Teachers who attempt to use inquiry-based, student-centered instructional tasks face challenges that go beyond identifying well-designed tasks and setting them up appropriately in the classroom. Because solution paths are usually not specified for these kinds of tasks, students tend to approach them in unique and sometimes unanticipated ways.…

"Principles and Standards for School Mathematics" (NCTM 2000) proposes that mathematics instruction provide opportunities for students to engage in mathematical inquiry and in meaning-making through discourse. Mathematics teachers are encouraged to build on student discoveries in designing subsequent instruction. In this article, the author…

This study investigated novel pedagogies for helping teachers infuse inquiry into a standards-based science curriculum. Using a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) as a pedagogical vehicle, teams of middle-school students collaboratively solved problems around disease in a virtual town called River City. The students interacted with "avatars" of…

Pragmatic social constructivist teaching methods require students to construct knowledge by engaging collaboratively with realistic problems, cases or projects. It is hypothesized that they are more effective than traditional didactic teaching methods in developing undergraduate students': (1) theoretical knowledge; (2) profession-specific skills;…

The central objective of this article is to teach students to analyze the Middle East situation by learning to think in terms of concepts and generalizations. Two teaching strategies, opining and inquiry, are suggested. Stressing geography as concept learning demonstrates how geography can be a contemporary problem solving, generalizing…

This paper is the first chapter in a monograph. In it the author attempts to examine the assumptions and justifications for process education. He does not write in a prescriptive fashion but attempts to arrive at a definition for process education by a successive convergency of ideas and tentative but logically consistent definitions. The author…

This paper attempted to critically consider different approaches to inquiry (research and theory) in order to determine their proper applications and their limitations. A method of checking different approaches to art education inquiry was outlined with the goal of facilitating effective instructional application of research findings. (Author/RK)

Teachers who state lesson plan topics in the form of a problem, who state objectives in terms of specific skill performances expected, and who construct test questions to assess the skills involved are taking important steps towards maximizing their success as inquiry teachers. (Author)

Article stresses the skills gained in problem-solving over mere information transmission in the classroom. (GB)

Explores the differences between the social science (SS) and reflective inquiry (RI) teaching traditions. Each tradition defines problems differently. For example, in the SS teaching tradition, the learner's problems are predefined. In the RI teaching tradition, the learner defines the problem. (AM)

Describes a philosophical community of inquiry as a controlled, communal form of wondering that focuses on the larger meaning of human experience. Suggests that, using familiar stories as texts, and facilitated by a leader sensitive to young children's philosophical preoccupations and ways of thinking and talking, young children are both…