The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) standards identify the primary purpose of the social studies as helping "young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world." To sustain and improve our democracy, future…

Designing inquiry-based-learning with and for university students develops problem-solving skills and logical reasoning, as well as reflective thinking. It involves working as a member of a team, questioning, being creative, shaping the skills for continued intellectual development. It is argued that inquiry-based group work is one of the most…

Teachers in all academic disciplines face increasing expectations to integrate technological applications into their lessons. These applications can be used to supplement face-to-face instruction or as stand-alone learning modules. Either way, technological applications can facilitate student-centered, inquiry-based instructional approaches.…

A qualitative study of children's museums' successful inquiry-based learning environments is described, focusing on four students with various exceptional learning needs. Benefits for the students in terms of scaffolded instruction, meaningful and contextualized activities, self-regulated learning, the establishment of learning communities, play,…

Many common objects can provide numerous opportunities for students to develop mathematical concepts and skills. The lesson described in this article provided an excellent opportunity for middle school students to discover how real-life situations do not always present obvious "right" answers. As students explored a question related to the…

A team of teachers, scientists, and high school students at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston has developed activities to teach concepts in learning through an inquiry-based laboratory method. The Learning Education and Research Network (LEARN) activities were field tested at the Society for Neuroscience Conference, in the…

Scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, have created micro*scope, a free, searchable knowledge environment for exploring the microbial world. Microbiology can easily be incorporated into the curriculum, because microbial communities are easy to access. Organisms grow quickly, making certain arrays of…

Insects are a natural choice for studying behavioral ecology in the classroom--they are easy to obtain, maintain, and manipulate. Unlike competition and predation, however, the concept of group living does not translate well to small-scale experiments involving only a few individuals. How can inquiry be used to examine why animals live in groups?…

This article presents an activity for early-in-the-year parents' night. The beginning of a new school year is an exciting time. The authors, as teachers, like to capture that excitement by engaging their 10th-grade biology students in an inquiry project demonstrating the nature of science and scientific inquiry. They developed the Next Step…

The main purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the relationship between certain learning organization characteristics and change adaptation, innovation, and bottom-line organizational performance. The following learning organization characteristics were found to be the strongest predictors of rapid change adaptation, quick product or…

This article talks about leading significant learning opportunities through conflict of ideas in a school system. Catalyzing school change can turn emotional differences of opinion into learning opportunities. Leaders who want to deal effectively with these challenging, often tense situations need to be more than good managers. They need to be…

Our role as teachers in universities should not be to simply keep up-to-date with new technologies; rather, we should be leaders in the use of new and emerging technologies to effectively meet the changing needs of learners. (Contains 1 figure.)

The recent promotion of inquiry-based learning techniques (Uno, 1990) is well suited to the use of animals in the classroom. Working with living organisms directly engages students and stimulates them to actively participate in the learning process. Students develop a greater appreciation for living things, the natural world, and their impact on…

This article gives an account of an inquiry into two different postgraduate student groups' ways of engaging with a virtual learning environment. Using a variety of data sources, including learning artefacts, interview data, open-ended qualitative questionnaires and online discussion postings, the inquiry captured processes of engagement of the…

There is increasing agreement among those who study classrooms that learning is likely to be most effective when students are actively involved in the dialogic coconstruction of meaning about topics that are of significance to them. This article reports the results of an extended collaborative action research project in which teachers attempted to…