Educational Psychology Series

<p>Why should inquiry - the engine for independent, curiosity- and interest-driven, life-long learning - be a curricular imperative, and its presence a criterion for excellent education? Is it possible to teach inquiry skills systematically and to engage learners in being inquirers across elementary, secondary, and post-secondary schooling?</p><p>To answer these urgent questions, this book</p><ul> <li>pulls together more than four decades of expert opinion, quantitative research, and qualitative research on inquiry in different disciplines, school subjects, and levels of education; and</li> <li>presents a dozen different pedagogical, philosophical, and disciplinary traditions within which evidence and rationale are found for building learning and teaching experiences around inquiry-based curricula</li> </ul><p><i>Inquiry in Education, Volume I: The Conceptual Foundations for Research as a Curricular Imperative</i> is the first book to gather all these sources together, to build a cross-disciplinary case for inquiry as the central core of sound curriculum design, and to offer an organized interpretation of this large body of knowledge from a variety of perspectives and for different educational purposes. A companion volume, Shore, Aulls, & Delcourt, Eds., <i>Inquiry in Education, Volume II: Overcoming Barriers to Successful Implementation</i>, focuses on a corollary question: If inquiry is such a good thing, why is it not universal practice? What barriers stand in the way, and how can teachers overcome them?</p><p><i>Inquiry in Education, Volume I </i>is intended for scholars, faculty, and students of education, and for practitioners at all levels of schooling who support inquiry-oriented reforms in education and who want to learn more about how to use inquiry in their own practice.</p>