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This chapter provides an outline of how the essential elements of problem-based learning (PBL) can be adapted to enhance inquiry-based learning environments and in the process teach 21st century skills. It uses a case study of a first-year nursing course at a regional Australian university to show how essential PBL elements can be adapted in an ‘ePBL’ context, following five ePBL steps. Overall, it is argued that a carefully mapped outset of learning outcomes and PBL problems designed as inquiry-based activities provide a ‘liquid learning’ environment that will ultimately prepare confident graduates who will be able to take full advantage of the 21st century learning and professional contexts in which they find themselves.

Higher education institutions have a significant role in preparing future generations for the world of work and sustainable development. This paper aims to present a curriculum model of an enquiry-based learning pedagogy and a sustainable development conceptual context as a mechanism for teaching skills in a geography module. Potential influences of this model on organisational change towards integrating sustainable development are explored.

Following the design and implementation of the curriculum model, semi-structured interviews of the module teaching team were conducted. Thematic analysis was undertaken against a priori objectives determined from existing theoretical frameworks.

Thematic analysis suggests powerful synergies exist between enquiry-based learning, education for sustainable development and skills teaching. Potential impacts are as follows: conceptual perspectives enhance cognitive potential around systems thinking, learning methods promote behavioural potential around professional capability and agency and cultural encounters raise affective potential around inclusive curricula.

Findings indicate potential for bottom-up curriculum intervention to enhance individual learner capability and outcomes, to promote the role of Geography in responsible futures, to build teaching team capacity for active learning pedagogies, to influence individual and institutional behaviour change towards sustainability practices, diversity and inclusion, and to catalyse organisational change around sector priorities including integrating education for sustainable development, active learning, inclusive education and enhanced graduate outcomes.

This paper identifies multiple benefits from a curriculum model combining skills teaching in a synergistic pedagogical and conceptual framework and its bottom-up potential to catalyse organisational change in higher education.

One of the most widely accepted goals of social studies education is to produce knowledgeable and caring citizens. It is, therefore, imperative that students have the opportunity to participate in public issues and have a meaningful voice within their community. Students must learn how to gather information, solve problems and make civic decisions (Saxe, D. W. (1997). The distinctive mission of social studies education. In E. W. Ross (Ed.), The social studies curriculum: Purposes, problems and possibilities (pp. 39–55). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press). Thus, educators and staff in higher education institutions should encourage their students to create their own questions, cultivate investigative strategies, formulate theories and apply new concepts to their own lives in a variety of methods (Fitzsimmons, P. F., & Goldhaber, J. (1997). Siphons, pumps, and missile launchers: Inquiry at the further and higher education [online]. Edinburgh: Scottish Funding Council). Inquiry-based instruction is a pedagogical strategy that places the educator in the role of a facilitator where students are pushed to think critically and construct meaningful knowledge. Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is a crucial practice for students to grasp and the earlier they are exposed to this style of learning, the better the educational results will be in regard to cognitive development. For instance, (Frederiksen, White, & Shimoda, 1999) found that students who take part in inquiry-based learning outperform those students in traditional classrooms on standardised assessments. This chapter explores a theoretical discussion of IBL and a subsequent theory of change focusing on the potential desired impact on the student learning experience in Irish higher education.

The core themes include the following:

1. How educators in the social sciences conceptualise, design and facilitate IBL?

2. The location and commencement of the development of an IBL ‘mind-set’.

3. Informal theories of change in the social sciences, and a discussion on disciplinary patterns and the discernation of differences.

4. What have educators learned about designing and facilitating IBL? The challenges of designing and facilitating IBL, in the social sciences.

5. Plans for further developing IBL practice in an international context.

How educators in the social sciences conceptualise, design and facilitate IBL?

The location and commencement of the development of an IBL ‘mind-set’.

Informal theories of change in the social sciences, and a discussion on disciplinary patterns and the discernation of differences.

What have educators learned about designing and facilitating IBL? The challenges of designing and facilitating IBL, in the social sciences.

Plans for further developing IBL practice in an international context.

This chapter provides an introduction to how the inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach is being used by colleges and universities around the world to strengthen the interconnections between teaching, learning, and research within the arts, humanities, and social sciences. 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 within the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The 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 serve as an incubator where students are part of a learning community and where they are encouraged to grow cognitively, emotionally, and socially by taking increasing responsibility for their own learning.

This paper aims to analyse an initiative to provide learners on “career‐based” programmes with opportunities to reflect upon their values within the context of sustainability.

