Having received clear and inspiring directives for implementing
change in the way we teach undergraduates science, we can now
focus on mechanisms to initiate that change in instruction at an
earlier stage in the education process. For the purpose of this
article, we consider the science-education process as having two
critical phases: an initial phase of inquiry-based learning
(K–12 science) and a maturation phase of inquiry-based learning
(undergraduate science education and beyond). As you would
suspect, it is much more difficult to initiate inquiry-based
learning at the maturation phase than at the initiation phase.
The question, then, is what we can do to induce inquiry-based
instruction at the initial phase so that students enter
undergraduate courses in the questioning mode rather than the
passive-recipient-of-information mode. Having students who enter
college in the questioning mode will allow college science
instructors to implement immediately the exciting changes a
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