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CHAPTER OVERVIEW

 The great challenge of  Importance of inquiry based

education today learning
 What is inquiry-based  Levels of inquiry-based learning
learning?  Misconception of inquiry based
 Inquiry-based-learning is a learning
education at its best  The inquiry cycle
Summary
References

Upon completion of this module, you should be able to:

 Define what is inquiry-based learning

 Explain the importance of inquiry-based learning
 Analyse the levels of inquiry based learning
 List some misconceptions about inquiry based learning
 Elaborate on the inquiry cycle
The Great Challenge of Education Today!

As educators we are charged with the great challenge and responsibility of engaging students
in learning so that they develop the skills and knowledge they need to function in today’s
world. Questions and concerns abound.

 How do we instill the skills and the values necessary to experience success in the
present and in the future?
 How can we provide opportunities for students to move beyond being passive
recipients of knowledge to become knowledge builders, capable of creative and
innovative solutions to problems?
 How can we play a role in human progress by equipping our students with the
requisite knowledge, skills and dispositions to solve the daunting problems of our
age? There is no one recipe for success.

There are, however, some pedagogical approaches to transforming educational practice that
seem better suited for the job than others. What follows is a review of the key characteristics
of inquiry-based learning that offer promise in supporting students to become thoughtful,
motivated, collaborative and innovative learners capable of engaging in their own inquiries
and thriving in a world of constant change.

What is Inquiry-Based Learning?

"Inquiry" is defined as "seeking for truth, information, or knowledge; N seeking

information by questioning." Individuals carry on the process of inquiry from the time they
are born until they die. This is true even though they might not reflect upon the process.
Infants begin to make sense of the world by inquiring. From birth, babies observe faces that
come near, they grasp objects, they put things in their mouths, and they turn toward voices.
The process of inquiring begins with gathering information and data through applying the
human senses – seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling.

Unfortunately, our traditional educational system has worked in a way that discourages the
natural process of inquiry. Students become less prone to ask questions as they move through
the grade levels. In traditional schools, students learn not to ask too many questions, instead
to listen and repeat the expected answers.

Some of the discouragement of our natural inquiry process may come from a lack of
understanding about the deeper nature of inquiry-based learning. There is even a tendency to
view it as "fluff" learning. Effective inquiry is more than just asking questions. A complex
process is involved when individuals attempt to convert information and data into useful
knowledge. Useful application of inquiry learning involves several factors: a context for
questions, a framework for questions, a focus for questions, and different levels of questions.
Well-designed inquiry learning produces knowledge formation that can be widely applied.

Inquiry-Based Learning is Education as its Best

Inquiry-based learning is an approach to teaching and learning that places students’

questions, ideas and observations at the centre of the learning experience. Educators play an
active role throughout the process by establishing a culture where ideas are respectfully
challenged, tested, redefined and viewed as improvable, moving children from a position of
wondering to a position of enacted understanding and further questioning (Scardamalia,
2002). Underlying this approach is the idea that both educators and students share
responsibility for learning. For students, the process often involves open-ended investigations
into a question or a problem, requiring them to engage in evidence-based reasoning and
creative problem-solving, as well as “problem finding.”

For educators, the process is about being responsive to the students’ learning needs, and most
importantly, knowing when and how to introduce students to ideas that will move them
forward in their inquiry. Together, educators and students co-author the learning experience,
accepting mutual responsibility for planning, assessment for learning and the advancement of
individual as well as class-wide understanding of personally meaningful content and ideas
(Fielding, 2012).

Although inquiry-based learning is a pedagogical mindset that can pervade school and
classroom life (Natural Curiosity, p. 7, 2011), and can be seen across a variety of contexts, an
inquiry stance does not stand in the way of other forms of effective teaching and learning.
Inquiry-based learning concerns itself with the creative approach of combining the best
approaches to instruction, including explicit instruction and small-group and guided learning,
in an attempt to build on students’ interests and ideas, ultimately moving students forward in
their paths of intellectual curiosity and understanding.

a) What is the challenge of education?

b) How would you define ‘inquiry’?
c) What do you understand by the statement ‘inquiry-based learning is
education at its best’?
Importance of Inquiry

Memorizing facts and information is not the most important

skill in today's world. Facts change, and information is readily
available – what's needed is an understanding of how to get
and make sense of the mass of data.

