquiry is research that is more exploratory, interdisciplinary, and collaborative,
that expands outward in countless possible directions.

Riegel 3
Reflective Afterthought
I chose this particular Writing to Explore prompt this week because I have just
started my inquiry process. My purpose in writing this essay was to reflectively explore inquiry
for my own sake while communicating the information in a way that would be understandable
for others exploring inquiry. I expected my audience to be students or young professionals who
have heard of inquiry, but who have not yet explored it fully. These are the reasons I chose to
write in the form of an essay. I am comfortable with this format, and I expect students and young
professionals to be, as well. Keeping in mind my audience, I wrote using more formal language,
excluding personal pronouns, to convey a more informative, factual tone rather than suggest a
strongly opinionated paper. I also provided hyperlinks so my audience could explore on their
own, allowing them to cultivate some practices of inquiry themselves. This also contributes to
my credibility, and the factual tone of my essay.