Progressive inquiry is a heuristic framework for
structuring and supporting students’ epistemological
advancement and knowledge building skills. The
model relies on recent advancement in cognitive
research on educational practices and equally, on a
conception of inquiry emerging from the philosophy
of science. Shared knowledge advancement requires
that students engage in a systematic effort to advance
shared knowledge objects - theories, explanations
or interpretations. Both of these approaches
acknowledge the socially shared character of inquiry.
The following elements describe the progressive
inquiry process: a) Creating the context to anchor
the inquiry to central conceptual principles of the
domain or complex real-world problems; b) Setting
up students’ own research questions; c) Constructing
students’ own working theories for the phenomena
before using information sources; d) Critical
evaluation of the produced theories and explanations;
e) Searching deepening knowledge using external information sources; f) Generating subordinate
questions; g) Developing new more advanced
working theories; and h) Distributed expertise, which
means sharing the whole process between all learning
community members.

Knowledge Building

Knowledge building is a special form of collaborative
activity oriented towards the development
of conceptual artifacts, and towards the development
of collective understanding. CSCL environments
provide tools for collaborative building of
knowledge. Sophisticated environments designed
to support expert-like processing of knowledge by
guiding students to work collaboratively to improve
shared knowledge objects may be called knowledge-
building environments. Through these kinds of environments,
students may be guided to engage in
productive working with knowledge objects in the
same way as the scientific community is engaged
with theory improvement.

Progressive inquiry entails that new knowledge is not simply assimilated but constructed through solving problems of explanation and understanding.