Educators must understand that schools need to go beyond data

and information accumulation and move toward the generation
of useful and applicable knowledge . . . a process supported by
inquiry learning. In the past, our country's success depended on
our supply of natural resources. Today, it depends upon a
workforce that "works smarter".
An old adage states: "Tell me and I forget, show me and I
remember, involve me and I understand." The last part of this
statement is the essence of inquiry-based learning. Inquiry
implies involvement that leads to understanding. Furthermore,
involvement in learning implies possessing skills and attitudes
that permit you to seek resolutions to questions and issues while you construct new
knowledge

Through the process of inquiry, individuals construct much of their understanding of the
natural and human-designed worlds. Inquiry implies a "need or want to know" premise.
Inquiry is not so much seeking the right answer – because often there is none; but rather
seeking appropriate resolutions to questions and issues. For educators, inquiry implies
emphasis on the development of inquiry skills and the nurturing of inquiring attitudes or
habits of mind that will enable individuals to continue the quest for knowledge throughout
life.

Content of disciplines is very important, but as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. The
knowledge base for disciplines is constantly expanding and changing. No one can ever learn
everything, but everyone can better develop their skills and nurture the inquiring attitudes
necessary to continue the generation and examination of knowledge throughout their lives.
For modern education, the skills and the ability to continue learning should be the most
important outcomes.

Human society and individuals within society constantly generate and transmit
knowledge. Experts, working at the boundary between the known and the unknown,
constantly add to the fund of knowledge.

It is very important that knowledge be transmitted to all the members of society. This
transmission takes place through structures like schools, families, and training courses.
Certain attributes are necessary for both generating and effectively transmitting the fund of
knowledge. The attributes that experts use to generate new knowledge are very similar to the
qualities essential for the effective transmission of knowledge within the learners'
environment. These are the essential elements of effective inquiry learning:
  Experts see patterns and meanings not apparent to novices.
 Experts have in-depth knowledge of their fields, structured so that it is most useful is
not just a set of facts. it is structured to be accessible, transferable, and applicable to
a variety of situations.
 Experts can easily retrieve their knowledge and learn new information in their fields
with little effort.

Levels of inquiry-Based Learning

There are many different explanations for inquiry teaching and learning and the various
levels of inquiry that can exist within those contexts. The article titled The Many Levels of
Inquiry by Heather Banchi and Randy Bell (2008) clearly outlines four levels of inquiry. The
progression seen from level one through four provides an excellent guide for how to scaffold
inquiry learning skills for your students.

Level 1: Confirmation Inquiry

The teacher has taught a particular science theme or topic. The teacher then develops
questions and a procedure that guides students through an activity where the results are
already known. This method is great to reinforce concepts taught and to introduce students
into learning to follow procedures, collect and record data correctly and to confirm and
deepen understandings.

Level 2: Structured Inquiry

The teacher provides the initial question and an outline of the procedure. Students are to
formulate explanations of their findings through evaluating and analyzing the data that they
collect.

Level 3: Guided Inquiry

The teacher only provides the research question for the students. The students are responsible
for designing and following their own procedures to test that question and then communicate
their results and findings.

Level 4: Open/True Inquiry

Students formulate their own research question(s), design and follow through with a
developed procedure, and communicate their findings and results. This type of inquiry is
often seen in science fair contexts where students drive their own investigative questions.
Banchi and Bell (2008) explain that teachers should begin their inquiry instruction at the
lower levels and work their way to open inquiry in order to effectively develop students’
inquiry skills. Open inquiry activities are only successful if students are motivated by
intrinsic interests and if they are equipped with the skills to conduct their own research study.

