The information-seeking process of the inductive inquiry approach helps students to establish facts, determine relevant questions, develop ways to pursue these questions and build explanations. Students are invited to develop and support their own hypotheses. Through inductive inquiry, students experience the thought processes which require them to move from specific facts and observations to inferences. To help students accomplish this, the teacher selects a set of events or materials for the lesson. The student reacts and attempts to construct a meaningful pattern based on personal observations and the observations of others.
Students generally have some kind of theoretical frame when they begin inductive inquiry.
The teacher encourages students to share their thoughts so that the entire class can benefit from individual insights. The inductive inquiry is a disciplined way to seek, information as students question why events happen, acquire and process information logically and develop strategies to discover why things are the way they are. In reality, other types of teacher responses are often necessary. These responses should be to encourage or ask questions which direct the students' inquiry not to provide answers, thereby depriving students of engaging fully in the inquiry process. Students may test or challenge their hypothesis or those of others at any time.