Inquiry is one way of making sense out of what we experience. It requires thinking. . .Inquiry teaching is putting learners into situations in which they must engage in the intellectual operations that constitute inquiry. It requires learners to make their own meaning out of what they experience. Neither inquiry nor inquiry teaching are easy. But they are productive. And fun! p. 6

It is sometimes labeled an approach, sometimes a method, and more frequently a strategy. Terms such as reflective thinking, problem solving, critical thinking, inductive teaching, discovery, and guided discovery are often used to describe it. p. 6

All in all there seems to be little agreement about what inquiry really is. p. 7

Essentially, meaning making is finding out for oneself. This is the goal, and essence, of inquiry. p. 9

. . for such a strategy (inquiry oriented) requires the student to use his mind for something other than a data storage bin. Inquiry learning is essentially a way in which the student finds out for himself. Thus, inquiry teaching is a type of strategy that puts the learner into situations which require him to engage in the same operations he would use if he were trying to find out for himself. In inquiry teaching much more than mere listening is required of the student. Indeed, the student must engage in an active intellectual search -- a search in which he manipulates data gathered from his or others' experiences or observations or reflections in order to make sense out of it, to give it meaning. p. 13

An inquiry teaching strategy, simply put, is one that has students identify a problem for resolution, propose possible solutions, test these possible solutions against the evidence, draw conclusions warranted by the testing, and then, later perhaps, apply these conclusions to new data and generalize. p. 14

    by Barry Beyer     in (1971). Inquiry in the Social Studies Classroom