Why Inquiry-Based Learning and Teaching?
Today's students live, learn and work in a world characterized by increasing diversity and social, economic, and environmental issues that they did not cause but which are theirs to solve. Accelerating technological advances make the world even more complex. Jobs of the future are unknowable and unpredictable. "In many industries and countries, the most in-demand occupations or specialties did not exist 10 or even five years ago."1 A subsequent 2018 report projected "workers lacking appropriate skills . . . may see their wages and job quality suppressed by technology steadily eroding the value of their job, as it encroaches on the tasks required to perform it."2
To flourish in twenty-first century life and work and adapt to an ever-changing landscape requires competencies in the areas of creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication and complex problem-solving.3
Helping teachers to design experiences that develop the "twenty-first century competencies" and thus enable "deeper learning" for all students is the instructional challenge for schools and it is a matter of equity and justice for students.4 Fortunately, inquiry-based learning and other learner-centered pedagogies have proved productive in this area.
Introducing inquiry into the science classroom is especially valuable. By learning science through inquiry, students become scientists as they explore scientific phenomena and engage in the practices of science.
1World Economic Forum (2016, January). The future of jobs: Employment, skills and workforce strategy for the fourth industrial revolution. Global Challenge Insight Report. Geneva, Switzerland
2World Economic Forum (2018). The future of jobs report. Global Challenge Insight Report. Geneva, Switzerland.
3National Research Council (2012), Committee on Defining Deeper Learning and 21st Century Skills, Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferrable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century. By J. W. Pellegrino and M. L. Hilton. Washington, D.C: National Academies Press; The Quality Assurance Commons for Higher and Post-Secondary Education (2020, March). Graduate profile. Retrieved from https://theqacommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Graduate-Profile-2020.pdf
4Darling-Hammond, L., Oakes, J. et al (2019). Preparing teachers for deeper learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
