Inquiry is the essence of social studies, and inquiry "looping" in social studies curricula means offering students opportunities to engage in inquiry in regular intervals and in a coherent fashion within and across grade levels. This can benefit the youngest students since they are filled with hope and want to make a difference in the…

As preservice teachers navigate the emotional and physical stress that teaching demands, they face new pressures ranging from curriculum disputes to a revolving door of political and social policies that attempt to redefine social studies. As such, social studies educators and methods instructors have struggled to develop a common language and set…

In this article, the authors share a unique and unfolding story about a program in Virginia that allows districts to opt into a series of Inquiry Design Model (IDM) performance assessments in place of the state-developed multiple-choice test. In the Rockingham County School District, this initiative was piloted in ninth-grade World Geography…

Deliberation and inquiry can go hand-in-hand. Inquiry-based learning calls on teachers to facilitate student-led discovery, something that can only happen when students ask questions and weigh possible answers before settling on a plausible and evidentiary answer. Teaching through inquiry is about setting students up to wrestle with the issue at…

Teachers introduced to the Inquiry Design Model (IDM) are often relieved to learn that inquiry isn't a fuzzy ideal, but rather is a curricular approach with a defined vernacular--questions, tasks, and sources. The inquiry blueprint is a one-page visual representation of the questions, tasks, and sources that define an inquiry. In the blueprint,…

In response to national and state trends promoting inquiry-based social studies over the last decade, social studies teacher educators at the University of Kentucky revamped their pre-service program to create alignment around the key inquiry concepts of questions, tasks, and sources. Part of the program revision involved the creation of a new…

The publication of the C3 Framework and the development of the C3 Inquiry Design Model (IDM) were just the beginning! The basic IDM blueprint has become a widely accepted foundation for inquiry-based teaching. This book presents new variations of that blueprint to support curricular and instructional strategies that target specific goals-for…

Shifting to an inquiry-based practice can be challenging. How should teachers get started? How many times should teachers plan for inquiry? What do teachers do when students struggle with inquiry? How long does it take for students to buy in to the inquiry process? These kinds of questions, and the concerns that underlie them, can create an…

In this article, the authors unveil the Trade Book Inquiry Design Model (IDM) blueprint. Anchored in a compelling question inspired by a trade book, the new blueprint is broken into two instructional blocks: "Reading and Comprehension" and "Living Social Studies." The inquiry template is designed to be instructionally efficient…