WMPeacock,2000

Inquiry-based Learning

What is it? and

What does it look like?

WMPeacock,2000

What is it?

• Inquiry-based learning is a curriculum strategy that assists students in developing:

– content knowledge and skills

– problem solving skills

– collaborative skills

– communication skills

WMPeacock,2000

What is it?

• Inquiry-based learning is often called problem-based learning.

• It allows students to – investigate a problem or question that

arises from the content curriculum– access their natural curiosity about a

subject– engage in active and authentic learning

WMPeacock,2000

What does it look like?

• questions/problems to drive student research,

• teachers become facilitators of learning,

• students are solvers of questions/ problems,

• students are given guidelines to investigation, but student inquiry drives discovery.

WMPeacock,2000

What does it look like?• Students are engaged in areas of interest.• Students use previous knowledge.• Students work collaboratively in teams.• Students engage in higher order thinking

skills, analyzing and making judgments.• Students connect previous knowledge to

new knowledge.• Assessment is authentic and performance-

based.

WMPeacock,2000

What do the questions look like?

• Questions are open-ended,

• generate from natural curiosity around the content,

• encourage more than one approach,

• involve discrimination of information, and

• build scaffold of learning and understanding.

WMPeacock,2000

What is the Process?• Students generate a question or problem.• In groups or individually, students organize

prior knowledge and attempt to identify the nature of the question.

• Students pose a question about what they do not understand.

• Students design a plan to solve the problem and identify the resources they need.

• Students gather information in order to answer the question.

WMPeacock,2000

Where do I find out more about Inquiry-based Learning?

• Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum– http://www.kemetro.cc.mo.us/longview/ctac/blooms.htm

• Education by Design– http://www.udel.edu/pbl/

• Center for Problem-based Learning– http://www.samford.edu/pbl/

• Webquest

WMPeacock,2000

More On-line Resources

• http://www.eduplace.com

• http://teacher.scholastic.com

• http://bham.wednet.deu/lessons.htm

• http://www.udel.edu/pbl

WMPeacock,2000

For further investigation:

• You are invited to check-out an example of an inquiry-based curriculum unit developed, Career I-Search, developed by

Wendy Peacock,

Rio Linda HS,

VIP resource teacher