Chapter 4: Developing Questions: Civics Inquiry into a Public Issue

Children are naturally curious and interested in the complex world around them. John Dewey (1910) reminds us that elementary students are capable of the hard but rewarding work of inquiry: “the native and unspoiled attitude of childhood, marked by ardent curiosity, fertile imagination, and love of experimental inquiry is near, very near, to the attitude of the scientific mind.” Questions are the key element in inquiry-based instruction. Questions tap into the students’ natural curiosity, heighten their interest, allow for creative investigations, and promote deep analysis. (Pellagrino & Kilday, 2013). However, the types of questions needed to spark inquiry require teachers to think and teach differently from traditional approaches. Rather than low-level questions that focus on the transmission of knowledge, teachers initiate questions that promote deeper understandings and richer engagement of issues of value to how students live and act with others in a complex, messy world.