Open/True Inquiry Learning

An important aspect of inquiry-based learning is the use of open learning, as evidence
suggests that only utilizing lower level inquiry is not enough to develop critical and creative
thinking to the full potential. Open learning has no prescribed target or result that people
have to achieve. There is an emphasis on the individual manipulating information and
creating meaning from a set of given materials or circumstances. In many conventional and
structured learning environments, people are told what the outcome is expected to be, and
then they are simply expected to 'confirm' or show evidence that this is the case.

Open learning has many benefits. It means students do not simply perform experiments in a
routine like fashion, but actually think about the results they collect and what they mean.
With traditional non-open lessons there is a tendency for students to say that the experiment
'went wrong' when they collect results contrary to what they are told to expect. In open
learning there are no wrong results, and students have to evaluate the strengths and
weaknesses of the results they collect themselves and decide their value.

Misconceptions About Inquiry-Based Learning

There are several common

misconceptions regarding inquiry-based
science:

 The first being that inquiry learning is simply instruction that teaches students to
follow the scientific method. Many teachers had the opportunity to work within the
constraints of the scientific method as students themselves and figure inquiry learning
must be the same.
 Inquiry is not just about solving problems in simple steps but much more broadly
focused on the intellectual problem-solving skills developed throughout a scientific
process.
 Additionally, not every hands-on lesson can be considered inquiry.
 Some educators believe that there is only one true method of inquiry, which would be
described as the level four: Open Inquiry (discussed earlier). While open inquiry
may be the most authentic form of inquiry, there are many skills and a level of
conceptual understanding that the students must have developed before they can be
successful at this high level of inquiry.
 While inquiry-based learning is considered to be a teaching strategy that fosters
higher order thinking in students, it should be one of several methods used. A
multifaceted approach to learning keeps students engaged and learning.
 Teachers must be prepared to ask students questions to probe their thinking processes
in order to assess accurately. Inquiry-based learning requires a lot of time, effort, and
expertise, however, the benefits outweigh the cost when true authentic learning can
take place.
 f) Discuss the importance of inquiry.
g) What is the difference between how an expert and novice thinks?
h) Explain some of the misconceptions about inquiry-based learning.

The Inquiry Cycle

Drawing from Dewey’s book How We Think, learning begins with the curiosity of the
learner. We can envision a spiral path of inquiry: asking questions, investigating solutions,
creating, discussing our discoveries and experiences, and reflecting on our new-found
knowledge, and asking new questions (Bruce & Bishop, 2002). Each step in this process
naturally leads to the next: inspiring new questions, investigations, and opportunities for
authentic “teachable moments.” Each question leads to an exploration, which in turn leads to
more questions to investigate (Bruce & Davidson, 1996).

The inquiry process is just that: a process. No one model can encapsulate inquiry-based
education and the range it encompasses. We are fully aware of the dangerous line we tread
when we try to describe a process that is dynamic; and we must stress that any one
description is not the only-or the ideal-model

Our intention is to present some of the important aspects of inquiry that ought to be supported
in a successful learning environment. For example, we should remember that inquiry often
does-and should-lead to the creation of new ideas. And constructively communicating those
ideas within the context of our classroom environments is central to the whole inquiry
process. That said, below you will find a basic outline of what the inquiry process includes.
See Figure 4.1

Figure 4.1 The Inquiry Cycle

ASK

It begins with the desire to discover. Meaningful questions are inspired by genuine curiosity
about real-world experiences. A question or a problem comes into focus at this stage, and the
learner begins to define or describe what it is.

Some real examples of questions in this stage in the process are:

 "What makes a poem poetry?"

 "Where do chickens come from and how does an egg 'work'?"
 "Why does the moon change shape?"

Of course, questions are redefined throughout the learning process. We never fully leave one
stage and go neatly to the next. As one teacher at a recent Inquiry Workshop pointed out, "It's
messy, but it works!" Questions naturally lead to the next stage in the process: investigation.

