The method was advocated by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner in their book Teaching as a Subversive Activity.
While inquiry-based education is a teaching method that has been connected with Piaget's theory of cognitive development and other constructivists like Jean Piaget, there is some evidence that this sort of approach was already used by the rabbis as early as antiquity (with the Passover Seder serving as an exemplar of such educational interventions).
[1] The inquiry method is motivated by Postman and Weingartner's recognition that good learners and sound reasoners center their attention and activity on the dynamic process of inquiry itself, not merely on the end product of static knowledge.
They write that certain characteristics are common to all good learners (Postman and Weingartner, pp.
Postman and Weingartner suggest that inquiry teachers have the following characteristics (pp.