John Barell

Inquiry Blog

Inquiry Strategies

Inquiry-Based Instruction, as outlined in Why are School Buses Always Yellow? (2007) and Developing More Curious Minds (Barell, 2003), is an approach that provides opportunities for students to pose their own thoughtful and significant questions about the content they are learning. These questions can then become part of the overall plan to learn the major concepts, ideas, principles, rules or dispositions set forth within the school's curriculum.

Major reasons for challenging students to develop their own questions include providing them with a sense of ownership and control; to help them structure their ability to conduct authentic investigations; and to enhance the meaningfulness of their learning.

There are ways to foster inquiry that we can use on an occasional or short term basis, and there are approaches that we can include in longer range development of curricular units.

To initiate inquiry within our classrooms we can do the following:

A. Model our own inquiry processes.
B. Use Inquiry Journals during and after class sessions.
C. Observe objects, pictures, films, and other representations of experience, think about what we already know, pose good questions.
D. Plan and structure purposeful units that include students’ inquiries.
E. Read stories of other teachers’ fostering inquiry.
F. Reflect on our own learning and inquiry processes.

PDF Downloads:

1. Inquiry at Home

2. Inquiry in Learning Organizations—US Army, GE, Shell and Enron

3. Curricular Approaches

Inquiry in Science
Over the past few years educators working with the Inquiry Network at the American Museum of Natural History have shared some of their approaches to fostering students' curiosities, their searching various resources (including AMNH's on-line resources) for answers and sharing findings. Read their brief stories here: www.amnh.org/learn/musings/network/index.php.