ABSTRACT
Our image of how students should learn mathematics is tied to the word inquiry, a word with a long history in educational contexts and with many connotations. By using inquiry, we bring to the reader’s mind the process of learning employed by creative people at the forefront of their fields—people interested in a particular area and continuously motivated to learn more about it, who set themselves problems, design methods to explore them, and then try to create solutions. (This characterization is based on Schwab’s (1962) description of pure inquiry.)
