1. THE INQUIRY DESIGN MODEL SESSION I:
Questions
This slide deck is the second in the professional development series titled, “Social Studies in New York State: From Standards to Toolkit.” These slides introduce the first component of the Inquiry Design Model™—questions.
The Inquiry Design Model (IDM™) is the basis for the construction and presentation of the 84 inquiries that make up the bulk of the Toolkit. In these slides:
A rationale is offered for using questions as a way to frame inquiries.
Compelling questions are defined and described with examples and with an opportunity for audience members to practice developing them.
Supporting questions are defined and described with examples. (Audience members will have opportunities to develop supporting questions during the third component of the professional development program.)
Depending on how much time session leaders have and the amount of audience participation desired, this slide deck could be presented in one to two hours. There are three slides in which the audience is invited to participate. Presenters who would like to linger on those slides may need as much as two hours to complete this second component of the professional development program.

2. Why Questions?
“By doubting we are led to question, by questioning we arrive at the truth.” —Peter Abelard
“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.” —Joseph Joubert
“We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not answered, we get wise, for a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as a snail carries its shell.” —James Stephens
“It is not the answer that enlightens but the question.” —Eugene Ionesco
“If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.” —W. Edwards Deming
“One of the very important characteristics of a student is to question. Let the students ask questions.” —A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
“The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.” —Thomas Berger
This slide is intended to inspire audience members’ thinking about the importance of questions. Presenters should feel free to pare down this list depending on their personal preferences.
From Socrates on, the value of questions in general, and for teaching and learning in particular, has been well established. In Plato’s Protagoras, Socrates claims, “my way toward truth is to ask the right questions.” Answers are important, but a well-framed question can excite the mind and give real and genuine meaning to the study of any social issue.
(Authors of quotes: Peter Abelard, French philosopher, 1079–1142; Joseph Joubert, French writer, 1754–1824; James Stephens, Irish poet, 1880–1950; Eugene Ionesco, French dramatist, 1909–1994; W. Edwards Deming, American scientist, 1900–1993; A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Indian scientist, 1931–present; Thomas Berger, American novelist, 1924–2014)

3. IDM™ Follows C3 Inquiry Arc
This slide highlights the basis for compelling questions in Dimension 1 of the C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards.
In content-rich subjects such as social studies, teaching and learning have traditionally focused on memorizing facts first and thinking later. That approach has not worked for all students. The C3 Inquiry Arc reframes that traditional approach by highlighting the use of compelling questions as a way to drive a social studies inquiry.
If students are asked a COMPELLING QUESTION …
In the middle are the SUPPORTING QUESTIONS, FORMATIVE TASKS, and SOURCES
Students answer in the form of a SUMMATIVE
ARGUMENT

4. Compelling Questions Characteristics of compelling questions:
Set the opening frame for an inquiry
Express the intellectual rigor and student relevance of an inquiry
Set up the summative performance task
This slide introduces the first component of the Inquiry Design Model—compelling questions.
The Inquiry Design Model represented in the Toolkit features compelling questions and the elements necessary to support students as they investigate questions in a thoughtful and informed fashion.
One of the primary characteristics of a compelling question is that it helps frame the inquiry under study. To that end, a compelling question helps teachers and students collect, organize, and pursue their ideas through the task of answering the question.
Compelling questions are also intellectually rigorous and relevant to students. Compelling questions address key issues, topics, and problems found in and across the academic disciplines in general and the New York State K–12 Social Studies Framework in particular. But, compelling questions also reflect the ideas and experiences that students bring to class.
Finally, compelling questions give direction and assistance to students as they construct their summative arguments.

5. Crafting Compelling Questions
Intellectually rigorous
Relevant to students
This slide introduces the two criteria for compelling questions.
The key to crafting compelling questions is hitting the sweet spot between the qualities of being intellectually rigorous and relevant to students.

6. Intellectually Rigorous
A compelling question:
Reflects an enduring issue, concern, or debate in the field
Demands the use of multiple disciplinary lenses and perspectives
This slide presents the key ideas behind the first criterion for a compelling question, namely that is has to be intellectually or academically rigorous.
An intellectually meaty question has two characteristics.
First, it reflects an enduring issue, concern, or debate in social studies. Compelling questions speak to the big ideas of history and the social sciences, both in concept and in particular. Revolution is an important and useful concept, but students need to understand that the American, French, and Russian revolutions, while sharing some traits, differed radically. Students understand some things by knowing the concept of revolution, but their understandings develop exponentially when they can see how the particulars of different kinds of revolutions have played out.
Second, compelling questions demand the use of multiple disciplinary lenses and perspectives. No social problem is economic, political, historical, or geographic alone. The challenges we face in society are multifaceted, so they demand that we use the power of history and the social science disciplines both individually and in combination to address them.
And if the study of social issues benefits from a multidisciplinary approach, so, too, does it benefit from examination from multiple perspectives. There is no social problem or issue on which there is universal agreement, so it only makes sense to examine those that teachers put in front of students from differing vantage points.

