Educational policy bodies worldwide have argued that practicing inquiry as a part of the K-12 curriculum would help prepare students for their lives as adults in today's world. This study investigated adults who graduated high school 9 years earlier with a major in biology, to determine how they perceive the inquiry project they experienced and…

Engaging students in inquiry is a key component in order to fulfill essential goals in science education. To achieve successful engagement in inquiry process, students need to feel competent and autonomous in spite of the cognitive and mental challenges the process entails. The study focuses on the "problematizing" mechanisms of…

The research goal of this study was to determine whether teachers who participated in an inquiry-based course were able to internalize a dynamic open inquiry process. This study focused on 25 science teachers who participated in an annual inquiry-based academic course. Several teaching tools helped teachers employ an open inquiry process. We…

The article provides science educators with definitions of inquiry and its levels, relating them to real-world scientific processes. Such an educational shift entails a fundamental cultural change in the epistemology of science learning in schools, shifting it from "instructionism" to social constructivist learning. The highest level of…

Among potential topics in the new science of biodiversity, understanding the characteristics and impact of invasive birds is an attractive subject to include as part of junior high school biology studies. Birds are aesthetic and raise curiosity. Curiosity about birds, combined with field observations, can stimulate students to ask authentic…

The novelty of this study is rooted in the uniqueness of its setting: Informal, in school, Mini Science Museum that is managed by high school students who also develop teaching materials and guide the visitors. The phenomenological study presented here followed, over a period of 9 months, a group of 11 students that served as the museum's…

Dynamic inquiry learning emphasizes aspects of change, intellectual flexibility, and critical thinking. Dynamic inquiry learning is characterized by the following criteria: learning as a process, changes during the inquiry, procedural understanding, and affective points of view. This study compared the influence of open versus guided inquiry…

Despite the growing consensus regarding the value of inquiry based teaching and learning, the implementation of such practices continues to be a challenge. The goal of this paper is to present a model for the educational infrastructure that can support the implementation of the Biomind program, which is a new open inquiry program for Israeli…

In recent years, the science teaching community and curriculum developers have emphasised the importance of teaching inquiry and teaching science as inquiry. One way of developing learners' skills for planning and carrying out scientific research is by allowing them to perform independent research, guided by a teacher. It was recently discovered…