An Exploration On Richard Suchman's Inquiry Teaching Thought

With the improvement of scientific civilization, inquiry is not a simple skill or a simple method of scientific exploration any more. It has been a spirit of our times. Therefore, many countries focus on cultivating students'inquiry ability. Recently, a new round reform of our basic education advocates adopting the method of "self-determination, cooperating, inquiry ", stressing on cultivating students'independence. And inquiry teaching has been a fashion. However, inquiry teaching is just a slogan in class while it has been admitted and accepted by people, because the theory of traditional teaching is the main stream for a long time in our country. How can it change the class really, how can we make it be effective ways to change the method of study, and cultivate the students'inquiry consciousness and scientific spirit? Richard Suchman (1927 --) , a professor in the University of Illinois of U.S.A and an advocator and experimenter of inquiry teaching, had done deep and special research on it in sixties last century and formed his own inquiry teaching thought. This dissertation just begins with his unique inquiry teaching thought, aiming at offering some useful things to our current inquiry teaching. Appearance of any thought has a specific historical background. Richard Suchman's inquiry thought is not an exception. The first part of this dissertation explains the specific background of his thought emphatically : a fierce competition between the U.S.A and Soviet Union made America have an unprecedented crisis; science and technology developed rapidly added challenges to American education too, new achievements of relative studies , such as psychology, were emerged constantly. All these factors impelled his inquiry teaching thought to bring about at the historic moment. Richard Suchman believed firmly that knowledge was the result of inquiry. He emphasized on the process of obtaining knowledge, advocated that instruction should prepare students to inquiry productively, and though highly of the function of curiosity in inquiry. He also maintained that instruction should make good use of children's intrinsic sources of motivation in inquiry teaching, brought the self–determination into full play, and made students combining bold, creative thinking with the rigor of logical analysis. He had annotated the logic structure and function of inquiry from the point of information processing, designed inquiry training which aimed at developing the skills of students'inquiry, asserted to assess student'inquiry ability based on the production and process of inquiry. The second part of this dissertation instructed his main thought systematically. Making a comprehensive survey of Richard Suchman's inquiry teaching thought and combining the development of society, science, education at that time, we found that his thought had broken the traditional science educational pattern which took scientific knowledge and the skills of experiment as main content, merged the new points of psychology at that time, catered to the idea of American elite education, and accorded with the requisition for education of era. And then, what can we learn from his inquiry teaching thought? The fourth part of this dissertation have carried on some elementary thinking through combining his thought and the current situation of our education reform: Not every question being probed into, we should design confusing problem episode; Not every student knowing how to inquiry, we should pay more attention to training the skills of student's inquiry; Not every teacher knowing how to inquiry, we should improve the ability of teachers'inquiry teaching; and the assessment of scientific inquiry should be based on the process and production of inquiry, lay stress on assessing the ability of students'scientific inquiry.