Spectrum of Process: Research, Their Way
- Nicholas Linke
- Nov 3, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 20
The Spectrum of Process outlines the movement toward Crucible Schools introduced in Burn Libraries to help students not just pursue innovations but shift the paradigms that currently constrict their thinking.
Authentic learning emerges through a series of intentional shifts, along spectrums that move students from structured, teacher-directed inquiry to open-ended, student-driven exploration rooted in culture, place, and purpose.
These spectrums scaffold the learning experience, helping students gradually gain autonomy, confidence, and clarity as they design meaningful investigations.
The Spectrum of Process is one of these essential scaffolds. It focuses on how students incrementally take ownership of how they learn, not just what they learn, by progressing from teacher-modeled methods to personally crafted approaches informed by disciplinary paradigms.
This movement allows students to navigate the messy, iterative nature of real-world problem-solving, engaging more authentically with their work.
Students develop the creative and critical habits needed to thrive beyond the classroom.
In the Spectrum of Process, students progress from following structured steps to defining their own investigative approach, ultimately choosing a paradigm to guide their inquiry. This aligns with Dewey’s principles of experiential learning, encouraging students to embrace inquiry as a dynamic, hands-on process where trial and error through iterations lead to meaningful discovery.
Students initially alter existing procedures to fit their specific question or project, learning to adjust variables within provided boundaries. This stage helps them build confidence while still supported by teacher scaffolding.
As they advance, students take greater control by designing their methodology and determining the sequence, tools, and processes that best suit their research goals. For instance, a student might choose to conduct interviews, develop simulations, construct models, or analyze data sets they’ve gathered themselves.
At the most open level of the spectrum, students define guiding paradigms, whether scientific, social, philosophical, economic, or environmental. By intentionally selecting the lens through which they conduct their work, students demonstrate an awareness of how methodology influences understanding.
Students learn that inquiry is not just a set of steps, but a reflection of values and purpose.
To illustrate this spectrum, consider the student-designed inquiry into pollution. Students begin with a simple classroom experiment on litter reduction, using teacher-provided materials and structured steps to understand basic environmental impacts.
Further, students design and lead a more complex project, such as a community cleanup initiative. They develop a research method tailored to their goals, perhaps surveying residents, creating posters, or analyzing local recycling rates, while still within a defined context.
Towards the end, students frame their work within selected paradigms such as sustainability science, systems thinking, or circular economy models. Their entire process is guided by these frameworks, allowing them to interpret, communicate, and advocate for their work through a deeper philosophical and methodological lens.
By allowing students to explore the process itself as part of the inquiry, the Spectrum of Process invites them to see learning as an act of design one that is purposeful, empowering, and responsive to the world around them.
Learn more about the memoir by Nicholas Linke: Tangents.
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