7. Relevant to Students A compelling question:
Reflects one or more qualities or conditions that we know children care about
Honors and respects children’s intellectual efforts
This slide presents the second criterion for a compelling question—relevance to students’ lives or, put more commonly, how to get under kids’ skins.
Compelling questions need to be worth investigating from an academic angle, but they also need to be worth exploring from a student angle. Recall Jerome Bruner’s claim—“any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.” To take this point seriously does not mean that we have to dumb down the curriculum. In fact, it means just the opposite: Teachers should teach intellectually ambitious material. The key is to see within the ideas to be taught those elements that teachers know their students care about. It is not the case that students are uninterested in natural resources or supply and demand or the New Deal, per se. But it is the case that teachers need to pull from those ideas relevant connections to students’ lives.
NOTE: Audience members may ask here what the difference is between a compelling question (CQ) and an essential question (EQ). Although the constructs are similar, there are some differences worth noting:
Both are about intellectually rigorous work, but CQs place equal emphasis on attending to the question of relevance to students’ lives.
EQs have a connotation about designing the “right” question for all students and all classrooms; because CQs are attentive to the particular students a teacher has, teachers are encouraged to modify them.
Given the language of “essential,” EQs presumably reflect profoundly deep and foundational human conditions; CQs may be about foundational human conditions, but they need not be.
The Inquiry Design Model and Wiggins and McTighe’s Backward Design are completely compatible as approaches to inquiry development.

8. What do kids care about?
This slide offers the audience members a chance to think through the student relevance criteria.
So what do students care about? Teachers tend to have less trouble identifying intellectually rigorous ideas than they do identifying the elements of those ideas that speak to students’ knowledge and experience. It is not that they can’t; it’s just that they already know the ideas are important and take for granted that students will too.
At this point, presenters can turn to the audience and say, “Let’s see if we can’t figure out what kids care about.” Depending on how much time is available, the resultant brainstorming session around this question can take five to 15 minutes. The key is to push the audience to come up with things kids really do care about and not just adult versions of what they should care about. For example, if an audience member says, “social inequalities,” push him/her by saying, “Okay, but what does that mean in kid language?” More than likely, “fairness” will quickly surface. At that point, most audience members will be nodding as the refrain “That’s not fair!” is likely to be echoing in their minds.
As a follow-up to each suggestion, presenters should ask for a social studies content connection as in, “What curriculum ideas could students explore to address the issue of fairness?” Audience members are likely to have lots of examples: the tax on tea during the pre-Revolutionary era, the enslavement of Africans, the treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII.
Other things students care about could include: power (who has it and who doesn’t), relationships (how do they form and change), money (its value and uses). If an audience member wants to undercut the value of understanding what students care about through a comment such as, “All kids care about is the here and now,” remind him/her that one way to investigate the 1920s, stock market fluctuations, or drug use is through that very issue. How people think about their futures, in the short or long term, is as important to understanding why we do the things we do as most any other concern.

9. From the NYS K-12 Social Studies Framework Conceptual Understanding and Content Specifications:
7.7b Enslaved African Americans resisted slavery in various ways in the 19th century. The abolitionist movement also worked to raise awareness and generate resistance to the institution of slavery.
Students will examine ways in which enslaved Africans organized and resisted their conditions.
Students will explore efforts of William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman to abolish slavery.
Students will examine the impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the public perception of slavery.
Students will investigate New York State and its role in the abolition movement, including the locations of Underground Railroad stations.
The text for this slide is from Conceptual Understanding 7.7b in the NYS K–12 Social Studies Framework. Presenters can introduce it to the audience this way:
Let’s start playing with the idea of writing compelling questions. Here is a Conceptual Understanding and the associated content in the seventh-grade curriculum. (Read aloud.) What do we see as the big academic ideas in this piece? (Encourage participants to identify things such as slave resistance and the impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.) What issues might students care about related to this topic? (Encourage participants to name issues such as fairness, injustice, and human rights.) Okay, let’s give writing a compelling question a try. (Click to next slide.)

