A SERIES OF EXPERIMENTS HAVE BEEN CARRIED OUT OVER A PERIOD OF 3 YEARS TO FIND MEANS FOR DESCRIBING INQUIRY BEHAVIOR IN GRADE SCHOOL STUDENTS AND TO TEST THE EFFECT OF TEACHING METHODS AND ENVIRONMENT ON THIS BEHAVIOR. INQUIRY ACTIVITY WAS TESTED BY HAVING CHILDREN PLAY THE ROLE OF A SMALL CITY MAYOR USING SPECIALLY DEVELOPED MATERIALS. THREE SEPARATE STUDIES WERE CONDUCTED. IN THE FIRST, 51 FROM THE MATERIALS. ALL WERE ABLE TO SUSTAIN INDEPENDENT ACTIVITY, BUT WIDE DIFFERENCES IN THE LEVEL OF ACTIVITY WERE OBSERVED. IN THE SECOND STUDY, 177 ADDITIONAL STUDENTS IN THE THIRD THROUGH SEVENTH GRADES WERE GIVEN ONE UNIT OF WORK. COMBINING THEIR SCORES WITH THE FIRST UNIT SCORES OF THE PREVIOUS STUDY, IT WAS FOUND THAT THERE WAS A GENERAL TENDENCY FOR INQUIRY ACTIVITY TO INCREASE WITH GRADE LEVEL, BUT THERE WERE NO SIGNIFICANT EFFECTS ATTRIBUTABLE TO SEX, INTELLIGENCE, OR READING LEVEL. IN THE THIRD STUDY, TWO EXPERIMENTS WERE CONDUCTED TO SEE IF INQUIRY BEHAVIOR COULD BE TAUGHT. THREE MEANS OF TEACHING WERE TRIED WITH 20 FIFTH GRADE CHILDREN IN THE FIRST EXPERIMENT, BUT NO EFFECT ON INQUIRY ACTIVITY WAS NOTED. A SECOND EXPERIMENT, USING A SPECIAL TRAINING CENTER, WAS CONDUCTED WITH 54 FIFTH GRADE CHILDREN, WHO WERE DIVIDED INTO THE CENTER SHOWED INCREASING INQUIRY ACTIVITY, BUT NO DIFFERENCE WAS NOTED BETWEEN TEACHER-DIRECTION OR STUDENT-DIRECTION, LEADING TO THE CONCLUSION THAT THE SPECIAL ENVIRONMENT WAS THE CRITICAL FACTOR. (DR)