Children's Inquiry: Theory And Practice

Inquiry, regarded as the instinct of every human being, is a basic way of how we live and how we learn, as well as a kind of humanistic spirit embodied in the educational field, thus it should exist in all learning activities of every child. Some precocial fruits which are not good looking and perish easily would be created by the curriculum that ignores children's inquiry. On the contrast, it is sure that children would develop holisticly when curriculum lays much emphasis on listening to the children and returns the right of inquiry back to our kids. Teachers and schools will benefit a lot in the process of guiding.Children's inquiry is a process through which they seek knowledge, understand the world, and make sense of the world. It is not confined in the scientific field, but also happens in the art field; it focuses not only on the natural and social research but also the inquiry to children themselves.The thesis is mainly about what children's inquiry is, how it develops, how children inquire the world, and how it contributes to children's growth, to teachers' professional development and to the construction of a democratic school. I try to convey such a perspective that if we want to cultivate "wise human being", we must return the right to inquiry back to the kids, so that they can grow up in the world of inquiry.The introduction presents the background and purpose of this thesis, illustrating a vision of children's absence and the lost of inquiry in the contemporary education.Chapter one clarifies the meanings and features of children, inquiry and children's inquiry, putting forward three basic principles of the perspective ofchildren's inquiry--respecting the uniqueness of children, placing great emphasison personal knowledge and situation-based knowledge, advocating back to the live world.Chapter two introduces the general view of how children inquire in practice, focusing on Deway's 'active occupations', problem-based learning and project-based learning, integrative learning in Japanese and integrated curriculum of practical activity of our country.Chapter three applies the descriptive method from phenomenology to give the readers some vivid pictures of how children inquire the world, displaying a complex interesting and active process of how children create knowledge and make sense of the world. What's more, this chapter also explores how children's inquiry contributes to the growth of the kids, the teachers and the schools.Chapter four aims to build a strong system to support children, to encourage children's inquiry based on the analysis of current-existed problems of the inquiry learning in our country.The last chapter summarizes the whole thesis and addresses some issues to be further studied.