Criticizes outcome-based education for reducing education, teaching, and learning to forms of human engineering and quasi-scientific planning procedures geared toward instrumental means and specified ends. Stating outcomes as a comprehensive form of intellectual scaffolding limits inquiry and speculation and gives schools and curriculum framers…

More than other institutions, the university is expected to be responsive to an increasingly diverse and specialized society. The modern, liberal university can respond to these challenges by adopting a combination of weak professionalism and strong pluralism, as embodied in the University of Iowa's Program on the Rhetoric of Inquiry. (MSE)

Describes how teachers can use hypotheticals to help their students use a wide variety of skills in a cooperative manner to investigate the many scientific facts, technology, and competing arguments that relate to a topical societal issue. (DDR)

Over the past 15 years, the educational leadership and administration field has shifted from traditional, social-science based approaches to more cognitively based views. A heightened interest in connections between school leaders' thinking and actions have spurred an expanded emphasis on practice-based knowledge and inservice preparation…

Presents an activity in which students propose that apples change their color as they ripen. Students gain content knowledge about decomposition, the growth of living mold, and the life cycle of fruit flies through purposeful inquiry connected to previous knowledge. (ASK)

Examines students' roles during a long-term collaborative task that required mastering complex sets of cognitive, regulatory, and social skills needed for building knowledge largely from their own and their peers' ideas and observations. Describes the eight prominent sociocognitive roles that emerged from the study. Contains 61 references.…

During the 1970s, the curriculum field underwent a "reconceptualization," shifting from commitment to developing curriculum toward interest in understanding curriculum. This article presents an alternative rationale: disillusionment with traditional institutions/preoccupation with private interests, fascination with "interesting…

Briefly describes an ecology course for gifted high school students which focuses on human relationships to the environment and encourages student questioning. (DB)

Describes the learning spiral, which was designed as a framework for instructional planning. Grounded in constructivism, the learning spiral attempts to align learning experiences at school with learning experiences in life. The components of the learning spiral are engage, investigate, share, and assess. The learning spiral is recursive, and it…

Concludes this journal focus section on curriculum integration with transcripts of questions asked by conference attendees and answers by Professors Beane and George. Areas addressed included experience levels with children and teachers, studies that point to the failure of curriculum integration, and how teachers can continue curriculum…

Describes an open-ended investigation in which students have to look into a feature of lens performance that is not commonly found in textbook materials on optics. Presents explanations and sample results. (WRM)

Argues that Deweyan philosophical pragmatism does not share the radical ontological and epistemological theses that are common elements of constructivism, demonstrating that the Deweyan-pragmatic perspective is one that is ontologically realist and requires a correspondence of truth. The paper concludes that Deweyan pragmatism is neither a version…

Inquiry cultivates epistemological maturity, as students consider what characterizes meaningful questions, attempt different investigative methods, and seek acceptable answers. The Web has six compatible features: specialized information matching students' interests; diverse topics to prompt student-generated questions; multiple perspectives on…

Many cherished school curriculum units are intellectually weak and fragmented because of confusion about what students are supposed to learn. A key component missing from curriculum design is the guiding question--the fundamental query directing the search for understanding. Such questions are neither leading nor generic but are succinct,…

Argues for a more flexible approach to teaching the scientific method in elementary schools. Recognizes the nonsequential nature of students' thinking when they have been engaged and excited by a topic of inquiry. (DDR)