Suchman: Inquiry Training Model (ITM)

The Inquiry Training Model was developed by Richard Suchman. Inquiry training
begins with a puzzling event. Suchman believes that individuals faced with a
puzzling situation are motivated to pursue the meaning in it. They naturally seek to
understand what they encounter.
In order to understand puzzling situations, they must increase the complexity of
their thinking and understand better how to link data into concepts and how to
apply these concepts towards the identification of principles of causation.
Thus, the underlying assumption of the model is that individuals when puzzled need
to explore the data surrounding the puzzlement and put these data together in new
ways. They inquire and as they inquire they recognize their knowledge
According to Suchman, the students can become more and more conscious of the
process of inquiry and that this process can be taught to them directly. He sees
conscious awareness of the process and strategies of inquiry as an essential aspect
of autonomous inquiry. Suchman feels we cannot analyze and improve our thinking,
unless we are consciously aware of it. Suchman deliberately selects episodes that
have sufficiently surprising outcomes to make it difficult for students to remain
indifferent to the encounter. The learner cannot dismiss the solution as obvious,
they have to work to explain the situation and the product of that work is a new
insight into the phenomenon, new theories, and new concepts
A unique feature of this model lies in the fact that, the teacher structures the
situation in such a way that the questions must be answerable by a yes or no.
This eliminates open-ended questions. Students may not ask the teacher to explain
the phenomenon to them. They have to focus and structure heir probes in order to
solve the problem. The teacher questions are confined to analyzing and verifying
the situation they have observed trying to find out the nature and identifying the
object, the events and the conditions that surround the puzzling situation.
The goals of Inquiry Training are to help students develop the intellectual discipline
necessary to search out data, process it and apply logic to it.
Suchman wants students to inquire independently, but in a disciplined way. Sheer
independent learning is not his goal. He wants students to question why event
happen as they do and to develop intellectual strategies that they can use to
determine causal relationships among phenomenons.
The whole process undertaken in the inquiry training model is represented in the
following steps

1. Encounter with the Problem: This is a step where presentation of the puzzling
problem is done by the teacher. Before presentation, the teacher selects a topic or
problem which is challenging, motivating an suitable for inquiry skills among
students
2. Data Gathering (Exploration): The students discus among themselves and
with the teachers and from memory, they collect the required data essential for
formulating the possible explanation of the given problem. In this step the teacher
directs the students to organise their knowledge for explaining and establishing
cause and effect relationship.
3. Data Gathering (Experimentation) : The process of data collection continues
in this step also like in step 2 with the only difference that here the students
formulae some hypotheses(explanation) , test them , try to verify it with causeeffect relationship, isolate the non-relevant variables or factors and if situation
demands , they can reject the hypotheses and re-establish a fresh one.
4. Formulation an explanation: On the basis of step (3) the explanation of the
posed problem is established and declared by the teacher
5. Analysis of the Inquiry process: Every inquiry process has its strengths and
weakness. The students have to ask themselves whether the approach adopted by
them was the only one feasible or they had a multiple choice. In the latter case the
question is whether the other choice(s) could help in searching out more effective
ways of inquiry