Education? New Zealand Case Studies of Inquiry-Based Learning

The isolation of thinking from confrontation with facts encourages that kind of observation which merely accumulates brute facts, which occupies itself laboriously with mere details, but never inquires into their meaning or consequences – a safe occupation, for it never contemplates any use to be made of the observed facts (Dewey, 1920). For many undergraduates, Dewey’s description of “brute facts ” and “mere details ” instead of thinking is unfortunately accurate. The encouragement to think, inquire, and consider the “use to be made of observed facts ” is often reserved for graduate students. Dewey’s charge to an undergraduate instructor, then, is to find an approach (in his vision, progressive or experiential) that combines thinking with facts. He characterized this challenge with a series of questions: “What is the place and meaning of subject matter and of organization within experience? How does subject matter function? ” (Dewey, 1938). Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is an approach for undergraduate education tha