Inquiry-based Instruction - Characteristics

Characteristics

Inquiry learning emphasizes constructivist ideas of learning, where knowledge is built from experience and process, especially socially based experience. Therefore learning proceeds best in group situations.

Inquiry-based learning covers a range of approaches to learning and teaching, including:

• ‘Pure’ Problem-based learning
• Hybrid’ Problem-based learning
• Field-work
• Case studies
• Investigations
• Individual and group projects
• Research activity

Specific learning processes that students engage in during inquiry-learning include:

• Creating questions of their own
• Obtaining supporting evidence to answer the question(s)
• Explaining the evidence collected
• Connecting the explanation to the knowledge obtained from the investigative process
• Creating an argument and justification for the explanation

The above comments represent a classroom that is fully committed to inquiry, to the greatest extent possible. However, it is not necessary to take an all-or-nothing approach to inquiry-based teaching methods.

in the 1960s Joseph Schwab called for inquiry to be divided into four distinct levels. This was later formalized by Marshall Herron in 1971, who developed the Herron Scale to evaluate the amount of inquiry within a particular lab exercise. Since then, there have been a number of revisions proposed, but the consensus in the science education community is that there is a spectrum of inquiry-based teaching methods available.

More recently, Heather Banchi and Randy Bell (2008) suggest that there are four levels of inquiry-based learning in science education:

1. confirmation inquiry,
2. structured inquiry,
3. guided inquiry and
4. open inquiry.

In confirmation inquiry, people are provided with the question and procedure (method) where the results are known in advance, and confirmation of the results is the object of the inquiry. Confirmation inquiry is useful to reinforce a previously learned idea; to experience investigation processes; or to practice a specific inquiry skill, such as collecting and recording data.

In structured inquiry, people are provided with the question and procedure (method), however the task is to generate an explanation that is supported by the evidence collected in the procedure.

In guided inquiry, people are provided with only the research question, and the task is to design the procedure (method) and to test the question and the resulting explanations. Because this kind of inquiry is more open than a confirmation or structured inquiry, it is most successful when people have had numerous opportunities to learn and practice different ways to plan experiments and record data.

In open inquiry, people form questions, design procedures for carrying out an inquiry, and communicate their results.