This exploratory case study aims to better understand the interactions between and literacy activities, practices, and actions of fifth-grade students, their teachers, and learning environments during a student-directed extended inquiry unit (the Kids Inquiry Conference--KIC) where students propose their own topics to be researched. This study details how inquiry as cultural activity unfolded over time and across spaces within the school (i.e. the fifth-grade classroom, library, etc.). The goal is to understand how enactment of inquiry as a cultural activity---including the repertoires of practice, spatial arrangements, and materials in interaction with participants---both fits into and creates tensions within the larger school context and culture.

This study is rooted conceptually in cultural-historical activity theory; Deweyan perspectives about experience, authenticity in learning, and inquiry; assumptions about literacy (i.e., meaning-making) that assert the multimodal, embodied, spatial, and material nature of interaction and meaning-making; as well as assumptions about the persistent entrenchment of school culture in neoliberalism and back-to-basics teaching and learning. Importantly, this research emphasizes inquiry from a literacy and design standpoint rather than the more common stance foregrounding scientific principles and processes.

Observational data of participants (i.e., students and teachers) was collected over the three-and-a-half months long KIC project (i.e., audio, video, researcher field notes, artifacts). Interviews were collected from participating teachers, students, and administrators. Data analyses included: domain and taxonomic analysis; multimodal/spatial interactional analysis; descriptive coding of activity systems; and multimodal discourse analysis. Two activity systems were extensively decomposed and analyzed for their interrelationships and tensions: 1) KIC project pedagogy and guidance and 2) KIC project learning and doing.

Major themes and tensions revealed in the activity systems under analysis include: a) supporting agency of students' bodies during inquiry learning; b) balancing students' access to resources during inquiry; c) open student choice, widened access to resources, and text readability; d) honoring and pedagogically supporting student choices in inquiry; e) student purposes for inquiry learning in schools; f) teacher purposes for inquiry learning in schools; and g) the socioemotional supports of inquiry learning.