What If Inquiry Started at the Classroom Window? From Mario Lodi to the PYP: The Roots of Inquiry-Based and Transdisciplinary Learning

A recent job interview left me thinking.

We were discussing the length of the school day, and I pointed out that, in many schools, lessons often extend well beyond the attention span of primary-aged children. One of the few contexts where I could genuinely justify longer learning periods was the IB PYP.

Why?

Because true Inquiry-Based Learning takes time.

Real inquiry isn't about completing a worksheet or finding the "right" answer. It requires children to observe, wonder, discuss, revisit their thinking, make connections, and sometimes change their minds. That process simply cannot be rushed.

Later in the conversation, we talked about learning beyond the classroom. I shared how essential outdoor experiences are if we want to nurture children who genuinely care about their communities and the environment around them.

And suddenly my mind travelled back to Trondheim, 2007.

Munkholmen island, Trondheim

During my stay there, I found myself taking a photo every day from exactly the same spot, of exactly the same view. It became a playful little project that I jokingly called Maybe it's not raining in Trondheim. At first, I thought I was simply documenting the weather. Looking back, I realise I was actually documenting change, patterns, light, seasons, and learning to notice what most people walk past.

That's when Mario Lodi came to mind.

Lodi, one of the greatest advocates of Freinet pedagogy in Italy, believed that careful observation of the world should be at the heart of children's learning. His classroom was a place where children's experiences, questions and discoveries became the starting point for authentic learning.

Mario Lodi with his pupils in the classroom, archival photo

In his educational diaries, C'è speranza se questo accade al Vho (1963) and Il paese sbagliato (1970), Lodi documents the everyday life of his classroom and explains his practical methodology.

A particularly fascinating example can be found in the chapter "La storia del cielo è fatta di numeri" (The History of the Sky is Made of Numbers) from Il paese sbagliato.

Through their daily observations from the classroom window, children began to record the changing sky: the days of rain, sunshine and clouds. What started as a simple act of noticing the world around them gradually became a way of organising and interpreting information.

They did not simply collect data; they also started to ask questions and make hypotheses. For example, they wondered whether a period of bad weather might be approaching because the swallows had already left. Their observations of nature became clues to interpret phenomena and build possible explanations (does it ring a bell? This is very close to what the IB describes through the Approaches to Learning: children developing thinking and research skills).

At first, they represented their observations using Cuisenaire rods, creating visual patterns and making comparisons. Only later did they move towards numerical recording, transforming their concrete experiences into data that could be analysed and discussed.

The story of the sky became a story of numbers: children discovered that mathematics was not an abstract exercise, but a tool to understand real phenomena. Through observation, classification, representation and reasoning, they explored connections between science, mathematics and their everyday lives.

If I remember correctly — and I say this because this time last year I borrowed all of Lodi's books from the library in Como and read them one after another — another fascinating window observation activity involved children making drawings at regular intervals to record the position of the sun above a precise reference point on the village rooftops.

Day after day, the children created a visual record of the sun's movement, transforming a simple view from the classroom window into a study of time, change and natural patterns.

These observations were never confined to one subject area. They became opportunities for mathematics, language, art, music, geography and science. A single authentic experience opened doors to multiple areas of knowledge. 

One of the most beautiful examples of this approach is Cipì, Mario Lodi's most famous book. The story was born from the children's own observations, conversations and imagination, and was developed collectively in the classroom with their teacher.

The little bird Cipì was inspired by the real world the children observed from their classroom window: the movements of birds, the changing seasons, the landscape around them and the relationships they noticed in nature. 

And this is where I see a beautiful connection with the PYP.

What we call transdisciplinary learning today — the idea that meaningful contexts allow children to build understanding across different disciplines — was already deeply present in Lodi's approach decades ago.

Isn't that exactly what we try to achieve in the PYP?

We encourage children to slow down, to observe before they conclude, to ask meaningful questions, to connect with their surroundings, and to become caring, reflective members of their communities.

Sometimes educational ideas that feel innovative today have deep roots in the work of extraordinary educators who understood, long before us, that authentic learning begins with curiosity.

Perhaps Inquiry-Based Learning and Mario Lodi have more in common than we think, and apparently, in Italy, some of these ideas were already being cultivated decades ago, before they became part of today's international educational conversations.

📚 References:

• Lodi, M. (1963). C'è speranza se questo accade al Vho. Torino: Einaudi.
• Lodi, M. (1970). Il paese sbagliato. Diario di un'esperienza didattica. Torino: Einaudi.

A final note:
This educational vision was not unique to Italy. In Spain, Freinet's philosophy also spread widely, especially during the years of the Second Republic, inspiring teachers who believed in active learning, cooperation, creativity and connecting school with real life.

👉A beautiful glimpse of this approach can be found in the 2023 film El maestro que prometió el mar (The Teacher Who Promised the Sea), directed by Patricia Font and based on the true story of Catalan teacher Antoni Benaiges.

👉Today, this educational tradition continues in Italy through the Movimento di Cooperazione Educativa (MCE), an organisation that keeps alive many of these principles: cooperative learning, research-based teaching, children's active participation, attention to the surrounding environment and the idea that knowledge is built through experience and dialogue.