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Botanic gardens represent a significant educational resource often acting as major providers of a diverse range of formal and informal education programs for people of all ages and backgrounds. INQUIRE was a three-year project focusing on inquiry-based science education (IBSE) that involved 17 partners in 11 European countries that aimed to reinvigorate IBSE in the formal and Learning Outside the Classroom (LOtC) educational contexts in Europe. This chapter presents a case study of successful practices for embedding inquiry-based teaching and learning in botanic gardens. IBSE training courses were developed, piloted, and run. The study based on a qualitative evaluation strategy centers on the examination of the INQUIRE partners’ design, implementation and delivery of their IBSE teacher/educator training courses. The findings show that the courses had a positive impact on the participants who learned both theoretical and practical aspects of implementing IBSE in school and LOtC contexts (www.inquirebotany.org) and strong indications of good quality course provision across the project. A greater appreciation of botanic gardens as a learning resource was also noted. The project resulted in significant professional development outcomes and the key factors for success are discussed here. Consequently, this chapter presents evidence from IBSE in action in botany-related topics and provides a strong case for IBSE in botanic gardens.

This chapter provides an introduction to how the inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach is being used by colleges and universities around the world to improve faculty and institutional development and to strengthen the interconnections between teaching, learning, and research. This chapter provides a synthesis and analysis of all the chapters in the volume, which present a range of perspectives, case studies, and empirical research on how IBL is being used across a range of courses across a range of institutions to enhance faculty and institutional development. This chapter argues that the IBL approach has great potential to enhance and transform teaching and learning. Given the growing demands placed on education to meet a diverse range of complex political, economic, and social problems and personal needs, this chapter argues that education should be a place where lifelong and lifewide learning is cultivated and where self-directed learning is nurtured. To that end, this chapter argues that IBL helps cultivate a learning environment that is more meaningful, responsive, integrated, and purposeful.

This paper is about action learning and the pedagogy of professional doctorates. The purpose of this paper is to explore the pedagogical problems of the relatively new professional doctorates and consider whether action learning offers potential solutions.

This conceptual paper seeks to answer the question: how good is the fit between the learning processes of action learning and the learning goals of professional doctorates?

The main conclusions of the paper are that action learning can support the learning of students enroled on professional doctorates by helping them realise the following three key learning outcomes, namely, the capacity to contribute to the advancement of knowledge, that is relevant to professional practice; their own personal and professional capabilities as practitioners; and their capacity to bring about change that directly enhances professional practice, i.e. they can make a direct contribution to professional practice, e.g. through some successful project that they undertake.

While this paper is not based on research, the main implication is that action learning can offer a valuable pedagogic approach in supporting the learning of professional doctoral candidates towards their goal of making an original contribution to the advancement of professional practice.

A second implication is the need for many of those university academics responsible for leading and managing professional doctorates to become more familiar with the theory and practice of action learning. A third implication is the appreciation of the need to weigh up cost against the benefits of using action learning as a pedagogic process on professional doctorates.

This conceptual paper is original as it explores the fit of action learning with pedagogic issues of professional doctorates.