But it is important to caution that inquiry does not always start with a well-articulated
question. In fact, questions themselves arise from reflection and action in the world, including
dialogue with others. Elspeth Huxley states this well:

The best way to find things out is not to ask questions at all. If you fire off a question, it is
like firing of a gun – bang it goes, and everything takes flight and runs for shelter. But if you
sit quite still and pretend not to be looking, all the little facts will come and peck round your
feet, situations will venture forth from thickets, and intentions will creep out and sun
themselves on a stone; and if you are very patient you will see and understand a great deal
more than a man with a gun does.

INVESTIGATE

Taking the curious impulse and putting it into action is what we call the investigation
process. At this stage the learner begins to gather information: researching resources,
studying, crafting an experiment, observing, or interviewing, to name a few. The learner may
recast the question, refine a line of query, or plunge down a new path that the original
question did not-or could not-anticipate. The information-gathering stage becomes a self-
motivated process that is wholly owned by the engaged learner

Investigate relates to the varieties of experience possible and the many ways in which we
become part of an indeterminate situation. It suggests that opportunities for learning require
diverse, authentic, and challenging materials and problems. Because experience includes
interactions with others, there is also a moral dimension to inquiry. Similarly, physical,
emotional, aesthetic, and practical dimensions are inherent in inquiry, and are not merely
enhancements or add-ons.

Through investigation, we turn curiosity into action. Learners gather information, study, craft
an experiment, observe, or interview. The learner may recast the question, refine a line of
query, or plunge down a new path that the original question did not, or could not, anticipate.
The information-gathering stage becomes a self-motivated process that is owned by the
engaged learner.
CREATE

As the information gathered in the investigation stage begins to coalesce, the learner begins
to make connections. The ability at this stage to synthesize meaning is the creative spark that
forms all new knowledge. The learner now undertakes the creative task of shaping significant
new thoughts, ideas, and theories outside of his/her prior experience

Create picks up the “controlled or directed transformation” part of Dewey’s definition. This
term insists that inquiry means active, engaged hands-on learning. Inquiry thus implies active
creation of meaning, which includes new forms of collaborating and new roles for
collaborators. As information begins to coalesce, the learner makes connections. The ability
at this stage to synthesize meaning is the creative spark that forms new knowledge. The
learner now undertakes the creative task of shaping significant new thoughts, ideas, and
theories extending his/her prior experience.

DISCUSS

At this point in the circle of inquiry, learners share their new ideas with others. The learner
begins to ask others about their own experiences and investigations. Shared knowledge is a
community-building process, and the meaning of their investigation begins to take on greater
relevance in the context of the learner's society. Comparing notes, discussing conclusions,
and sharing experiences are all examples of this process in action.

Discuss highlights an implicit part of Dewey’s definition, which is developed in great detail
in his other writing, especially the later work. Although inquiry has a personal aspect it is also
part of our participation in social arrangements and community. The discuss aspect in the
inquiry cycle involves listening to others and articulating our own understandings. Through
discussion (or dialogue), construction of knowledge becomes a social enterprise. Learners
share their ideas and ask others about their own experiences. Shared knowledge is a
community-building process, and the meaning of their investigation begins to take on greater
relevance in the context of the learner’s society. Learners compare notes, share experiences,
and discuss conclusions, through multiple media, including now online social networks.

Community inquiry is inquiry of, by, for communities. How can we go from individual to
community inquiry? Dewey argues that inquiry is situated in circumstances defined by a
unique history of prior experiences and present social and physical conditions. As Gale points
out, this implies an ineffability of experience; there are fundamental limits to how much the
defining, problematic situation can even be understood, much less entered into by another.
How then is community inquiry possible?

REFLECTION

Reflection is just that: taking the time to look back at the question, the research path, and the
conclusions made. The learner steps back, takes inventory, makes observations, and possibly
makes new decisions. Has a solution been found? Do new questions come into light? What
might those questions be?
Reflect tells us that only the inquirer can recognize the indeterminate situation and further,
say whether it has been transformed into a unified whole. Reflection means expressing
experience, and thereby being able to move from new concepts into action. Reflection may
also mean recognizing further indeterminacies, leading to continuing inquiry. Reflection is
taking the time to look back at initial questions, the research path, and the conclusions made.
The learner steps back, takes inventory, makes observations, and new decisions. Has a
solution been found? Do new questions come into light? What might those questions be? And
so it begins again; thus the circle of inquiry.

