The Power of Curiosity: 4 Keys to Successful Inquiry-based Learning

How might we redesign our instruction to better support learner creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking?

Inquiry-based Learning: What is it?

Inquiry is a pedagogical practice that is grounded in constructivism and is facilitated by posing authentic questions, problems, or scenarios. This approach engages learners in developing questions, making observations, researching to learn what information is already available, developing processes for experiments, planning for data collection, analyzing and interpreting, summarizing explanations, and creating predictions for future study.

Inquiry-based learning consists of learners doing the following in an iterative–and often non-linear–process:

• Question - Ask: “What might you want to know?”
• Research - Ask: “How/where might you find the information to gain that knowledge?”
• Investigate - Ask: “What might you create or implement to build our understanding and answer your question?”
• Analyze - Ask: “What data did you gather, and what does that data tell you about the answer to your question?”
• Conclude - Ask: “What conclusion could you draw from the data you collected?”
• Reflect - Ask: “What have you learned about your question or the learning process?”

How might we improve our school, town, community, country, or world?

Authentic Tasks

Authentic tasks in inquiry-based learning are activities that connect classroom learning to real-world applications, requiring students to apply their knowledge and skills to solve genuine problems or create meaningful products.?

These tasks:

• Address real-world issues or challenges.
• Involve the creation of a product or solution with practical relevance.
• Require students to make real-world decisions and apply critical thinking.
• Encourage collaboration and community connections.
• Promote self-directed learning and active investigation.

Examples of authentic tasks in inquiry-based learning include:

• Designing a recycling program for the school that is simple and easy to follow.
• Creating a community garden to meet the needs of the hungry.
• Investigating water quality in a nearby creek to determine if it's safe for recreational use.

What might you see in classrooms where questioning promotes curiosity and inquiry?

Questioning Strategies

Empower learners to explore their world through innovative questioning! When students generate their own inquiries, learning becomes more authentic and engaging. This principle applies equally to coaching adults – better questions lead to deeper learning. Students progress from closed, clarifying queries to open-ended, probing ones by writing, classifying, analyzing, and refining questions. This journey nurtures curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking, sparking deeper conversations and complex ideas. Embrace strategies that promote dialogue and discussion to elevate both student and adult learning experiences. Let's cultivate a culture of inquiry that transforms education!

How might I enhance my lesson to make the inquiry level more learner-autonomous?

Building Inquiry

Along the spectrum of inquiry (from closed, to mixed, to open), projects can be Confirmation (closed)—Students confirm a principle through an activity when the results are known in advance; Structured (mixed)—Students investigate a teacher-presented question through a prescribed procedure, Guided (mixed)—Students investigate a teacher-presented question using student designed/selected procedures; and completely Open Inquiry—Students investigate questions that are student formulated through student designed/selected procedures (Banchi & Bell, 2008).

Assess where you (the teacher) are at and what your learners are ready for. Consider the following:

• What is the authentic task?
• What are the curriculum-framing questions (CFQs) of the unit? (Check out last month’s tip series on CFQs at bit.ly/eMINTS-CFQs!)
• How can I promote student questioning?
• What authentic activities am I including in this unit?
• How will I support my students along the way?
• How will learning be assessed at the end of the unit?

To move a lesson to fully autonomous on the Spectrum of Inquiry, teachers can gradually give the students more control over the key features. With closed projects, the teacher defines the question, process, and conclusion; whereas, an open lesson allows learners to take the reins to define the question, process, and conclusion. The process can be gradual to scaffold students to more autonomous learning.

View previous tips on the Spectrum of Inquiry: bit.ly/eMINTSInquiryTips!

Follow @emintsnc on social media for more #TuesdayTips to help you improve your #teaching practice.

Thank you to the eMINTS National Center staff contributors for this article: Haylee Anderson, Nicholas Linke, and Brooke Higgins.

Have ideas for #emintsTips that you'd like to see or that you think would be helpful? Reach out to Haylee at: [email protected].

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