Inquiry-based Learning

As we all know that a good teacher always wants to improve his teaching methods and techniques, besides having mastery of his/her subject before anything else. In addition, as an elementary school teacher I can say that children have different strategies for learning and achieving their goals. In this paper I will talk about one of these learning strategies which is "Inquiry based learning".

According to what I have learned in the ICT2 class, I can define the inquiry-based learning, as that it is the approach where the students learn through asking questions, gathering information and ideas, examining relevant issues (big ideas), and making systematic attempts to answer the questions they have identified. The questions and possible answers may lead to possible actions.

Unfortunately, our traditional educational system has worked in a way that discourages the natural process of inquiry. Memorizing facts and information is not the most important skill in today's world. Through the process of inquiry, individuals construct much of their understanding of the natural and human-designed worlds. Inquiry based learning is not just asking questions, but it is a way of converting data and information into useful knowledge. A useful application of inquiry based learning involves many different factors, which are, a different level of questions, a focus for questions, a framework for questions, and a context for questions.

In conclusion, I can say that a good teacher's worksheet enables the student to increase its study skills by providing different ways of viewing the world, communicating with it, and successfully introducing new questions and issues of daily life and finding answers of them.