Inquiry-Based Learning
Effective inquiry is more than just asking questions. Inquiry becomes a complex process when students attempt to convert information and data into useful knowledge. Instructors must understand that curriculum needs to go beyond data and information accumulation and move toward generating useful and applicable knowledge; inquiry learning facilitates this process. Through the process of inquiry, individuals construct much of their understanding of the natural and human-designed worlds. Inquiry implies a "need or want to know" premise. Inquiry is not so much seeking the right answer—often there is none—but rather, it is seeking appropriate resolutions to questions and issues. For instructors, inquiry implies developing skills and nurturing attitudes or habits that will enable students to continue the quest for knowledge throughout life.

Outcomes of Inquiry
Questioning and searching for answers in a conceptual context effectively generate knowledge. Just as students should not be focused only on content as the ultimate outcome of learning, neither should they be asking questions and searching for answers about minutiae. Inquiry in education should be about a greater understanding of the world in which students live, learn, communicate, and work. The following questions will help to foster inquiry in your classroom.

Inquiry-Based Questions

• "Based on our discussion, what . . . do you predict for . . . ?"
• "Based on what you just read, what . . . do you predict for . . . ?"
• "Thinking about what we know about . . . , what would happen if . . . ?"
• "What are some completely different predictions . . . ?"
• "What completely different . . . would happen?"
• "What else would happen?"
• "Give me a specific example of . . . "
• "What do you mean by . . . ?"
• "Why do you expect . . . ?"
• "Why would . . . happen?"
• "Why do you think/predict . . . ?"
• "What else must happen or be true for . . . ?"
• "What else would have to happen or be true for . . . to happen?"
• "Why would that be necessary?"
• From whose viewpoint are we seeing or reading or hearing? From what angle or perspective?
• How do we know when we know? What's the evidence, and how reliable is it?
• How are things, events, or people connected to each other? What is the cause and what is the effect? How do they fit together?
• What's new and what's old? Have we run across this idea before?
• So what? Why does it matter? What does it all mean?