The current educational context calls for evidence-based, measurable student-learning outcomes. Professional-development initiatives are increasingly designed to ensure these outcomes are achieved. Thus, opportunities for teachers to create, adapt, and discern within the act of teaching are closed off. Teachers' praxis is at stake with less and…

The author investigates the recent, surprising discovery of the invention of suspicion in the development of 16th century English drama to consider how this discovery might contribute to a new elaboration of narrative inquiry, specifically, to new ways of becoming a narrative inquirer. In her book, "The Invention of Suspicion," scholar…

In order to provide a picture of how inquiry is practiced in everyday science classrooms, the articles published in "The Science Teacher" from 1998 to 2007 were analyzed for explicit evidence of features of inquiry. Inquiry was operationally defined by the essential features detailed in "Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards" (NRC…

This study describes the development of two instruments to investigate the extent to which students are engaged in scientific inquiry. As a result of the instrument development process employed, each finalized instrument consisted of 20-items separated into five categories. Both instruments were found to be internally consistent, with high…

Collaborative inquiry learning is one of the most challenging and exciting ventures for today's schools. It aims at bringing a new and promising culture of teaching and learning into the classroom where students in groups engage in self-regulated learning activities supported by the teacher. It is expected that this way of learning fosters…

This article presents a case study of the authors' experience using the POGIL method in an information literacy (IL) course. We describe our approach to using POGIL and discuss both the instructor and student observations about the experience. The article concludes with recommendations for future uses of POGIL in IL.

Due to the variations of design and protocol in qualitative inquiry, researchers may inadvertently create problems for themselves in terms of the trustworthiness of their research. Miscommunication between participants and researchers can especially arise from the unique and unpredictable nature of human dynamics. In this paper I contend that such…

The debate rages on between those who endorse scientific standards for educational research--scientifically based research (SBR)--and those who see such a characterization of the research endeavor as unduly narrow and rigid. One unresolved question in this debate involves the place of inquiry that does not aim to produce generalizable knowledge,…

This lab activity uses inquiry to help students define heat. It is generic in that it can be used to introduce a plethora of science content across middle and high school grade levels and across science disciplines that include biology, Earth and space science, and physical science. Even though heat is a universal science phenomenon that is…

The author describes a professional development model for high school science teachers based on the framework of inquiry and science standards. The "Learn-Teach-Assess Inquiry" model focuses on guided inquiry labs as the central theme and builds on these labs to reinforce science concepts and abilities to understand and engage in inquiry…

Academic freedom is the freedom to inquire--to study, learn, teach, express, and debate ideas. Academic freedom is essential to education in a democracy, a professional responsibility of teachers, and the fundamental purpose for social education. These ideas occur in the traditional education literature. Academic freedom is not just a professional…

Introduction: While there is a general agreement on the theoretical importance of epistemological beliefs, the research area is struggling with the measurement of these beliefs. In this contribution, the use of drawings to ascertain epistemological beliefs is explored. Method: Three studies are described. In Study 1, we asked participants to draw…

Learning in the library should present opportunities to enrich student learning activities to address concerns of interest and cognitive complexity, but these must be tasks that call for in-depth analysis--not merely gathering facts. Library learning experiences need to demand enough of students to keep them interested and also need to be…

Collaborative inquiry groups, such as professional learning communities and lesson study groups, are proliferating in schools across the United States. In whatever form, the potential for impacting student learning through this collaborative work is expanded or limited by the nature of teachers' conversations. Polite, congenial conversations…

This article presents the inquiry and literacy processes of two fifth-grade students as they created a digital video about African American history for a school project. During this process, the students gained experience in researching (both on the Web and in books) and writing, with the overall goal of creating a digital documentary video about…