Inquiry: A Teaching Approach for Gifted Visually Impaired Learners

Abstract

Inquiry is a dynamic approach to learning and teaching that involves a process of experiencing the natural world. As they pose questions about the information, learners conduct research for genuine reasons, make new discoveries, and test their discoveries to generate new knowledge and understanding. Inquiry is an approach that fits the learning needs of both visually impaired students and students who are gifted, and is especially important for gifted students with visual impairments. We introduce readers to inquiry approaches, review the theoretical framework, outline the characteristics of inquiry learning, explain how these approaches are important to use with gifted children with visual impairments, provide examples, summarize research on the effectiveness of inquiry learning, give an example of science teaching using an inquiry learning model in a regular classroom setting, and show how this lesson could be an effective way to involve and challenge a gifted student with a visual impairment.