Skip to Content
Visible Learning™
Visible Learning MetaX
Version 1.4 – Updated February 2026

Inductive teaching

Overview

  • Influence: Inductive teaching
  • Domain: Teaching Strategies
  • Sub-Domain: Instructional strategies
  • Potential to Accelerate Student Achievement: Likely to have positive impact
  • Influence Definition: A teaching technique that encourages students to reason from observation – or to move logically from observing, testing, and comparing – to articulating broad principles. Inductive teaching and learning is an umbrella term that encompasses a range of instructional methods, including inquiry learning, problem-based learning, project-based learning, case-based teaching, discovery learning, and just-in-time teaching.

Evidence

  • Number of meta-analyses: 2
  • Number of studies: 133
  • Number of students: 4,668
  • Number of effects: 133
  • Weighted mean effect size: 0.57
  • Robustness index: 3

Meta-Analyses

Meta-Analyses
Journal Title Author Article Name Year Published Variable Number of Studies Number of Students Number of Effects Effect Size
Journal of Research in Science Teaching Lott The effect of inquiry teaching and advance organizers upon student outcomes in science education 1983 Inductive teaching in science 24 NA 24 0.06
Zeitschrift fur padagogische psychologie Klauer Training of Inductive Reasoning - An Updated Meta-Analysis 2014 Inductive teaching 109 4,668 109 0.68
TOTAL/AVERAGE 133 4,668 133 0.37
Back to top