Inquiry Learning and Teaching in Science Education

Synonyms

Education; Epistemology; Learning; Science

Introduction

Inquiry teaching is one approach for communicating the knowledge and practices of science to learners. While inquiry approaches to science education offer potential learning opportunities, they also pose constraints on what might be available to learn. Inquiry teaching and learning have a history in science education that warrants analysis from pedagogical and philosophical perspectives. Pedagogical arguments for inquiry approaches are grounded in social epistemology, which makes clear the need for building from extant disciplinary knowledge of a relevant social group in order to learn through inquiry. Establishing a social epistemology in educational settings provides opportunities for students to engage in ways of speaking, listening, and explaining that are part of constructing knowledge claims in science. This perspective on epistemology emphasizes the importance of dialectical processes in science learning. Thus, an...