SIG 20 - Inquiry Learning
Coordinators
Koen Veermans
Mission statement
The Inquiry Learning SIG focuses on how to design learning environments for effective inquiry learning. Inquiry practices include activities that scientists engage in to explore and explain different issues, topics, or problems in different knowledge domains within the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Within our SIG we conceive inquiry learning in the broad sense as referring to learning activities and approaches that aim to offer learners opportunities for engaging in inquiry practices within and beyond inquiry-based learning, such as authentic learning, discovery learning, problem-based learning, or productive failure. The design of effective inquiry learning environments that offer learners opportunities for engaging in inquiry practices involves a meaningful problem and the necessary cognitive scaffolds for supporting students during the inquiry process. To achieve an adequate design, a deep understanding of the learning processes that comprise inquiry learning and the difficulties learners may experience is necessary. The interests of the SIG include, but are not limited, to the following topics: collaborative inquiry learning, learning by modeling, scaffolding inquiry learning processes, assessment techniques for inquiry learning processes and their outcomes, and implementation of (computer-supported) inquiry learning in the curriculum and in and outside the classroom.