Inquiry-Based Learning: How My Thinking Has Grown

Inquiry-Based Learning: How My Thinking Has Grown

Over the past few weeks, my understanding of inquiry based learning has continued to shift and deepen. Honestly my understanding has become a lot more grounded in what real classrooms look like. When I wrote my first blog post, I was just beginning to understand that inquiry isn’t simply “hands-on learning.” I knew it was more intentional, more reflective, and more student-centered than I originally thought. Since then, after diving into the case studies and reading more about content knowledge and process skills, my thinking has sharpened in a few important ways.

Inquiry Is Not One Thing

One of the biggest insights I’ve gained is that inquiry doesn’t look the same in every classroom. The case studies made that really clear. Classroom One was almost entirely student-directed, while Classroom Two was heavily teacher-directed, and Classroom Three fell somewhere in between. Seeing those examples helped me understand that inquiry can be flexible depending on the lesson goals, the students, and the content.

Before, I had a more “all or nothing” mindset—either it was inquiry, or it wasn’t. Now I realize that teachers can purposefully choose when to guide, when to share the lead, and when to let students take over. That actually makes inquiry feel much more doable, especially when balancing curriculum expectations.

Process Skills and Content Knowledge Work Together

Another new understanding is how tightly process skills and content knowledge are connected. In my Unit 2 work, I learned that process skills are not something extra we try to sprinkle in; they’re the foundation of deeper thinking. Students don’t just “learn content” in social studies or science; they use inquiry such as making predictions, asking questions, analyzing data, and constructing explanations.

This helped me rethink my earlier worry that inquiry might take away time from teaching standards. Now I see that inquiry is how students make standards meaningful. When students explore, discuss, analyze, and reflect, they’re not avoiding content; on the other hand they’re engaging with it more deeply.

Inquiry Isn’t Chaos

A major change in my perspective came from looking closely at the case studies. In Classroom One, students were completely in charge, but the teacher still had a purpose and direction behind the scenes. That helped me understand something I was struggling with earlier: inquiry isn’t the teacher stepping back and hoping everything works out. It’s the teacher creating conditions where student thinking can unfold.

This connects to Donovan & Bransford’s (2005) point about tapping into students’ background knowledge before moving forward. Inquiry takes intention, planning, and knowing where students are starting from. It’s not “hands off” teaching, it’s teaching that listens before it acts.

Curiosity Really Is the Heart of Learning

One idea that keeps coming back in everything I’ve read is that curiosity is not something extra, it’s central to how learning actually happens. Wolpert-Gawron (2016) emphasized that good inquiry isn’t just asking questions, but asking the right questions that push thinking forward. Over the past few weeks, I’ve started to see curiosity almost as a skill we help students build, not just a personality trait that some students have and others don’t.

What Has Changed for Me

If I compare my thinking now to a few weeks ago, here’s the biggest shift:

• I used to think inquiry was something you “do” a couple times during a unit.
• Now I see it as a mindset and a way of approaching learning. 
• Inquiry can live inside small moments; like asking a more open-ended questions.  
• It doesn’t have to be a huge project to be meaningful.

My Questions Moving Forward

Even though my understanding has grown, I still have some questions that I don’t think have an easy answer:

• How can teachers realistically balance inquiry with the pressure of standards, pacing guides, and state assessments?
  I’m starting to see how inquiry and standards can work together, but I still feel the tension in real classrooms.

• How do I support students who struggle with open-ended tasks? I don't want to shift back to teacher directed learning as a response. 

• How can I use inquiry learning in subjects that are dense or even abstract like social studies?

• How can I trust the process and step back and allow inquiry to unfold?

Even though I have these question, I feel more prepared to implement inquiry based learning with my students. These past few weeks have shown me that inquiry is about giving students meaningful opportunities to think, question, explore, and make sense of the world. An inquiry based classroom feels exactly like the kind of classroom I want to build.

Inquiry-based learning video if you want to learn more!

References

Battelle for Kids. (2019). P21 resources. https://www.battelleforkids.org/insights/p21-resources/

BSCS. (2006). Why does inquiry matter? Secondary classroom case studies: Teaching science as inquiry. Kendall Hunt Publishing Company.

Conley, D. T. (2003). Understanding university success. Center for Educational Policy Research.

Donovan, M. S., & Bransford, J. D. (2005). How students learn: History in the classroom. The National Academies Press.

Life Science Institute. (2011). Indicators of development of process skills.

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2011). Getting started with student inquiry (Capacity Building Series). https://www.onted.ca/monographs/capacity-building-series/getting-started-with-student-inquiry

Spencer, J. (2017, December 5). What is inquiry-based learning? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlwkerwaV2E

Wolpert‐Gawron, H. (2016, April 25). What the heck is inquiry-based learning? Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/what-heck-inquiry-based-learning-heather-wolpert-gawron