Inquiry-based learning has huge potential. It teaches students that their curiosity, thinking, and exploration are important. However, to be truly effective, inquiry needs to go beyond surface-level wonder and become a process that challenges students to think critically, connect to real-world issues, and take ownership of their learning.
So, how do we create inquiry-based learning experiences that are truly rigorous? How can we ensure that students aren’t just asking questions but are also exploring them deeply? I'd like to unpack what criteria make inquiry-based learning rigorous and also introduce a tool to help you reflect on inquiry practices in your classroom.
Why Rigorous Inquiry Based Learning Matters
Rigorous inquiry isn’t just about asking questions. It’s about catalyzing deep investigation. Students explore complex problems, grapple with diverse perspectives, and synthesize new ideas. In fact, rigorous inquiry prepares students for real-world challenges because it helps them grow in critical thinking skills and creativity while also developing resilience.
In her blog post, Culturally Relevant or Culturally Responsive? It can be both!, my colleague Alicia noted that one of the keys to Culturally Relevant and Responsive Practices is to “Have a Constructivist Approach”. Constructivism is when students play an active role in creating their own knowledge while being guided by their teacher. Inquiry-based learning should be exactly that. In rigorous inquiry-based learning, students are not passive participants—they are active in their learning journey. They formulate their own questions, make meaningful connections, and engage with the world beyond the classroom. Rigorous inquiry-based learning empowers students to go beyond “right answers” and engage in an iterative process of exploration, reflection, and growth.
Key Elements of Rigorous Inquiry
In a previous blog post, I offered some quick points to explain what inquiry is… and isn’t. Here is how I summarized the differences:
I’d like to take this thinking a step further to ensure that inquiry is rigorous. Rigorous inquiry-based learning can be understood through several key criteria that foster depth, relevance, and student engagement. These criteria include Intellectual Challenge and Depth, Authentic Experiences, Student Ownership and Agency, Collaboration and Feedback, and Reflection and Synthesis. Each one of these criteria plays a role in ensuring that inquiry is rigorous.
Intellectual Challenge and Depth
Students should experience challenges that require them to think critically, connect ideas, and evaluate evidence. This depth pushes them beyond simple answers to develop a more complex understanding, allowing them to engage and develop a more meaningful understanding of content and skills.
As you design learning experiences that promote intellectual depth, consider:
Are the questions guiding your inquiry open-ended, encouraging sustained exploration? For example, “How does urban development shape social and economic inequality?” can lead students to examine historical policies, current demographic trends, and economic impacts. This type of question encourages students to explore the various factors and understand the long-term perspectives of urban planning. Be sure to encourage students to generate sub-questions as they continue learning. This keeps their investigation alive and connected to their interests as they change.
Do your students have access to diverse, credible sources that challenge them to think critically? You might provide a mix of materials such as primary documents, case studies, experts, and videos. This helps students learn to evaluate different kinds of evidence and perspectives. Collaborate with your school librarian to collect resources that meet these criteria and coach students on how to use them to answer their questions and refine their thinking.
How can you integrate opportunities for students to discuss and reflect on their findings with purpose? Plan regular check-ins where students share what they’ve discovered and pose questions to the group. Tools like Think-Pair-Share or Fishbowl Discussions can help students communicate their thoughts as they learn from each other’s perspectives.
Authentic Experiences
For inquiry to be rigorous, it must be relevant to our students. Students should explore issues connected to the real world, whether in their community or on a global scale. When learning has a purpose—when it feels “real”—students are more motivated and see the value in what they’re doing. In her blog post, “Unlocking Student Engagement Step-by-Step: A Deep Dive into a Successful PBL Experience,” Rachel Harcrow’s students were challenged to investigate the mismanagement of $1.1 million in Federal COVID relief funds by the Community Resource Collaborative (CRC) in their town of Rochester, NY. They dove into the project, because it felt real and intriguing to them. Her students were eager to learn about the various non-profits in their community and how to help them determine whether they were making a positive impact in the community. Authentic inquiry invites students to use real-world tools and interact with community members, experts, or organizations to deepen their learning.
As you’re planning for authentic inquiry-based learning experiences, ask yourself these questions:
What are some local or global challenges or phenomena that will foster curiosity among your students? Ms. Harcrow was able to leverage the missions of local non-profit organizations to intrigue her students. Meanwhile, OpenSciEd uses the global phenomenon of our reliance on palm oil affecting the populations of animals in one of their inquiry-based units.
What practices and tools do experts in the field use? If your unit explores the allocation of resources in a hospital, reach out to your local healthcare providers to ask them how they conduct inventory and manage information. Students who are investigating how to inspire the community to shop local can talk to small businesses to learn how they are currently marketing within the community.
Student Ownership and Agency
In rigorous inquiry, students are the leaders of their learning. They generate and evaluate their own questions, explore options that interest them, and make decisions about their learning process. This feeling of ownership sparks and sustains independence, curiosity, and resilience, which makes students feel invested in their work.
Yes, this might sound daunting, but teachers can support students with some of these practices:
Anticipate student questions. What do you predict your students will wonder as part of this journey? Make a list before you start the unit and also at some key moments throughout the unit. What resources can they use and what learning experiences can you create to find answers?
Plan resources and learner-centered experiences so that your students can answer their questions. Remember that engaging in inquiry-based learning doesn’t mean your students are out there researching on their own. Rather, they are engaging in learning that answers their questions. You can use our Mini-Workshop and Reading Frenzy learning strategies to provide some structure to this.
