Inquiry based learning

As we all know traditional education focus on ‘what we know’ (facts), it is a direct transfer of knowledge from teacher to student where the teacher’s role is dispense knowledge and student’s role is receive knowledge. But inquiry based learning focus on ‘how we know what we know’ (evidence); this is kind of Indirect transfer of knowledge where the teacher’s role is facilitator of learning and student’s role is active, independent learner (investigator).

“Inquiry is something that students do, not something that is done to them.”

This type of learning is flexible and adaptable for a variety of projects. It helps to build self-esteem through allowing students to be more active in their own learning process, rather than passive via traditional lecture based methods.

It also reinforces and builds several skills of students in the areas of physical, emotional, and cognitive and it can work with any age group.

On the other hand I find there are some disadvantages which are it doesn´t work for all topics , it requires more planning, preparation, and responsiveness from the educators,educators must be skilled in helping students learn the art of asking a good question. Finally, as we know time is the biggest enemy so this kind of learning requires more class time and may be less able to meet goals of standardized testing.