An international literature review relating values and behaviour to the sustainability agenda led to the development of “sustainability training” workshop activities for construction students at the University of Plymouth. The activities, drawing on good practice from a range of education for sustainability initiatives and the behavioral discipline Neuro Linguistic Programming, enable participants to elicit and reflect upon their core values and to relate these to key sustainability issues. Following multiple pilots the workshops were offered as voluntary field trials to students, their effectiveness being measured through structured feedback.

The feedback returns demonstrate the popularity of the enquiry‐based learning techniques utilized and the effectiveness of the individual activities in achieving their aims. Constructive criticism centred on the need to simplify some of the activity instructions.

This research shows that open‐ended enquiry‐based learning techniques are useful for promoting sustainability values within educational programmes. As the activities described here are not discipline‐specific, they have potential to be adapted for similar disciplines at other institutions and for use with other career‐based disciplines.

Much is written about the need to embed sustainability values in the curriculum. This paper describes a method of fulfilling this need and may be of significant value to those attempting to embed sustainability within educational programmes.

Design thinking has become something of a buzz word in innovation discussions and has recently also invested occupied education spaces. In this chapter we briefly compare design thinking to problem-based learning (PBL) and enquiry-based learning (EBL) approaches to problem solving in education before focusing on the approach itself and current debates about its meaning and significance. This chapter focuses particular attention on the problem finding aspect of design thinking and its integration of creative methods for solving a range of tame to wicked problems in a variety of spaces. We ground our analysis in three environments of design thinking and five specific cases of application across education sectors from primary through to university. The examples focus on the generative potential of design thinking for all students and especially those from non-design disciplines. It is this capacity of design thinking to complement existing pedagogies and provide inspiration for change and innovation that is the strength of the model.

There are many beliefs about how additional languages are learned, several of which have informed some of the most tenacious pedagogical constructs. In this chapter, additional language teachers working with additional language students in high schools are asked to challenge some widely accepted beliefs about language learning and methods of teaching language, and consider a technique that better aligns with constructivist theories of learning and the inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach. This chapter includes a brief discussion on IBL, its constructivist roots, and its many permutations. It also explores some constructivist-based additional language teaching approaches and discusses to what extent they align with IBL. Also provided is a six-step inquiry language-learning process, specifically designed to teach additional languages, with discussion on how each stage builds upon the other, optimizing language learning. In addition, a series of lessons are described which show how the inquiry language-learning process can be employed to teach additional languages to students who are not yet fully proficient in the school’s language of instruction. The chapter concludes with a discussion on some of the challenges of using IBL with additional language students, citing some of the psychological, cultural, and cognitive needs often present in these students. The chapter ends with a call for further research into the use of IBL to teach additional languages.

This paper aims to focus on developing critical understanding in human resource management (HRM) students in Aston Business School, UK. The paper reveals that innovative teaching methods encourage deep approaches to study, an indicator of students reaching their own understanding of material and ideas. This improves student employability and satisfies employer need.

Student response to two second year business modules, matched for high student approval rating, was collected through focus group discussion. One module was taught using EBL and the story method, whilst the other used traditional teaching methods. Transcripts were analysed and compared using the structure of the ASSIST measure.

Critical understanding and transformative learning can be developed through the innovative teaching methods of enquiry‐based learning (EBL) and the story method.

The limitation is that this is a single case study comparing and contrasting two business modules. The implication is that the study should be replicated and developed in different learning settings, so that there are multiple data sets to confirm the research finding.

Future curriculum development, especially in terms of HE, still needs to encourage students and lecturers to understand more about the nature of knowledge and how to learn. The application of EBL and the story method is described in a module case study – “Strategy for Future Leaders”.

This is a systematic and comparative study to improve understanding of how students and lecturers learn and of the context in which the learning takes place.

In attempting to balance student satisfaction, individual expectations and the need to produce industry-ready graduates, with the increase in student numbers, a new strategy for teaching and learning was explored within the advanced apparel curriculum. An active learning strategy (enquiry-based learning) using an operational framework was developed and implemented which incorporated blending learning strategies, including the use of an e-forum. This study investigated the effect of e-forums in relation to enhanced student learning and increased student satisfaction within a large cohort of apparel students. Through a combination of content analysis, student satisfaction surveys and tutor reflective practice, overwhelming evidence was found to support the hypothesis that e-forums and continuous e-feedback embedded into units designed for large cohorts of apparel students significantly increased student satisfaction. The findings from this study illustrated that e-forums, with the opportunity for continuous feedback, enhanced learning and engagement, improved team communication, and developed the life skills required for apparel-industry-ready practitioners/graduates. Further to this embedding, an e-forum was found to increase tutor awareness and be an effective mechanism for identifying bottlenecks within the curriculum design and delivery.

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.