Use student questions to support coherence. Questions launch every inquiry-based experience. Many teachers use processes such as Notice and Wonder Charts and See Think Wonder to launch inquiry. Be sure to keep the questions generated in a consistent place that everyone can access, such as the wall of your room or the top of your Google Classroom. Use this list to help students keep track of the questions they have answered, are trying to answer, and what they might want to tackle next.
Collaboration and Feedback
Inquiry thrives on collaboration. Students should work with peers, teachers, stakeholders, or experts through their journey. They will learn to communicate ideas, challenge each other’s thinking, and build a shared understanding. Getting feedback from diverse perspectives helps them refine their work and deepen their learning.
These aspects of rigorous inquiry are heavily dependent on having a healthy classroom culture. We took a deep dive into culture in a previous blog post, “Culture: the Secret Sauce of Learner-Centered Success”. Here are some suggestions for cultivating this culture:
Create norms together at the beginning of the school year that encourage and celebrate collaboration and learning together (and then be sure to revisit these on a regular basis!)
Use feedback protocols that teach students how to have productive discussions about their work. One of our favorites is the Ladder of Feedback, but you can find more in our shop.
Build in low-stakes opportunities for students to share their best thinking or try something challenging. Karina Costas, a former math teacher and current principal, challenged her students to solve Fermi Problems as warm up questions each day. The problems are a open-ended, huge-scale challenges that test
Reflection and Synthesis
Reflection is the heart of rigorous inquiry. Students need regular opportunities to think about what they’ve learned, assess their progress, and consider next steps. Reflection encourages them to synthesize new insights and connect learning across topics, which helps solidify understanding and builds self-awareness.
In a past blog post, we offered these tips for reflection:
Build in opportunities for them to reflect in teams on their personal growth at regular intervals - this is often most effective right after an opportunity to prototype and develop products.
Use multiple modalities for reflection. Mix in individual reflection, small group, and large group.
Not all reflection has to be shared. There will be times when you need to hear what your students are thinking, and other times it can build trust to allow them to keep their thoughts personal.
Don’t forget about reflection! School can be a hectic place for us as teachers. Make sure your learners get to experience it! Reflection is a key to student voice and metacognition.
Introducing the Rigorous Inquiry Reflection Tool
To help you reflect on the rigor of inquiry practices in your classroom, we’ve developed the Rigorous Inquiry Reflection Tool. This tool describes each criteria of rigorous inquiry, with specific markers and a space to record your notes about your strengths and areas for improvement. It’s designed to guide you as you create a classroom that promotes depth, authenticity, and student ownership in inquiry-based learning.
Here’s how it works:
Criteria | In Rigorous Inquiry-Based Learning, Students: |
|---|---|
Intellectual Challenge and Depth  | - Investigate complex questions that encourage critical thinking, analysis, and problem-solving. - Engage deeply with content by exploring open-ended questions and uncovering underlying concepts. - Use evidence to form conclusions and support ideas, thoughtfully considering and synthesizing information from multiple sources. |
Authentic Experiences  | - Connect learning to the real world by engaging with issues relevant to their lives, cultures, or communities. - Apply real-world tools and methods using authentic practices, technologies, or techniques in their learning. - Build connections beyond the classroom through interactions with experts, community members, or stakeholders. |
Student Ownership and Agency  | - Drive their own learning by developing questions, exploring interests, and choosing learning paths with their teacher's guidance. - Make choices about inquiry approaches, resources, and ways to communicate what they learn. - Reflect on personal growth and take ownership of their progress by setting goals and assessing their learning journey. |
Collaboration and Feedback  | - Collaborate purposefully with peers to share ideas, build on each other’s thinking, and support collective understanding. - Seek and provide feedback to improve and expand their work, engaging constructively with peers, teachers, and authentic audiences. - Develop teamwork and communication skills essential for lifelong learning and problem-solving. |
Reflection and Synthesis  | - Pause to reflect regularly on their thinking and learning process, identifying key takeaways and areas to improve. - Integrate new insights to make connections across ideas and apply knowledge in meaningful ways. - Use reflection to set goals and adapt their approach, developing a deeper understanding of content and of themselves as learners. |
How to Use the Tool
Reflect on Current Practices: Begin by thinking about your current inquiry practices in your classroom. Download the tool to see where your practices align with rigorous inquiry and identify areas you may want to strengthen.
Plan for Growth: Note your strengths and areas for improvement in the "Notes" column. Then, identify your next steps in the "Next Steps for Myself" section at the bottom of the table. Possible next steps include increasing student choice, additional research resources, or providing more reflection opportunities. Be sure to identify concrete and manageable steps to move your inquiry practice toward greater rigor. Once you've identified these possible changes, choose 1-3 to actually implement.
Reflect and Adjust on a Regular Basis: Use the tool throughout the year to monitor your growth. As you make new adjustments, be sure to reflect on the impact of these changes on your students - in their engagement and learning.
As you can probably tell, the journey towards inquiry that is rigorous takes time and effort on the part of all parties. However, as students become accustomed to this approach, they’ll start to view learning as something they shape. They’ll learn to ask bigger questions, make connections, and take initiative—all skills that will set them up for success in their lives beyond school.
Conclusion
While student inquiry is one of the best experiences we can provide to equip our students for the future, remember that not all inquiry-based learning experiences are created equal. In a recent blog post, inquiry expert Kath Murdoch reminds us, "Without meaning making, information is of little value." As we plan and facilitate inquiry-based learning, let’s ensure our students have the time, structures, and support to discuss and reflect upon their learning. Only through this thoughtful approach can we elevate inquiry to rigorous, transformative learning.
Great teachers see themselves as team players, seeking out insights and collaborating. We’d love to hear about your journey—share your triumphs, challenges, and insights with us, and let us know how we can support you!
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