This paper examines the phenomenon of children’s inquiry and asks questions about how the process of inquiry might be understood in a new way that can be utilized, in the form of a new model of pedagogical inquiry, by both teachers and learners. It focuses particularly on the major analytical dimensions of inquiry and what inquiry looks like specifically for young learners. The framework that emerges employs C.S.’s Peirce’s notions of semiotics and interpretants of signs; the habits of mind, and his ideas on reasoning [formal ways of arguing] including his pragmatism; and community of inquiry, in illuminating classroom based pedagogy. The study was set in an elementary international school offering the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme and a case study was designed that examined children’s inquiry in five episodes both in the classroom and in other aspects of school life. However, the nature of the framework used, the teaching and learning approaches observed and the methodological instruments employed are applicable accross a range of curriculum types. The model developed is therefore not curriculum bound and could be applied in a variety of settings.

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