LESSON 1: INQUIRY AND RESEARCH

Inquiry is a learning process that motivates you to obtain knowledge or information

about people, things, places, or events. You do this by investigating or asking questions about
something you are inquisitive about. It requires you to collect data, meaning, facts, and
information about the object of your inquiry, and examine such data carefully.

Benefits of Inquiry-based learning

1. Elevates interpretative thinking through graphic skills

2. Improves students learning abilities
3. Widens learner’s vocabulary
4. Facilitates problem-solving acts
5. Increases social awareness and cultural knowledge
6. Encourages cooperative learning
7. Provides mastery of procedural knowledge
8. Encourages higher-order thinking strategies
9. Hastens conceptual understanding

Research is the systematic investigation and study of materials and sources to establish
facts and reach new conclusions. When you come across studies about events that happen or
experiences that you meet, they shape people’s understanding of the world around them. In
various spheres of human life, research has come up with developing appropriate solutions to
improve the individual’s quality of life. Although, it may take place in different settings and may
use different methods, scientific research is universally a systematic and objective search for
reliable knowledge. (Walker, 2010)

Generally, people find it difficult to do research. Many reasons are given for people to
find excuse in doing it. Most often, you are not aware of the benefits derived from conducting
research. Some benefits of conducting research include increasing personal knowledge.

Research is an act of studying something carefully and extensively in order to attain

deep knowledge. When done on a larger scale, research contributes to the welfare of humanity.
It can be creative, exploring or just reassuring in nature

Characteristics of research

1. Accuracy: Research must give factual and exact data which should be correctly and
appropriately documented or acknowledged in the footnotes, notes, and bibliographical
entries.
2. Objectivity: Research must deal with facts and NOT with mere opinions arising from
assumptions, predictions, generalizations or conclusions.
3. Timeliness: Research must work on a topic which is fresh, new, and interesting to the
present society.
4. Relevance: Research must be instrumental in improving society or solving problems
affecting the lives of people in a community.
5. Clarity: Research must succeed in expressing its central point or discoveries by using
simple, direct, concise, and correct language.
6. Systematic: Research must take place in an organized or orderly manner.
7. Ethical: Research must be geared toward what is advantageous or beneficial rather than
what is detrimental by respecting preferences on matters of confidentiality,
independence, or freedom.

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Importance of research
Research is important in enabling you

1. To learn how to work independently;

2. To learn how to work scientifically or systematically;
3. To have an in-depth knowledge of something;
4. To elevate your mental abilities by letting you think in higher-order thinking strategies
(HOTS) of inferring, evaluating, synthesizing, appreciating, applying, and creating;
5. To improve your reading and writing skills;
6. To be familiar with the basic tools of research and the various techniques of gathering
data and of presenting research findings; and
7. To free yourself, to a certain extent, from the domination or strong influence of a single
textbook or of the professor’s lone viewpoint or spoon-feeding.

Ethics of research

Generally, ethics is considered to deal with beliefs about what is right or wrong, proper
or improper, good or bad. Here are four general ethical principles you have to follow when you
conduct research:

1. Respect for persons

o ensures that the choices of autonomous people, people who can responsibly
make their own decisions, are given serious considerations, and that people
lacking autonomy, such as young children or adults with advanced dementia, are
entitled to protection
o the source of the moral rules of informed consent and confidentiality
o requires the researcher to protect the confidentiality of the research participant’s
personal information

2. Beneficence
o obliges the researcher NOT to inflict unnecessary harm and, where possible, to
promote the good of the research participant

3. Justice
o the ethical obligation to distribute the benefits and burdens of research fairly
o requires the researcher to ensure that the means used to select the research
participants are equitable
o means that the researcher must neither exploit the vulnerable, nor exclude
without good reason those who stand to benefit from study participation

4. Respect for communities

o means that the researcher really must respect communal values, protect and
empower communities, and, where applicable, abide by the decisions of
legitimate communal authorities allows the researcher to generally view the
researcher-community relationship as a partnership

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