Imagine--you must bring water to a hurricane-ravaged area. There is only one bridge and only one truck, and the bridge can only hold so much weight. Your calculations determine if the truck--and its load of water--can make it safely over the bridge. This is a typical challenge during two-week summer camps for third-through fourth-grade students…

One of the "good old" standard activities middle school students seem to enjoy is paper chromatography. The procedures and materials needed are relatively simple and the results can be colorful. All too often, the activity ends just after these colorful results are obtained, cutting short the potential it holds for some further inquiry. With some…

During inquiry activities, teachers need to ensure their students are making progress toward learning goals. The informative questioning cycle can help teachers and students achieve these goals through simple techniques that can redirect and improve the quality of students' learning while it is in progress. The informative questioning cycle…

In this article the author presents a model that shows how inquiry-based instruction and creative classroom assessment can be used to teach the concepts and principles on which standardized test items are based. To successfully implement this model, the teacher must have a clear understanding of: (1) The ways that the NSES link to instruction and…

In this article, the author discusses the importance of questioning in understanding teaching practice and the possibilities of inquiry in English education. The author has come to believe that the most important thing everyone can do in the field of English education is to support teachers in establishing a questioning stance that will evolve…

This article examines the merits of the proposition that design and inquiry are conceptual parallels. It does so by first looking closely at the inquiry-related discourse within science education, then at aspects of the design discourse within engineering, and finally within technology education. Convergences and divergences of these two streams…

The call for implementation of inquiry-based teaching in secondary classrooms has taken on a new sense of urgency, hence several instructions models are developed to assists teachers in implementing inquiry in their classrooms. The role of knowledge and beliefs in inquiry teaching are examined.

For many biology classes, the year begins with the study of characteristics of life. Many biology teachers have their students read lists from biology books and then have examinations about those characteristics. However, it is doubtful if students really understand what those characteristics mean "in terms of the life of an organism." They may…

Interdisciplinary conversations are fast becoming a central feature of academic and intellectual life. In this article, the authors present the different perspectives of a literary scholar, a biologist, and a physicist, as well as the voices of other professionals in other disciplines who have worked together under the auspices of the six-year-old…

In response to an invitation to explore the idea that potential guidelines be considered for qualitative inquiry in environmental education research, this article argues that prerequisite understanding of the nature and scope of qualitative inquiry required for such a task will reveal the problem inherent in it. Understanding the diverse…

This article explores how classroom-based teacher inquiry research supports teachers in constructing understandings about teaching and learning that are uniquely applicable to their own contexts in American urban schools. This study was conducted by two teacher educators in their year-long classroom-based inquiry research classes with…

To teach students to think like scientists, the authors modified their laboratory course to include regular opportunities for student practice of inquiry and the scientific process. Their techniques are simple; they can be implemented without rewriting lab manuals, require little additional grading beyond typical lab reports, and are applicable…

Inquiry-based learning is more work than passive learning, and there is a body of students who prefer to take the easier route. But there is also a body of students who wish to explore science. Two descriptive evolutionary experiments conducted by university freshman/sophomore biology majors, enrolled in General Zoology are described.

The study examined children's understanding of scientific inquiry, through the lens of their conceptualization of uncertainty in investigations they had designed and implemented with a partner. These largely student-regulated investigations followed a unit about animal behavior that emphasized the scaffolding of independent inquiry. Participants…

Death is an unavoidable fact of human life, which cannot be totally ignored in education. Children reflect on death and raise questions that deserve serious answers. If an educator completely evades the issue, children will seek other conversation partners. It is possible to find arguments both from secular and religious sources, which alleviate…