10. Compelling…or not so compelling?
How did slave owners try to justify their actions?
Who were three abolitionists?
Was everyone in the South a racist?
Should former slaves have received reparations?
What were the causes of the Civil War?
Can words lead to war?
An important aspect of compelling questions is the ability to identify what makes them intellectually rigorous and relevant to students’ lives…or not. Again, audience participants are likely to struggle a bit more with the latter than the former.
On this slide are several examples of compelling questions on the topic of slavery that presumably vary in terms of their academic and student benefits. Encourage audience members to nominate examples and talk through how they do or do not meet the criteria for a compelling question.
As it will become apparent to the audience later on, the seventh-grade annotated inquiry entitled “Can words lead to war?” is used as an example throughout these professional development slide decks.
NOTES: 1) Although audience members may be drawn to one or more of the examples as immediately useful to frame an inquiry, it is important to reiterate the point from the Introduction slide deck that teachers are encouraged to adapt and modify the components of an inquiry—including the compelling question—in light of their particular students’ needs; and 2) audience members should notice that these sample compelling questions cover different elements of the Conceptual Understanding and Content Specifications. This point, which is addressed in more detail in the Conceptual Foundations, is important because it signals the idea that inquiries need to be planned with a clear and coherent intellectual and student-relevant purpose rather than simply to cover all of the ideas represented. Thus, multiple inquiries may be needed in order to convey the full scope of a Conceptual Understanding. By the same token, a single inquiry may be more coherent if it draws from multiple Conceptual Understandings. The point is that an inquiry works best when it has a cogent and well-reasoned focus.

11. Your Task
Draft a compelling question or two for seventh- grade students around the issue of slavery in the United States.
Presenters can set this task for the group, reminding them that their drafts need to meet the criteria of being intellectually rigorous and relevant to students’ lives.
Depending on the time available, the creation of the questions portion of the activity can run from five to ten minutes. The key to the activity, however, is having time to debrief. During that time, encourage audience members to read their questions and talk through how their examples meet the criteria for a compelling question. This second portion of the activity may also take from five to ten minutes.

12. An Inquiry in IDM Format
This slide represents the first part of an inquiry blueprint developed using the Inquiry Design Model format. The expanded version of this page is referred to as an IDM blueprint, for it offers a preview of all of the key components of an inquiry.
Key points to make:
The grade level and content focus of the inquiry is established first.
The compelling question is stated upfront, and it reflects one or more Key Ideas from The NYS K–12 Social Studies Framework.
Along with the NYS Framework Key Idea, the relevant Social Studies Practices are cited.
The Staging the Question section previews an initial activity designed to generate student interest in the big ideas behind the compelling question.
These activities are described in some detail in the annotated inquiries and in the next slide deck.

13. The Compelling Question and Summative Argument task are the bookends of the inquiry. The Supporting Questions, Formative Performance Tasks, and Sources form the middle.
This slide signals the transition from compelling questions to supporting questions by foreshadowing the other elements of the Inquiry Design Model.
A compelling question serves to initiate an inquiry; a summative performance task, where students address that question, serves to pull the inquiry together. The beginning and end points are important, but no more than the elements—supporting questions, formative performance tasks, and sources—that comprise the middle of the Inquiry Design Model.

14. Supporting Questions Support and extend the Compelling Question
Represent the disciplinary knowledge desired
Reflect the sources selected
Anchor formative performance tasks
This slide is the first of two intended to introduce the idea of supporting questions. The key point is that supporting questions play a pivotal role on both the academic and pedagogical fronts. On the academic side, supporting questions a) scaffold the content ideas central to the compelling question and b) provide guidance for the construction of the formative performance tasks and the selection of sources. On the pedagogical side, supporting questions offer a set of guideposts around which teachers can build additional instructional activities based on the knowledge and ability of their students.
Presenters will want to help audience members realize that supporting questions have to be designed in an iterative process, along with the formative performance tasks and sources, such that each component supports and extends the others.

15. Can words lead to war?
SQ1: How did Harriet Beecher Stowe describe slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
SQ2: What led Harriet Beecher Stowe to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
SQ3: How did Northerners and Southerners react to Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
SQ4: What was the impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on abolitionism?
This slide presents the supporting questions included in the seventh-grade Uncle Tom’s Cabin inquiry. Audience members will want to think about how the questions work as a sequence; that is, the supporting questions build upon one another conceptually in ways that allow students to a) dig deeply into elements of slavery using the reference point of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and b) keep the compelling question, which frames the inquiry, firmly in mind.
Taken together, the compelling question and supporting questions provide the intellectual architecture for the inquiry as they highlight the ideas and issues with which teachers and students can engage. There is no one right compelling question for a topic, and there is not only one way to construct and sequence the supporting questions. The question, “Can words lead to war?” has been vetted and found to be compelling by a range of teachers and academics, but that is not to say that others might not develop equally engaging questions. Similarly, the supporting questions on this slide have won the reviewers’ endorsement. Other teachers, however, may rearrange the sequence of supporting questions, insert additional questions, or even substitute in a whole new series. Once developed, the Toolkit inquiries were reviewed, piloted, and revised. But these inquiries will not come alive in classrooms until teachers make them their own.

