Abstract: In the ever-changing era of knowledge economy, innovation ability has become the core of comprehensive competitiveness. To keep pace with the education innovation, students, teachers, schools and the government pay more attention to the promotion of the research-based teaching and the creative capability of the students. This paper summarizes three basic principles of inquiry curriculum and their applications in real practice. The author hopes that the inquiry curriculum can open up the talent development training function in the main channel of higher education and harmonize the students' ability of knowledge accumulation, innovation ability and quality cultivation.