Inquiry Science & Sense Making

Key Takeaways

Inquiry Science is an approach, not a tool.
Science inquiry helps students make observations, be curious, ask questions, conduct experiments, and find answers.
Science inquiry makes science more engaging and more fun. And it results in improved science learning.
In an inquiry science approach, teachers ask questions to prompt wondering, curiosity, and motivate learners to propose and test answers.

Inquiry Science in the Classroom

For teachers, inquiry science means presenting problems to students in a way that piques interest and challenges current conceptual understanding. Teachers guide exploration, rather than provide explanations. This creates a generative space where learners tackle the challenges and construct new understandings through authentic questioning and discovery.

For students, inquiry science means that their curiosity and discoveries lead to science learning.

Why Inquiry Science

The inquiry science approach puts student discovery, interest, and agency at the center of science learning.

When implemented in the classroom, inquiry helps students make observations, be curious, ask questions, conduct experiments, and find answers. It makes science more engaging and more fun. And it results in improved science learning.

Feng Jiang & William F. McComas (2015) The Effects of Inquiry Teaching on Student Science Achievement and Attitudes: Evidence from Propensity Score Analysis of PISA Data, International Journal of Science Education, 37:3, 554-576, DOI: 10.1080/09500693.2014.1000426

Nichols, K., Burgh, G. & Kennedy, C. Comparing Two Inquiry Professional Development Interventions in Science on Primary Students’ Questioning and Other Inquiry Behaviours. Res Sci Educ 47, 1–24 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-015-9487-5

Examples of Inquiry Science

Inquiry science is an approach that starts with wonderings, leads to questions, discovery, and explanations that build new understanding.

Pages in SNUDLE, a universally designed digital science notebook

SNUDLE, the Science Notebook in a Universal Design for Learning Environment, is a UDL-based tool that supports the inquiry science approach. SNUDLE guides learners through 5 steps: Question, Collect Data, Analyze Data, Explain, and Connect & Reflect.

While SNUDLE uses these 5 steps, other models of the inquiry science process may use fewer or more steps, but all of these models are designed to support learners to build new understanding based on questioning, observation, and explanation. SNUDLE is a great tool, but if you don’t have it, you can still do inquiry science. Inquiry science is a student-centered approach, not a particular tool.