Can inquiry promote learning? A lens from cognitive and emotional interactions during learning

Abstract

Although inquiry learning can stimulate students' curiosity
and engagement and has significant potential in promoting
deep learning and problem-solving abilities, at the
elementary school level, especially when students face
complex knowledge construction tasks, how to effectively
engage in autonomous inquiry and knowledge integration in
artificial intelligence courses remains a challenge.
Therefore, this study applied exploratory teaching to a
fifth-grade artificial intelligence course and used
Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA) to examine the differences
between inquiry-based teaching and direct instruction in
terms of students' AI literacy, cognitive and emotional
interactions, and learning experiences. The results show
that exploratory teaching enhanced the complexity of
students' cognitive interactions and their depth of
engagement, particularly demonstrating more advantages in
socio-emotional interactions during classroom
collaboration. However, compared with direct instruction,
inquiry teaching had a limited overall effect on improving
AI literacy.