Inquiry education

Inquiry education (sometimes known as the inquiry method) is a student-centered method of education focused on asking questions. Students are encouraged to ask questions which are meaningful to them, and which do not necessarily have easy answers; teachers are encouraged to avoid giving answers when this is possible, and in any case to avoid giving direct answers in favor of asking more questions. In this way it is similar in some respects to the Socratic method. The method was advocated by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner in their book Teaching as a Subversive Activity.

While inquiry-based education is a teaching method that has been connected with Piaget's theory of cognitive development and other constructivists like Jean Piaget, there is some evidence that this sort of approach was already used by the rabbis as early as antiquity (with the Passover Seder serving as an exemplar of such educational interventions).