REaCT: Lessons of tolerance - Inclusive teaching of adults

Inquiry based learning was developed during the 1960s, as a form of people memorizing information from instructional materials, such as direct instruction and rote learning. Generate information and create meaning of it based on personal or social experience is reflected to as constructivism.

In 1960s Joseph Schwab called for inquiry to be divided into three distinct levels:

Level 1: Confirmation Inquiry:

The teacher has taught a particular science theme or topic. The teacher then develops questions and a procedure that guides students through an activity where the results are already known. This method is great to reinforce concepts taught and to introduce students into learning to follow procedures, collect and record data correctly and to confirm and deepen understandings.

Level 2: Structured Inquiry:

The teacher provides the initial question and an outline of the procedure. Students are to formulate explanations of their findings through evaluating and analysing the data that they collect.

Level 3: Guided Inquiry:

The teacher provides only the research question for the students. The students are responsible for designing and following their own procedures to test that question and then communicate their results and findings.              

Level 4: Open/True Inquiry:

Students formulate their own research question(s), design and follow through with a developed procedure, and communicate their findings and results. This type of inquiry is often seen in a science fair context where students drive their own investigative questions.^[1]

Banchi and Bell (2008) explain that teachers should begin their inquiry instruction at the lower levels and work their way to open inquiry in order to effectively develop students' inquiry skills. Open inquiry activities are only successful if students are motivated by intrinsic interests and if they are equipped with the skills to conduct their own research study. Later, Marshall Herron formalized it in 1971, which developed the Herron scale to evaluate the amount of inquiry within a particular lab exercise.