Inquiry Teaching and Learning: Forms, Approaches, and Embedded Views Within and Across Cultures

Abstract

Inquiry is a multifaceted activity. It involves a process of exploring phenomena, asking questions, investigating, representing and reasoning to construct explanations in the search for new understanding. Through inquiry learning processes, students have better opportunities to engage with phenomena, develop inquiry skills and scientific reasoning, understand the meaning of doing and talking science, and develop positive attitudes toward science. Though scholars and practitioners all recognise the importance of inquiry learning in science education, there is a variety of definitions and forms of inquiry learning as well as different instructional approaches to support it. Based on the video-ethnographic analysis of classroom pedagogical practices in Australia, Germany and Taiwan, this Chapter analyses the forms of inquiry learning in the observed science classrooms, and the instructional approaches teachers applied to support inquiry as well as the learning modes through which students engaged with inquiry activities. The Chapter explores the impact of local cultural and curriculum contexts on the framing of inquiry processes in these classrooms.