4 Phases of Inquiry-Based Learning: A Guide For Teachers
1. Interaction
Big Idea: Dive into engaging, relevant, and credible media forms to identify a
need or opportunity for inquiry
The first phase of inquiry-based learning is one characterized by interaction. This
interaction can be:
Student-to-material. This material is ideally obtained through formal (i.e., research)
and informal (e.g., reading, social and digital media, collaboration) means. It can be
modeled or supplemented by teacher-provided materials
Student-to-peer. This interaction is chosen by teacher or student, informed by need for
information and perspective
Student-to-expert (experts within relevant fields at accessible levels)
Student-to-media (digital, text, pure data, etc.)
The nature of inquiry is ideally both curiosity-based and fluid. Narrow criteria,
restrictive rubrics, and other traditional artifacts of school work can stifle inquiry at
this point of the learning process. The teachers role at this point in the learning
process is focused on resources, modeling curiosity, and cognitive coaching.
Tone: Open-minded, curious, unburdened, playful
Student Indicators: actively skims a variety of media, follows curiosity, responds
with awe, dwells with certain media depending on curiosity or perceived utility; seeks
out peers for ideas and resources
Teacher Indicators: models curiosity, thinks-aloud when interacting with disparate
media, asks probing questions, withholds evaluative statements, provides exemplars,
monitors and encourages student thinking habits
Apps: FlipBoard, Pocket, Podkicker, Zotero
Appropriate Questions: What sources of information are available to me? What do
others around me know? Whats worth studying? What possibilities, problems, or
situations tend to interest me? What types of experiences, perspectives, and data are
available to me? When am I at my best?
2. Clarification
Big Idea: Summarizing, paraphrasing, and categorizing learning with teacher or
expert support.
This happens by analyzing data, identifying and clarifying misconceptions, and
otherwise getting a feel for the scale, nature, and possibility of selected topics of
inquiry.
After skimming, reading, watching, and otherwise interacting with a variety of media,
this stage of the inquiry process is centered around students clarifying both their own
thinking, and the nature of things around them: ideas for projects, scientific
challenges, opportunities for revision, need for design thinking, a new scale to tackle
persistent problems, etc.
Thinking patterns are both inward and reflective, and outward and communicated. In
that way, students both reflect on their own knowledge, while beginning to identify
possible pathways forward.
Tone: Slightly more focused, reflective, independent, cautious
Student Indicators: Paraphrases understanding in familiar language; resists looking
for answers and solutions; distinguishes between fact and opinion; evaluates the
credibility and relevance of sources; focused on possibility
Teacher Indicators: offers non-evaluative and frequent feedback; provides relevant
graphic organizers and other ways to frame student thinking; asks probing questions
that focus on student thinking: what they know and why they think they know it;
Appropriate Questions: Whats the big picture here? What are the pieces and how
do they fit? Whats accessible, and whats not? Whats possible? Am I missing critical
data, perspectives, or opportunities for collaboration that could further clarify my
thinking? What do I seem to understand, and how do I know?
Apps: MindMeister, WordPress, Google+, Quora, reddit
3. Questioning
Big Idea: Asking questions to drive continued, self-directed inquiry
The questioning phase is a critical phase of the inquiry-based learning process, if for
no other reason than misunderstandings, lack of organization, uneven confidence, or
an inability to see the big picture surface here more clearly than other phases.
Students and teachers alike must also be able to trust the nature and patterns of inquiry
that are often recursive and iterative: They often move back and forth between phases,
and new skills and understandings can be obtained in frustratingly small increments.
Inquiry-based learning is more about the process, tone, and instincts of learning than
other tidier academic forms, which can require both students and teachers to adjust
their measures of progress, quality, and success.
Tone: Creative, confident, interdependent
Student Indicators: Curious, precise with questions, self-monitoring, big-picture
thinking, little-picture application
Teacher Indicators: models questioning, thinks-aloud in revising irrelevant or
otherwise flawed questions; models use of concept-mapping tools to analyze
thinking; hosts QFT sessions and Socratic seminars
Appropriate Questions: Whats worth understanding? Where are my knowledge
gaps? What is both within and beyond my reach? What have I done in the past that
can help me in this situation moving forward?
Apps: Evernote, MindMeister, twitter, Quora, reddit
4. Design
Big Idea: Designing an accessible, relevant, and curiosity-driven action or
product to culminate and justify inquiry
At this final stage of the inquiry-based learning process, learners are focused on
design.
Design of solutions to address problems within a manageable scale
Design of logical and curiosity-based applications of current understanding
Design of next steps to extend their own learning pathway
Tone: Creative, restrained, calculating
Appropriate Questions: What now? What audience makes sense for this research?
Where can I do good work? What would be cool? What have others before me
done?
Apps: Posts, Mextures, Inkist, Google Drive, DesignPad, Foldify
Student Indicators: Clarifies thinking, busy, self-directed, uncertain but efficacious,
follows curiosity
Teacher Indicators: Creates conditions and means for collaboration; identifies
areas for revision, reflects back on entire process (i.e., how we get to this point)
4 Student Questions For Post-Phase Reflection
After the inquiry-based learning process is finished (for the purposes of classroom
work, publishing, grading, etc.), it can be helpful for students to reflect in the inquiry-
based learning process through questions such as:
1. What skills did I depend on?
2. What do I now understand more deeply, and how do I know?
3. If I had more time or resources, what else could I have done?
4. What is the role of inquiry in learning?
