From design to narrative: the development of inquiry-based learning models.

The University of Nottingham and the Open University are partners in a ca. £1.2m project to help school students learn the skills of modern science. The three-year project, Personal Inquiry (PI)1 (funded by the UK ESRC and EPSRC research councils), is developing a new approach of ‘scripted inquiry learning’, where children investigate a science topic with classmates by carrying out explorations between their classroom, homes and discovery centres, guided by a personal computer. This paper describes our progress to date on the development of four models for inquiry-based learning, as part of the PI project. These are being used as the basis for the development of educational scenarios and associated scripts to explore the use of mobile technologies in supporting an inquiry-based approach to teaching Scientific thinking across formal and informal learning.