Inquiry Activities for Schools
The school constitutes the “epicentre” of formal comprehensive education. Most processes and educational models start there and revolve around the work carried out within its walls. Naturally, the same applies for activities involving the IBSE model, generally acknowledged as one of the most effective teaching approaches;2 the students start their acquaintance with inquiry-based learning at school, with the help of their teachers. Therefore, schoolbased work on the IBSE constitutes the cornerstone upon which any further activities can be built. Solid, engaging, well designed and time-tested practices are of the utmost importance for the successful implementation of the IBSE at schools and beyond. In the pages that follow, a series of case studies will be presented, which will form the basic pool of reference for the training activities that will follow (WP5). These cases have been implemented for many years in the framework of training activities in Europe by PATHWAY partners and they have proven their efficiency and efficacy as IBSE resources. They can therefore be considered as best practices. Moreover, the PATHWAY project proposes valueadded services to increase the utility of these resources through coordination, systematic training and dissemination and effective teachers’ community building. The necessary link to the school curriculum will be implemented using a multilingual Science Education Vocabulary. The goal of the Science Education Vocabulary is to associate the users, the educational activities and pedagogical models. The proposed educational materials and methods offer a “feel and interact” user experience, allowing for learning “anytime, anywhere” by employing advanced and highly interactive visualization technologies and also personalised ubiquitous learning paradigms in order to enhance the effectiveness and quality of the teaching and learning process.