16. Students and Questions
Constructing questions is intellectually challenging, but students’ questions could be the basis for:
Developing questions within inquiries using strategies such as the Question Formulation Technique
Tweaking the construction of a teacher’s compelling question
Creating additional and/or alternative supporting questions
New compelling questions for inquiries used in subsequent years
This slide addresses the issue of how student questions play out in the questions that make up an inquiry.
Central to a rich social studies experience is the capacity for developing questions that can frame and advance an inquiry. Those questions come in two forms: compelling and supporting. The authors of the C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards argue that students can and should play a role in constructing the questions that guide the inquiries in which they engage. That said, constructing questions is a challenging intellectual pursuit and students, particularly before grade six, will need their teachers’ guidance in doing so.
Creating compelling and supporting questions is only one way, however, for students’ questions to play a role in inquiries. Although they may not be creating all of their own inquiry questions (as they might for a National History Day competition, for example), student questions could well provide the basis for:
Developing questions within inquiries using strategies such as the Question Formulation Technique.
Tweaking the construction of a teacher’s compelling question.
Creating additional and/or alternative supporting questions.
Forming new compelling questions for inquiries to use in subsequent years.

17. Summary Compelling questions frame inquiries
Compelling questions need to be intellectually rigorous and relevant to students’ lives
Supporting questions extend and support compelling questions, represent the content, reflect the sources, and inspire tasks
Students’ questions have a role in inquiries
This slide offers a brief summary of the slide set devoted to questions.
Compelling questions frame inquiries.
Compelling questions need to be intellectually rigorous and relevant to students’ lives.
Supporting questions extend and support compelling questions, represent the content, reflect the sources, and inspire tasks.
Students’ questions have a role in inquiries.

18. IDM™ CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK:
Questions
Inquiry begins with a question (#1)
Inquiry topics and outcomes should be grounded in standards (#2)
Inquiries are not all-inclusive (#9)
Inquiries are best mediated by skilled teachers (#10)
This slide is a summary of the four conceptual framework assumptions that undergird this section of the Inquiry Design Model series on questions. Presenters might want to review these assumptions in preparation for using this slide:
Inquiry begins with a question (#1): Social studies is many things, but at its heart is the drive to understand how the social world operates; in short, why do people do the things they do? The Inquiry Design Model represented in the Toolkit begins with a compelling question and features the elements necessary to support students as they address that question in a thoughtful and informed fashion.
Inquiry topics and outcomes should be grounded in standards-based frameworks (#2): At the core of the Toolkit project are two frameworks—the inquiry-focused standards represented in the C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards and the content-focused standards in the New York State K–12 Social Studies Framework.
Inquiries are not all-inclusive (#9): Using “inquiry” as the descriptor for the curriculum topics portrayed reflects a specific, conscious decision not to produce fully developed and comprehensive curriculum units or modules.
Inquiries are best mediated by skilled teachers (#10): Children can and do learn important social lessons on their own. With the guidance of expert adults, however, learning becomes deeper, richer, and more engaging. The IDM strikes a balance between these two ideas by posting the key components any instructional plan is likely to have but leaving many important instructional decisions in the hands of the teachers who will tailor the inquiries to their classroom situations.

19. LOOKING AHEAD:
Tasks
At the conclusion of this slide deck, audience members should have a basic sense of the primary components of the Inquiry Design Model in their minds—i.e., compelling and supporting questions, formative and summative performance tasks, and sources. Questions about compelling and supporting questions should probably be addressed at this point. Audience members are likely to have a number of other questions, however, about what the other component parts are and how they work together. Though some questions may be answerable immediately, it might be best to record the bulk of the questions and then return to them as presenters work through the next two sets of slides.
The next two slide decks cover additional components of the Inquiry Design Model. The first of these deals with the tasks. There, the issues covered include formative and summative performance tasks, and taking informed action exercises. The last set of slides focuses on sources and the content of an inquiry. The purposes and limitations of sources are discussed as well as the manner in which students can use them throughout an inquiry.