Inquiry for Deep Learning
Course
Questioning for Deep Learning in Inquiry [11:18]
We want to teach our students to ask conceptual, maybe even provocative questions.
What makes a great question? Well, a good response is a good question is one that gets us all thinking. When we want students to engage in inquiry, a key is helping them compose questions that require more than that quick Google search to answer. Questions that are not answered by a simple fact, but rather questions that really make us think. We can help our students learn about good questions by giving them categories or you could even call them taxonomies of questions. These can serve as models for the kind of question that makes us think more deeply. There's a learning support that explains and describes examples of complex questioning and we're going to talk about those examples now.
Younger students might learn to classify their questions in three categories. We might teach them about knowing questions. Knowing questions begin with what, or when, or where. What is the pathway of monarch butterfly migration? What are they seeking when they migrate? These are factual questions that we may need to answer to give us background upon which to build real questions. Knowing questions are those simple, basic, fact oriented questions that help us build our background. Analyzing questions are more complex. Analyzing questions answer "how" and "what evidence do we have?" So how do butterflies decide when to begin their travel? Or, on another topic, what happens to the amount of energy required to ride a bicycle if we switched to wider tires?
Analyzing questions require us to investigate a bit more deeply. The third category of questions we can teach younger children is creating questions. These are speculative questions or questions that answer what would, what should, or what if, kinds of questions. So like what should be done to reduce the decline in the monarch butterfly population? Or what could happen to coastal cities if the sea continues to rise? These are creating questions, creating ideas for what could be, or what should be, what might be, what will be. At the knowing level, students are engaging in exploration. Their questions at that level build their background to underpin the questions that they can later generate at analyzing and creating levels. We need to give them question stems and question models to help them know what category the questions they're posing fall into and to help them challenge themselves to ask more complex questions.
With older students, we might use a more sophisticated classification scheme and frame their questions to fit one of these categories. I suggest sometimes it's a good idea to share these categories with teachers as they're designing their assignments for inquiry and suggest that they might ask students to pose a question that fits into one of these particular categories. Let's begin though with again those general factual questions that underpin our inquiry, that lead us to our background knowledge. I like to call those encyclopedic questions. They're the kinds of questions that lead to a report that sort of reads like an encyclopedia article if we let it go at that. So examples are things like who are the Hmong? Or what is causing global warming? Too often, however, this is the kind of question students imagine as they begin an assignment and they think that this is their research question, but this kind of question will only yield a report, but not research, not inquiry. It will yield information, but probably not insight.
Questions like this can provide the background knowledge upon which to base inquiry. Their answers serve to begin, not end the inquiry. And that important distinction is one that we must help our students understand if they are going to engage in true and deep inquiry. So what might those deeper questions look like? Let me suggest four types of questions; in any given assignment the teacher might choose to craft an assignment to ask students to focus on a particular one of these types of questions in order to raise the level of inquiry. So the first category that I would describe is meaning-oriented questions.
These questions require students to construct meaning of a concept, but within a particular context. So if we thought about the concept of assimilation, we might say, a question that might fit here would be, what does assimilation mean in the context of the Hmong people? Because their culture provides very important aspects to what it means to assimilate or not assimilate into a culture. So we might be leading our students toward a question like what are the challenges inherent in cultural assimilation for the Hmong people? Or another example might be why have certain states expressed particular concern about acid rain? So we're taking a notion of acid rain and saying, sort of mapping, and studying, and analyzing how it has impact in certain areas and why and what that means for people in that region. So meaning oriented questions get at the meaning of something, but it's how it means in a particular context.
Relational questions on the other hand have to do with looking at a relationship between or among phenomena. So for example, what factors have influenced women's opportunities from the Pre-Women's Movement of the '60s to today? So what's the relationship between the Women's Movement that began in the '60s and the opportunities that exist for women today in the world of work, or whatever context a student might be interested in. Or, another relational question. Relational questions often have to do with cause and effect. So what are the effects of climate change on sea lions? So again, we're looking at a relationship between two things and those are relational questions. And for many contexts in the curriculum, a relational question is a good kind of question to frame for deeper inquiry.
