Realizing Authentic Inquiry Activities with ICT

We report on our research and development work in the last decade, which has recently been presented in a PhD thesis (Heck, 2012a) and which generally aimed at improving the contribution of ICT to inquiryoriented mathematics and science education. We present the research setting and main outcomes of the PhD study, the scope of which was limited to pedagogical and software design perspectives on the use of ICT in quantitative mathematical modeling. We discuss how the study provided on the one and a deeper understanding of the ways in which ICT can support students in carrying out an inquiry activity and can reduce the gap between research of students and professionals, and how it led on the other hand to more insight in what it takes to develop an integrated computer environment for mathematics and science education.