INQUIRY AS A PIVOTAL ELEMENT OF KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION WITHIN THE VYGOTSKIAN PARADIGM - BUILDING A SCIENCE CURRICULUM FOR THE ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL

A Vygotskian approach to the development of students' ability to engag e in persistent and systematic inquiry is exemplified by a science cur riculum for elementary school children. Three factors are singled out as crucial for evoking and amplifying this ability: (a) Instruction st arts by introducing ideas that are central and general to the discipli ne tin our example, these are the concepts of growth and development); (b) students invent and adapt cultural tools for thinking about these ideas (models, schemes, and symbols designed by students under the te acher's guidance); and (c) problems are solved in cooperation with pee rs, helping students to present explicitly their own naive theories of growth and development and to see the phenomena being studied from th e other's point of view. Illustrations are presented from lessons that occurred during our experiments in 2 Moscow schools from 1993 to 1996 .