The inquiry-oriented classroom depends on questions. Good questions can help students integrate, apply, and reflect on the meaning of the knowledge they are learning. Students' responses to good questions can help us determine what they are understand, and where they are still confused. The essence of collaborative learning described by Kenneth Bruffee (1993) is a group of informed peers working together to construct a response to a meaningful question. So often we talk about the process skills that students can gain from inquiry-oriented activities-problem-solving, analytical skills, "learning to learn"-and forget that these can help students gain a sound understanding of fundamental concepts as well, understanding that will serve them well in future learning. The questions and questioning activities that are included in this issue are particularly focused on conceptual learning, and provide examples of how students can gain a conceptual foundation while also developing thinking and investigative skills. Asking good questions, also, models this process for students and helps them move toward asking their own good questions, and begin thinking like a scientist.

Reader Contributions

One obvious next step from these kinds of question-based activities, that I know many of these instructors do, is helping students learn to ask their own questions. Another "next step" that is less common, but potentially just as powerful, is to get students to not only be able to propose answers to the kinds of questions outlined here, but to reflect actively on what they learn by doing so. One of our jobs as teachers is to evaluate students' learning, but if we are truly going to promote life-long learning, we need to help students learn to evaluate their own understanding. Generally, students don't know how to do this on their own, being used to being told when they've "got it." Following up an activity such as those described here with another question, "What did you learn?" (by engaging in this discussion, completing this assignment, etc.) sounds simple (it is!) but I have seen it lead to powerful new levels of understanding in students. Not only can they better internalize what they are learning, they can better recognize its value.

References

Bruffee, Kenneth A. (1993). Collaborative learning: higher education, interdependence, and the authority of knowledge. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.