Value oriented questions require the researcher to interpret events or phenomenon in the context of a value system, so this gets really complex. So these might be in the context of a religious values, political values, social values, gender, race, or other social values. Let me give you an example. So what has been the impact of the Women's Movement on men's family roles? So we're really looking at the whole value structure around family and the value structure around gender and trying to think about a value oriented question that says, what is happening in our values around women's worth, in our values around gender roles in the family. So it's through that gender value system that we're looking at that question.
Or what is the importance of animals being identified as endangered species? Now we could have students just write about what we mean by endangered species, but here what we're saying is, if we value preserving species on our planet and we don't want them to disappear, then how effective is it to name certain species as endangered. Does that work? Is that enough? How does that play out in preserving our value for not losing species. So you can see that underpinning these questions is a value system and I think that can be a very interesting way of students thinking about inquiry.
The last type of question that we might model for students and that might fit certain situations would be solution-oriented questions. So these questions require the researcher to examine a problem and then seek a solution to that problem. So these are questions with which you're probably quite familiar. How can prejudice toward Non-White immigrants be reduced in the United States? Or how can coral reefs be protected from further loss. Categories of questions give students models for their inquiry. These categories help students understand what kinds of questions lead them to begin inquiry and what kinds of questions actually constitute deep inquiry.
This requires librarians to collaborate with teachers in the design of their assignments and to focus on these categories of questions. This is a contribution you can make to helping teachers deepen the learning of their students by giving them these examples. Among the learning support for this workshop, you'll find a template for planning with teachers that might be helpful. There's a blank template and there's a completed template. You might take a look at those and think how you could adapt a template of that sort to use as a planning guide in sitting down with teachers and thinking about how can we create deep learning experiences for our students.
Let me close by pointing to studies of high school engagement which have revealed that many students dislike school because they find it uninteresting. Indeed, if one's assignment is easily accomplished with a Google search, there's not much there to sustain interest. So, besides raising our expectations and increasing the complexity about their work, we're also likely to make schoolwork more interesting for our students. We're likely to see them engage more when they face complex, even provocative questions.
Good questions get students thinking. To answer good questions, students must engage in deeper process, thought, and effort than a quick Google search requires. For younger children, we can teach three classifications of questions: knowing questions (what, when, where), analyzing questions (how, what evidence), and creating questions (speculative questions, what would, what should, what if). For older students who may be designing their own questions, librarians and teachers can share a more sophisticated version of these same three categories, and have students align their questions with the categories. Then teachers and librarians can help students with the mental model of inquiring into their question, and anticipating results (facts versus insights).
Using the project you considered for Lesson 4, use the Inquiry Task template provided in the Resources to develop the project further. For a completed template, see the example with a Grade 7 project (also provided in Resources) on the environment.
MLA Citation
Morris, Rebecca J. "Inquiry for Deep Learning: Inquiry Task Template." School Library Connection, November 2024, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2001849?learningModuleId=2001843&topicCenterId=2247903.
Entry ID: 2122832
Additional Resources
About the Author
Jean Donham, PhD, has taught in the area of school librarianship at both the University of Iowa School of Library & Information Science and at the University of Northern Iowa in the School Library Studies program. Earlier, she worked in the Iowa City Community School District where she coordinated the school library program for thirteen years. She also served for eight years as library director at Cornell College, a selective liberal arts college. Dr. Donham holds an master's in library science from the University of Maryland and a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Iowa. She has authored numerous articles, book chapters, and books, including her most recent book, Enhancing Teaching and Learning: A Leadership Guide for School Librarians.
MLA Citation
Donham, Jean. "Inquiry for Deep Learning. Questioning for Deep Learning in Inquiry [11:18]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, February 2016, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2001849?learningModuleId=2001843&topicCenterId=2247903.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2001849?learningModuleId=2001843&topicCenterId=2247903
Entry ID: 2001849