First-year undergraduates on degree programmes in the arts, humanities and social sciences were found by this qualitative study to experience inquiry and research in four distinct ways. Research as "gathering information" and "exploring others' ideas" was associated with learning by engaging independently with a knowledge base. Research as "evidencing and developing students' own ideas" and "making discoveries" was associated with an emergent sense of participation in knowledge-building, understood as the potential to bring something personal or new to an area of study. Students described opportunities to frame their own lines of inquiry, and inquiry experiences with an open-ended, knowledge-building orientation, as especially empowering in their intellectual and personal development. They also highlighted their need for support in carrying out research and inquiry. The authors present a conceptual framework for inquiry-based learning that was developed on the basis of this study, and that has been found useful for pedagogical design and research/evaluation. (Contains 1 figure.)