Why We Need to Rethink Inquiry-Based Learning in Science Education

The Common Argument for Inquiry-Based Learning

You’ve probably heard educators say we should teach science through inquiry-based learning because it mirrors how real scientists and engineers work. At first glance, this makes perfect sense. Why not have students learn the way professionals practice? But there’s more to this story than meets the eye, and I want to walk you through why this comparison isn’t quite as straightforward as it seems. In fact, the more we examine this approach, the more we realize we might be doing our students a disservice by pushing them too quickly into inquiry.

The Expert-Novice Gap

Let’s start by explaining the gap between experts and novices. Think about scientists and engineers for a moment. These professionals can tackle complex problems because they’ve spent years building their knowledge through intensive study and practice. They’ve developed such a deep understanding of their field that they can think about concepts abstractly and solve problems almost instinctively. When a physicist looks at a pendulum, they immediately see angular momentum, gravitational potential energy, and harmonic motion. When a chemist examines a chemical reaction, they visualize electron transfers and molecular rearrangements. This kind of sophisticated mental modeling doesn’t happen by accident. It comes from years of structured learning and practice.

Students, on the other hand, are just beginning their journey. When they look at a pendulum, they see a swinging weight. When they watch a chemical reaction, they might just see bubbles or color changes. They’re still working to grasp basic concepts and only focus on surface-level features. This isn’t a flaw in their thinking. It’s a natural and necessary stage in the learning process. But it does mean we need to approach teaching differently than we might initially assume.

Here’s a fascinating example that really drives this point home: researchers once gave the same set of 24 physics problems to both experts and novices, asking them to sort these problems into categories.¹ Novices focused on surface-level features. They put all the spring problems in one category, all the inclined plane problems in another. But the experts? They saw right through to the underlying principles, categorizing problems based on concepts like conservation of energy, regardless of whether they involved springs or planes. This fundamental difference in how experts and novices think shows why we can’t expect students to “think like scientists” right out of the gate.

Image Source: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2000. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/9853.

The Problem with Premature Inquiry

Think about what happens when we ask students to design their own experiments without sufficient background knowledge. It’s like asking someone to write a novel before they’ve mastered basic grammar. The results are often frustrating for everyone involved.

This brings us to a crucial point: you can’t develop scientific inquiry skills in a vacuum. Imagine trying to design an experiment to study chemical reaction rates without first understanding what reaction rates are, how to measure them, or what factors might affect them. You’d be shooting in the dark! Yet many inquiry-based approaches ask students to do just that. To investigate and discover without first giving them the foundational knowledge they need to make sense of what they’re seeing.

How Scientists and Engineers Actually Work

While superficially appealing, the argument that students should “learn the way professionals practice” fundamentally misunderstands how scientists and professionals actually develop expertise.

Scientists and engineers don’t actually work the way many inquiry-based classrooms suggest. They don’t start with a blank slate and just follow their curiosity wherever it leads. Instead, they build carefully on established knowledge and proven methodologies. When a research team designs a new experiment, they first spend months reviewing existing literature, understanding current theories, and identifying gaps in knowledge. Their creativity comes into play in how they apply and extend this knowledge, not in reinventing basic concepts from scratch.

Consider the development of the Mars rovers. The engineers at NASA didn’t simply imagine a rover and build it from scratch. Their work was the culmination of decades of aerospace engineering, materials science, robotics research, and previous space exploration missions. Each rover – from Sojourner to Curiosity to Perseverance – represents a carefully constructed advancement built upon extensive prior knowledge. The innovative leap comes from how these engineers synthesize and extend existing technologies, not from reinventing fundamental principles with each new mission.

Just as scientists and engineers relied on foundational knowledge to achieve extraordinary breakthroughs, students need a solid base of skills and concepts before tackling more complex, inquiry-based challenges. Explicit instruction in core principles equips them with the tools they need to explore, innovate, and eventually make discoveries of their own. By prioritizing foundational knowledge, we ensure students are prepared for academic success.

The Equity Concerns of Inquiry-Based Learning

When we throw students into inquiry without proper preparation, we risk doing more harm than good. Many students, especially those who are already struggling, become frustrated and discouraged when they can’t arrive at meaningful results through inquiry. I’ve seen bright, curious students start to believe that science is just too hard for them to understand, simply because they were asked to run before they could walk.

The impact can be particularly severe on students from disadvantaged backgrounds who might have had fewer opportunities for enrichment activities outside of school. These students often need more structured support to build their confidence and skills, not less. By relying too heavily on inquiry, we might actually be widening achievement gaps rather than closing them.

A Better Approach to Science Education: Balancing Explicit and Inquiry-Based Instruction

I am not advocating for the elimination of inquiry-based learning. Far from it! Research shows that when implemented effectively, inquiry-based learning offers significant advantages in enhancing student academic outcomes.² However, we need to ensure students have the foundations to navigate inquiry-based learning successfully. This preparation is crucial. As Dr. John Sweller puts it, “Problem solving only becomes viable as a learning procedure once learners are sufficiently expert to require practice of a specific procedure. It does not work as an introduction to a new topic as confirmed by the many studies of the expertise reversal effect.”³

Thus, what we need is a more balanced approach between explicit instruction and inquiry-based learning. This approach begins with developing prerequisite skills, where students learn basic scientific vocabulary and fundamental concepts through clear, explicit instruction. Next, students practice these skills in controlled, structured environments, demonstrating their ability to apply knowledge consistently. As their proficiency grows, they move to more complex applications, learning to generalize their understanding across different contexts. This can be successfully implemented using the instructional hierarchy model. Only after mastering these stages should students engage in scientific inquiry.

I believe the best approach is to begin the learning sequence with approximately 80% explicit instruction. This ensures students have enough time to solidify foundational knowledge and store it in long-term memory. The final 20% should focus on inquiry-based instruction, introduced later in the sequence, allowing students to apply their understanding in higher-order thinking tasks. By scaffolding learning through this systematic progression, we equip students with the necessary tools and confidence to conduct meaningful scientific investigations. This method respects how real scientists and engineers actually work. They build on a solid foundation of established knowledge before they push into innovative exploration.

Remember, our goal isn’t just to teach science content. It’s to develop students who can think scientifically and solve problems independently. But just as you can’t build a house without a foundation, you can’t develop scientific thinking without first establishing basic knowledge and skills. When we acknowledge this reality and design our teaching accordingly, we set our students up for genuine success in science.

References

1. Mayer, R. E. (2013). Problem solving. In D. H. Jonassen (Ed.), Learning to solve complex scientific problems (pp. 29–44). Routledge.
   https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2013-22112-002 ↩︎
2. Barron, B., & Darling-Hammond, L. (2008). Teaching for meaningful learning: A review of research on inquiry-based and cooperative learning. George Lucas Educational Foundation.
   https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED539399.pdf ↩︎
3. Sweller, J. (2021). Why inquiry-based approaches harm students’ learning (Analysis Paper 24). Center for Independent Studies.
   https://www.cis.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/ap24.pdf ↩︎