Inquiry-based Learning In The Junior High School Geography Classroom Teaching

Inquiry learning, which originated in the United States in the 1960s, has produced a far-reaching effect on American education of Science and contributed to the emergence of a world-wide educational reform wave. Humanity has now entered the twenty-first century, every country in the world has established as its educational goal training and developing top-quality intellectuals with both creative spirits and practical abilities. Inquiry learning, which is opposed to receptive learning and attaches more importance to participation and process, equality and cooperation, stimulation and creativity, is an efficient approach to developing students' creative spirits and practical abilities; hence it is increasingly applied, and more widely canonized and advocated in all countries. A new wave of educational reform of elementary course-books is being launched with the purpose of transforming the now-prevalent students' passive learning style, which emphasizes repetitive, mechanical drilling, into inquiry learning, which promotes students' active participation.The following paper has summarized the origin of inquiry learning and its studies conducted by researchers at home and abroad, with implications of inquiry learning elaborated on; has analyzed, by investigating the present conditions of junior middle school students' inquiry learning, the necessity and feasibility of promoting inquiry learning in the process of teaching junior middle school geography; has inquired, on the basis of inquiry learning theories, into basic concepts and goals involved in the junior middle school geography teaching, with emphasis on the application of inquiry learning to the junior middle school geography classroom teaching; has proposed, combined with the requirements established in the junior middle school course-book standards, four learning methods, such as question-centered inquiry learning method, situation-centered inquiry learning method, case-centered inquiry learning method and interactive-cooperative inquiry learning method; and has elaborated on concrete operational strategies and steps connected with these four models as have been supported by related cases in teaching practice.The paper has tentatively inquired into inquiry learning method and its application to the process of junior middle school geography teaching, with the hope that more fellow teachers will pay more attention to inquiry learning and take an active part in its studies, thereby improving on junior middle school students' geography learning techniques and producing more creative talented people who are more qualified for our society in the future.