And so it begins again; thus the circle of inquiry.

We need to interpret the cycle as suggestive, neither the sole, nor the complete,
characterization of inquiry-based learning. Inquiry rarely proceeds in a simple, linear fashion.
The five dimensions in the process—ask, investigate, create, discuss, reflect—overlap, and
not every category or step is present in any given inquiry. Each step can be embedded in any
of the others, and so on. In fact, the very nature of inquiry is that these steps are mutually
reinforcing and interrelated. Thus, reflection on solving a problem may lead to reformulating
the problem or posing a new question. Similarly, action in the world is closely tied to
dialogue with others.

Despite these complexities, the steps and cycle outlined can be helpful in highlighting aspects
of an otherwise opaque process.. It presents some of the aspects of inquiry that need support
in a successful learning environment. It serves as a boundary object (Star & Griesmer, 1989),
allowing us to relate theory with ordinary practices or to look across modes and contexts of
learning. Together, they comprise a cycle that can be used to inform and guide educational
experiences for learners.

a) Why is the inquiry cycle called a ‘cycle’?

b) What is done by learners at the ‘ask’ and ‘investigate’ stage?
c) What is done at the ‘create’ and ‘discuss’ stage?
d) What is ‘reflection’ and state its importance?
e) Explain the role of questions in the inquiry cycle.
SUMMARY

 Inquiry is defined as seeking for truth, information, or knowledge; N seeking

information by questioning.

 The process of inquiring begins with gathering information and data through applying
the human senses – seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling.

 Unfortunately, our traditional educational system has worked in a way that

discourages the natural process of inquiry.

 Inquiry-based learning is an approach to teaching and learning that places students’

questions, ideas and observations at the centre of the learning experience.

 Facts change, and information is readily available – what's needed is an understanding

of how to get and make sense of the mass of data.

 The progression seen from level one inquiry through level four inquiry provides an
excellent guide for how to scaffold inquiry learning skills for your students.

 Inquiry is not just about solving problems in simple steps but much more broadly
focused on the intellectual problem-solving skills developed throughout a scientific
process.
 Teachers must be prepared to ask students questions to probe their thinking processes
in order to assess accurately.
 Our intention is to present some of the important aspects of inquiry that ought to be
supported in a successful learning environment.

 A question or a problem comes into focus at this stage, and the learner begins to
define or describe what it is.

 Taking the curious impulse and putting it into action is what we call the investigation
process.

 The ability at this stage to synthesize meaning is the creative spark that forms all new
knowledge.

 Shared knowledge is a community-building process, and the meaning of their

investigation begins to take on greater relevance in the context of the learner's society.

 Reflection is just that: taking the time to look back at the question, the research path,
and the conclusions made. The learner steps back, takes inventory, makes
observations, and possibly makes new decisions.
REFERENCES

Bruce, B. C., & Davidson, J. (1996). An inquiry model for literacy across the
curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 28(3), 281-300.

Bruce, B. C., & Bishop, A. P. (2002, May). Using the web to support inquiry-based literacy
development. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 45(8), 706-714.

Dewey, John. How We Think (Boston: Heath, 1910; London: Harrap, 1910); revised as How
We Think, a Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative
Process (Boston, New York & London: Heath, 1933; London: Harrap, 1933).

Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1975). Truth and method. London: Sheed and Ward.

Gale, Richard M. (2006). The problem of ineffability in Dewey’s theory of inquiry. Southern
Journal of Philosophy.
Olds, Henry F., Schwartz, Judah L., & Willie, N. A. (1980, September). People and computers:
Who. teaches whom? Newton, MA: Education Development Center.

Star, Susan Leigh, & Griesemer, J.R. (1989). Institutional ecology: ‘Translations’ and
boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
1907-39.Social Studies of Science, 19, 387-420.