What is Inquiry Based Learning?

Inquiry based learning is mainly involving the learner and leading him to understand. Inquiry here implies on the possessing skills and attitude of yours, which allows you to ask questions about new resolutions and issues while you are gaining new information.

Dictionary meaning of Inquiry is seeking knowledge, information, or truth through questioning. All the people carry on with this process throughout their life, even if you might find it not very much reflecting. For example, infants use inquiry to build their sense of the world, the babies turn towards voices, put things in their mouths, grasp things, and observe faces that come near. The inquiry process is mainly the gathering of data and information and applying them to senses like smelling, tasting, touching, hearing and seeing.

Very sadly, our traditional ways of teaching discourage the process of inquiry. It makes the student get less prone to asking questions as they move through their grade levels, they are just expected to listen and repeat the expected answers. This is due to the lack of understanding of inquiry based learning. 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.

Much mesmerizing information and facts are readily available, which needs an understanding of how to make sense out of it and turn it into useful knowledge. The teachers must be able to analyze that he or she does into only have to accumulate information and data but also have to generate it into useful knowledge, which can be easily done through inquiry based learning. Our country's success depending upon natural resources is the past; the future of our country's success now depends upon the workforce which works smarter.

There are four essential elements on which inquiry based learning depends, which are, first is that the patterns and meanings should not be deceptive to the beginners, second is that the useful knowledge about a field should be structured, third is that the knowledge which is structured should be applicable, transferable, and accessible to a vast range of situations, fourth is that the structured knowledge should be easily retrieved so that new information in that particular field could be gained without much effort.

Inquiry based learning can be applied on all disciplines which has been confirmed through different researches. Learners have different perspectives of viewing the world like economic, historic, scientific, artistic, etc. The disciplines can be interrelated through inquiry based learning, which ensures the integrity of different disciplines and the world views about them.

The teachers must organize their lesson plans according to the changing, interrelating, and communicating of knowledge. 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. Questioning and finding answers is an extremely important factor of inquiry based learning as it aids you in effectively generating knowledge. In the end, inquiry based learning is basically teaching the students to have a greater understanding of the world they work, communicate, learn, and live in.

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