The complex environmental challenges humanity faces require citizens who are scientifically and environmentally literate. Many environmental education programs are situated in the field where students are immersed in their learning. These field-based activities are engaging but may lack opportunities for students to develop critical thinking and…

Many alternatives exist for setting the delivery, content, direction, tone, and priorities for a Critical Inquiry/Thinking general education program. Review of our university's overall general education program indicated the need, and overwhelming faculty approval, for a program to improve critical thinking skills, to specifically include…

Any given inquiry can be divided into four methodological stages. These are: problem solving, problem evaluating, solution forming and solution evaluating. In teaching students to think, teachers should encourage them in all of these steps. (GC)

The topic of this article concerns how students make sense of categories of progressive inquiry made available to them through a discussion and inquiry type of software called Future Learning Environments 2 (FLE2). The idea behind tools of this kind is to induce approaches to school-work that build on the metaphor of learning as research. By…

The intention of this article is to focus on why students' preferences should be considered an integral part of the total evaluation of the inquiry approach and how students' preferences can be ascertained. (Author/RK)

This study was an attempt to determine whether, and to what extent: 1) there is disagreement about the nature and function of values and valuing among educators, and between social science educators and certain axiologists; 2) social science educators endorse valuation theories which are internally inconsistent or antithetical to the purposes of…

Students must be actively involved in the process of learning for it to have personal meaning and importance in their lives. Teachers must also become critical thinkers, creative individuals, and decision makers in order to create more challenging learning environments. Teachers need to blend structure and spontaneity into meaningful learning…

Describes inquiry learning as defining a purpose for inquiry (the problem), postulating tentative answers or solutions, testing various hypotheses, drawing tentative conclusions, and applying those conclusions to new situations. Asserts that acquisition of these skills supports democratic citizenship. Outlines the inquiry approach used for a…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…