“It’s the spark behind a love of learning and the foundation of everything we do,” This is how Dr. Tosca Killoran, Deputy Head of School, described inquiry-based learning at International School Ho Chi Minh City (ISHCMC). “When students are encouraged to lean into their curiosity, even when it leads to mistakes, it builds real excitement for exploration, questioning, and discovery.” she continued.

Indeed, the school’s promotion of inquiry-based learning allows students to flourish academically while developing critical thinking and leadership skills as well as a sense of global citizenship that helps them progress to bright futures. 

Dr. Tosca speaks to ISHCMC community in the school's performing arts center. 

How Inquiry-Based Learning Differs From Traditional Education

The world’s leading education experts have long moved on from endorsing students memorizing facts and details to repeat back to teachers. Instead, an approach that forefronts student explorations of high-level questions and real-world experiences has proven to best nurture curiosity, develop critical thinking skills, and improve retention of important information. Teachers serve as facilitators and mentors who pose questions for students to approach individually and collectively, stepping in as needed to guide their learning process. 

Poking your head into a class that employs inquiry-based learning may be unfamiliar at first. Students are rarely lined up at their desks, writing down material from a board at the front of the room. Rather, they are dispersed in small groups debating topics, interacting with multimedia or not even in the classroom at all, but out on a field trip. These textbook-free moments reveal how the goal of learning shouldn’t be an ability to regurgitate information, but to expand one’s understanding via a cross-disciplinary and collaborative search for answers. The complexity of these questions and the freedom to seek answers is of course, dependent on each student’s age and situation, with teachers closely monitoring so they can “really understand each student’s needs and tailor the learning experience to what will support their growth most effectively,” Dr. Killoran said. 

Dr. Killoran offered an example that helps clarify what inquiry-based learning looks like and how it can enable meeting all the educational standards set forth by esteemed International Baccalaureate (IB) Programmes. “Instead of just reading about fish swimming upstream, students go to the river themselves. They investigate which species are present, whether they’re indigenous, how the river flows, and why. In doing so, they engage in authentic data collection, pattern recognition, hypothesis testing, and spatial reasoning. These skills directly address ACARA Science and AERO Math standards. Inquiry like this isn’t free-form; it’s deeply grounded in clear learning objectives and international benchmarks. The difference is, students meet those standards through meaningful, hands-on exploration that sticks.”

Through inquiry-based learning, ISHCMC students master all the conventional math, science, language, and history skills that universities and careers will require, but they develop much more. The ISHCMC curriculum is guided by the IB scope and sequence and firmly grounded in internationally recognized standards, including AERO and ACARA, ensuring both depth and global rigor. A search for answers requires students to become adept critical thinkers with robust problem-solving skills. They can work independently but also collaboratively with strong interpersonal skills, allowing them to become confident in themselves and their abilities. Because they come to understand how not knowing an answer or being wrong is a necessary step in the journey, they are resilient in their search for solutions and self-assured once they reach conclusions. ISHCMC provides a safe space for students to make mistakes and grow, or, as Dr. Killoran put it: “putting yourself out there in uncertain situations is how one learns confidence.”

How Inquiry Yields Leadership Skills

Critical thinking, solution-oriented mindsets, effective communication, and a desire to collaborate are all skills developed by inquiry-based learning that make for effective leaders. Thus, leadership does not need to be taught as a specific skill, but is rather an intrinsic part of the learning process at ISHCMC. 

Students also become good leaders by observing good leadership. Dr. Killoran explained that having exceptional teachers follow the inquiry-based system themselves provides strong models. “When adults can say, ‘That’s a great question! I don’t know the answer, but let’s find out together,’ they model curiosity, research skills, and how to navigate information safely. Students don’t just hear about inquiry-based learning, they experience it through the way their teachers think, speak, and explore.” Better than merely being told an inquiry-based approach works, the students experience it in action.

Because ISHCMC expects that students take co-ownership of their learning, there is ample space for them to practice leadership within the regular curriculum. For example, Dr. Killoran shared that when creating the lessons for global citizenship, teachers provided students with a survey on what was important to them and what they wanted to explore. Those ideas were then incorporated into the learning plan. Each student needed to think through the impact of their choices on themselves and their peers and how the decision would support their learning.

As part of a holistic approach to development, ISHCMC provides many avenues to practice leadership outside the classroom as well. A wide variety of sports, clubs, and extracurricular activities allow students to explore their passions with a sense of independence that cultivates self-motivated leadership. Similarly, the IB culminates in a degree program that requires a CAS (Creativity, Activity, Service) project wherein they interact with outside communities to make a tangible difference. 

How Global Citizenship is a Matter of Inquiry

Being a positive, contributing member of the world community requires an interplay of traits and perspectives. Empathy, communication, collaboration, and intercultural collaboration are all skills that inquiry-based learning cultivates that make global citizenship possible. Beyond the curriculum, ISHCMC excels in this respect in part because of the school’s diverse makeup. Currently, the student body represents more than 60 countries with different backgrounds, traditions, religions, experiences, and outlooks. 

When designing the questions and scenarios that shape each unit of inquiry, teachers intentionally draw from a wide range of cultures and global themes. This not only broadens students’ understanding of the world but also invites them to connect with and reflect on their own identities. Beyond the classroom, students regularly share their experiences with one another in ways that go “beyond flags, festivals, and food,” as Dr. Killoran put it. By the time they graduate, ISHCMC students have engaged with diverse perspectives and developed the open-mindedness needed to navigate a global society.

Happy, healthy, inspired students make the best learners, which is the ultimate goal of an ISHCMC inquiry-based education. “We want students who are energized, who feel real ownership of their learning, and who can’t stop talking about it,” Dr. Killoran said. “That kind of engagement is exactly what we’re aiming for.” The results of an inquiry-based system can be measured in more conventional ways, as well, with students scoring well above the global averages for the IBDP and the MAP (Measure of Academic Progress) Test before accepting offers to some of the world’s most prestigious universities with impressive scholarship offers. 

ISHCMC follows inquiry-based education not because it will produce these accomplishments, but rather, the accomplishments provide evidence of why it's the best approach to learning.