Barclay Barrios | Moving from Argument to Inquiry: Reframing Student Writing Projects

Barclay Barrios

For Barclay Barrios, the standard argument-based essay model has diminishing usefulness. While once valuable for teaching structure and persuasion, it now feels too rigid for the realities students face. Instead, he advocates for a shift toward inquiry—a method that invites students to think alongside others, rather than against them. This shift is central to his evolving approach to writing pedagogy.

In an inquiry-driven classroom, students begin with questions, not answers. Their writing is rooted in exploration, reflection, and revision. Barrios teaches students to move through ambiguity rather than rush past it. Claims arise not as pre-set positions, but as outcomes of deep engagement with texts, peers, and the world. This method helps students develop their own ideas with greater nuance and depth.

Barrios designs assignments that resist easy closure. Rather than requiring students to “prove” a point, he encourages them to document their thinking, engage conflicting views, and reshape their arguments as new information emerges. Peer review is central—students learn to critique, affirm, and revise collaboratively. Through this process, writing becomes both public and participatory.

This pedagogy also reflects Barrios’s broader values as an educator. He believes that teaching writing is not just about form—it’s about citizenship. When students practice inquiry, they learn to hold multiple truths, to listen, and to reconsider. These are skills that serve them well beyond the classroom, especially in a world that too often demands certainty over understanding.

Barrios’s goal is not to eliminate argument, but to reframe its purpose. In his classroom, writing is no longer a contest. It’s a conversation. And the students, he believes, are better for it—not just as writers, but as thinkers and community members.