In this article, the authors share how a third-grade teacher supported students in crafting and researching their own inquiry questions using a process known as the Question Formulation Technique to scaffold students' development of supporting questions. Hughes and Heckart provide the reader with suggestions and resources for supporting…

How can educators engage students in learning, thinking, and inquiring? One consideration is teaching with a set of two contradictory texts--texts that have some contradiction between them. The authors find that when students read these books in tandem, they show an innate response of actively wanting to learn, think, and inquire in powerful ways.…

The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework continues the long tradition of inquiry-based learning in the social studies by merging disciplinary and critical inquiry approaches. Using the Inquiry Design Model (IDM), an instructional design tool, teachers guide students through a series of formative tasks to address supporting questions. By…

This practical book addresses the consistent questions that were posed by secondary social studies teachers during professional learning sessions. In particular, it examines ways to break through the inclination and perception expressed by many teachers that "my kids cannot do that." Drawing on 22 years as a high school history teacher,…

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…

This paper involves an experiment in how to engage in an informal and open-ended discussion, in a normally expository context, that is customarily guided by the norms for scholarly exposition. In attempting this experiment, I avoid using the scholarly apparatus of footnotes, endnotes, and references. I leave it open to those interested to use…

Critical inquiries--those seeking to disrupt and alleviate injustice--amplify the stakes and challenges of designing effective compelling questions. Teachers must navigate decisions about what constitutes an injustice, which perspectives are legitimate, and how to maintain a focus on justice and equity while neither indoctrinating students nor…

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 mathematics classroom is particularly vulnerable to these judgments of perfectionism, with endless evidence of students and teachers believing that mathematics is based on an ultimate truth or a single, objective, unique answer. School mathematics still favors students' participation in rote procedures, memorization, and using only a few…

When designing solutions for early learning, part of the process is clearly identifying a problem that impacts the wellbeing of young children that is both well-researched and in need of innovative solutions. However, with such a vast and complex field, identifying an issue to focus on can be difficult. The questions adults ask children have a…

A multi-perspective, exploratory framework applicable to all critical thinking, creative and communication acts, 3D-Briefing synthesizes meticulous enquiry questions with a user-focused, equitable stance toward meaning production. It scaffolds identification, interpretation, evaluation, reflection and action in a user-empowered, three step process…

Project-based learning (PBL) is a powerful way to make learning meaningful to students and to promote student questions and ownership of the inquiry process. It is a useful way to design and deliver curriculum that is similar in many ways to the Inquiry Design Model (IDM). Although PBL and IDM both value inquiry and student questioning, PBL…

Successful inquiries using the C3 Framework depend on compelling questions that structure an inquiry and supporting questions that allow the inquiry to unfold coherently. The Inquiry Design Model (IDM) reflects the three elements common in inquiry teaching and learning. Those elements--questions, tasks, and sources--are represented in a one-page…

This paper provides an overview of John Dewey's ecological psychology and his basic concepts: experience, inquiry, and habit. The concept of habit, which is particularly relevant in understanding problem-solving strategies, is further explicated on the basis of Gross's (2009. "A Pragmatist Theory of Social Mechanisms." "American…

Questions form the core of both the learning experience and the teaching experience. Because of their importance in the educational enterprise, questions (i.e., their structure and use) should receive more attention from educators. The authors construct what they call productive questions (those questions that produce meaningful responses) and…