Inquiry-based instruction is a teaching technique in which teachers create situations in which students are to solve problems. Lessons are designed so that students make connections to previous knowledge, bring their own questions to learning, investigate to satisfy their own questions and design ways to try out their ideas. Such investigations may extend over a long period of time. Students communicate through journal writing, oral presentations, drawing, graphing, charting, etc. Students then revise their explanations as they learn. This technique is particularly popular in science instruction, but has also been used in a number of other subject matter areas including mathematics, engineering and even reading instruction.
Discovery learning

Discovery learning

Discovery Learning is a method of inquiry-based instruction and is considered a constructivist based approach to education. It is supported by the work of learning theorists and psychologists Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, and Seymour Papert...

 is a type of inquiry-based instruction which was developed primarily by the psychologist Jerome Bruner

Jerome Bruner

Jerome Seymour Bruner is an American psychologist who has contributed to cognitive psychology and cognitive learning theory in educational psychology, as well as to history and to the general philosophy of education. Bruner is currently a senior research fellow at the New York University School...

.

Further reading

• An Inquiry Primer by Alan Coburn, Science Scope, March 2000, National Science Teachers Association