Inquiry is central to the IB’s approaches to teaching and learning (ATTL), yet may remain poorly understood in secondary school contexts. Traditional measures of inquiry-based teaching have a moderate effect size of d=0.49. Within the meta-analyses, effect sizes are hugely variable. This is one domain where not all comparisons are equal, as definitions of inquiry vary considerably… yet measurement of effect size remains pinned to external assessments.
Effective inquiry is not free-range discovery of a list of facts or skills that will be externally examined; it is a deep pedagogy that requires active teacher engagement.
In the context of a high-agency IB school, a solid definition of inquiry needs to be the root of the pedagogical approaches that follow. This definition from Taylor (2014) is an example:
Inquiry is critical, creative reflective thought. It builds on a solid foundation of accessible, well-learned knowledge, skills and conceptual understandings, inviting learners to take action on their learning and ask “what if…?”
Through this definition, we can see a constellation of constructivist and high-impact strategies are required, for example:
Effective inquiry requires excellent, collaborative teaching practices and critical attention to the impacts of learning on learners. The expert inquiry teacher knows which strategies to use and when, planning with intention and actively building the development of learner agency, self-efficacy and metacognition.