Inquiry-Based Learning: A Model for Improving the Humanities in Iranian Higher education

The humanities in Iran face major challenges: the challenge of graduate unemployment, the challenge of localization, the challenge of the reason for attending classroom and the challenge of dissertations and articles without identifying and structuring real problems. To resolve these challenges, different approaches have been presented by the theorists. This article analyzes the problematic status of humanities education in universities with the method of "philosophical analysis", then using the reductional method to explain this status by traditional memory-based teaching. Then it shows how "teaching" is changed to "learning" in the reflective paradigm of education and how this change can be effective in resolving the challenges of the humanities. The paradigm of reflective learning also includes different models. Between these models, this article focuses on inquiry-based learning, considering that believes the main cause of the challenges in the humanities is the weakness and lack of logical-philosophical skills of graduates. Inquiry-based learning is "a self-directed and question-based search for understanding" and a study of a valuable question, topic, issue, or idea. Inquiry-based learning teaches students how to "play" their discipline by "acting". This method of learning is the same natural human learning process that, while transferring specialized knowledge, cultivates logical-philosophical skills, creative thinking, and empathetic imagination in students. Thus the humanities graduates can perform the function that society expects of them.