What Are The Phases Of Inquiry-Based Learning? A Guide For Teachers
by Terry Heick
Inquiry-Based Learning as Phased Thinking
The phases of inquiry describe shifts in student thinking and corresponding instructional emphasis. They are not fixed steps and may recur or overlap as understanding develops.
| Inquiry Phase | Instructional Focus |
|---|---|
| Interacting | Curiosity, exposure, resource interaction |
| Clarifying | Sense-making, organizing ideas, feedback |
| Questioning | Framing questions, identifying gaps |
| Designing | Application, revision, extension |
Research on constructivist learning emphasizes that knowledge is actively built as learners interact with information, test ideas, and reorganize understanding through feedback and reflection (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000).
Studies of problem-based and inquiry-oriented instruction suggest that these processes often occur in recognizable phases, even when learning is nonlinear and iterative (Hmelo-Silver, 2004). Describing inquiry in terms of phases can therefore support instructional planning by helping teachers anticipate student needs without reducing inquiry to a fixed sequence.
Phase 1: Interacting
Big Idea: Dive into engaging, relevant, and credible media forms to identify a ‘need’ or opportunity for inquiry
Dominant student stance: exploratory | Primary teacher role: curating, modeling curiosity | Cognitive tone: open-minded, playful
The first phase of inquiry (often produced by strategies for promoting inquiry-based learning) is one characterized by interaction. This interaction can be:
- Student-to-material. This material is ideally obtained through formal (i.e., research) and informal (e.g., reading, social and digital media, collaboration) means. It can be modeled or supplemented by teacher-provided materials
- Student-to-peer. This interaction is chosen by teacher or student, informed by need for information and perspective
- Student-to-expert (experts within relevant fields at accessible levels)
- Student-to-media (digital, text, pure data, etc.)
Inquiry is ideally both curiosity-based and fluid. Narrow criteria, restrictive rubrics, and other traditional artifacts of ‘school work’ can stifle inquiry at this point of the learning process. The teacher’s role at this point in the learning process is focused on resources, modeling curiosity, and cognitive coaching.
Tone: Open-minded, curious, unburdened, playful
Student Indicators:
actively skims a variety of media, follows curiosity, responds with awe, dwells with certain media depending on curiosity or perceived utility; seeks out peers for ideas and resources
Teacher Indicators:
models curiosity, thinks-aloud when interacting with disparate media, asks probing questions, withholds evaluative statements, provides exemplars, monitors and encourages student thinking habits
Apps (examples):
Feedly, Pocket, YouTube, podcasts, Zotero
Appropriate Questions:
What sources of information are available to me? What do others around me know? What’s worth studying? What possibilities, problems, or situations tend to interest me? What types of experiences, perspectives, and data are available to me? When am I at my best?
Phase 2: Clarifying
Big Idea: Summarizing, paraphrasing, and categorizing learning with teacher or expert support.
Dominant student stance: sense-making | Primary teacher role: framing, feedback, cognitive coaching | Cognitive tone: focused, reflective
This happens by analyzing data, identifying and clarifying misconceptions, and otherwise ‘getting a feel’ for the scale, nature, and possibility of selected topics of inquiry.
After skimming, reading, watching, and otherwise interacting with a variety of media, this stage of the inquiry process is centered around students clarifying both their own thinking, and the nature of ‘things’ around them: ideas for projects, scientific challenges, opportunities for revision, need for design thinking, a new scale to tackle persistent problems, etc.
Thinking patterns are both inward and reflective, and outward and communicated. In that way, students both reflect on their own knowledge, while beginning to identify possible pathways forward.
Tone: Slightly more focused, reflective, independent, cautious
Student Indicators:
Paraphrases understanding in familiar language; resists looking for ‘answers’ and ‘solutions’; distinguishes between fact and opinion; evaluates the credibility and relevance of sources; focused on possibility
Teacher Indicators:
offers non-evaluative and frequent feedback; provides relevant graphic organizers and other ways to ‘frame’ student thinking; asks probing questions that focus on student thinking: what they know and why they think they know it;
Appropriate Questions:
What’s the big picture here? What are the pieces and how do they fit? What’s accessible, and what’s not? What’s possible? Am I missing critical data, perspectives, or opportunities for collaboration that could further clarify my thinking? What do I seem to understand, and how do I know?
Apps (examples):
Miro or FigJam, Google Docs, WordPress, Notion
Phase 3: Questioning
Big Idea: Asking questions to drive continued, self-directed inquiry
Dominant student stance: framing | Primary teacher role: modeling, facilitation, revision support | Cognitive tone: creative, confident
The questioning phase is a critical phase of the inquiry-based learning process, if for no other reason than misunderstandings, lack of organization, uneven confidence, or an inability to see the ‘big picture’ surface here more clearly than other phases.
Students and teachers alike must also be able to trust the nature and patterns of inquiry that are often recursive and iterative: They often move back and forth between phases, and new skills and understandings can be obtained in frustratingly small increments. Inquiry-based learning is more about the process, tone, and instincts of learning than other ‘tidier’ academic forms, which can require both students and teachers to adjust their measures of progress, quality, and success.
Tone: Creative, confident, interdependent
Student Indicators:
Curious, precise with questions, self-monitoring, big-picture thinking, little-picture application
Teacher Indicators:
models questioning, thinks-aloud in revising irrelevant or otherwise flawed questions; models use of concept-mapping tools to analyze thinking; hosts QFT sessions and Socratic seminars
Appropriate Questions:
What’s worth understanding? Where are my knowledge gaps? What is both within and beyond my reach? What have I done in the past that can help me in this situation moving forward?
Apps (examples):
Google Docs, Miro or FigJam, Padlet
Phase 4: Designing
Big Idea: Designing an accessible, relevant, and curiosity-driven action or product to culminate and justify inquiry
Dominant student stance: application | Primary teacher role: enabling, revising, reflecting | Cognitive tone: creative, restrained
At this final stage of the inquiry-based learning process, learners are focused on design.
Design of solutions to address problems within a manageable scale
Design of logical and curiosity-based applications of current understanding
Design of next steps to extend their own learning pathway
Tone: Creative, restrained, calculating
Appropriate Questions:
What now? What audience makes sense for this research? Where can I do ‘good work’? What would be ‘cool’? What have others before me done?
Apps (examples):
Google Workspace, Canva, Adobe Express, Figma, video creation tools
Student Indicators:
Clarifies thinking, busy, self-directed, uncertain but efficacious, follows curiosity
Teacher Indicators:
Creates ‘conditions and means’ for collaboration; identifies areas for revision, reflects back on entire process (i.e., “how we get to this point”)
