Open Learning
After completing a few experiments, we felt
that it was important that students heard from
teachers who had experience of teaching using
inquiry-based methods. One morning the students
visited a local school to talk to a teacher who
specialized in open teaching techniques as proposed
by the German science education specialist Martin
Wagenschein ( 1968 ). The students heard about the
teacher’s experiences and ideas, and were shown how
one simple lesson could be transformed to make it
more open-ended by letting schoolchildren make
Learning to Teach Inquiry Bioscene 21
the choices and decisions in the classroom instead of
the teacher. The teacher emphasized the importance
of getting schoolchildren to be active and involved
during lessons, and the importance of teacher
questioning in promoting schoolchildren to think for
them self.