Session 3 Objective: Examine and select topics for Inquiry. Begin creation of the compelling questions and supporting questions.
3. Disciplinary knowledge and skills are integrated within an investigation. Long debated in social studies circles, the question of whether to focus on content and conceptual knowledge or skills has been firmly answered in both the C3 Framework and the New York State Social Studies Framework: Good teaching focuses on both. Dimension 2—Applying Disciplinary Concepts and Tools—of the C3 Framework outlines the kind of disciplinary knowledge and skills students need to develop and answer compelling questions. Skills and knowledge in isolation have little value. It is the application of skills in the pursuit of knowing and understanding the past and the present that makes up the substance of social studies (Willingham, 2003). In the New York State Social Studies Framework, this substance—the disciplinary knowledge and skills—is clearly delineated. Social studies content and concepts are presented in the Key Ideas, Conceptual Understandings, and Content Specifications. Social studies skills are represented as the Social Studies Practices. In the IDM, each of these categories is explicitly listed and developed across the inquiries.
4. Students are active learners within an inquiry. Central to the IDM approach is psychologist Jerome Bruner’s (1960) observation about the relationship between students and ideas: “We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development” (p. 33). The accumulating research evidence demonstrates the idea that students actively construct knowledge rather than passively receive it (Bruner, 1990; Grant, 2003; Newmann, Marks, & Gamoran, 1996; Piaget, 1962; Saye & SSIRC, 2013; Wineburg & Wilson, 1991).
Taking Bruner’s quote seriously means teachers need to find ways to engage all students in the topics under study. One assumption of IDM is that students of all abilities can participate in the questions and tasks in the inquiries. To support students across a range of abilities, the Toolkit inquiries include suggestions on how to create language-focused scaffolds, vocabulary guides, and other instructional tools to support all students so that they can be successful. The inquiries also offer a range of ways to interact with the sources that students encounter as their curiosity is engaged and as they build their disciplinary knowledge and their arguments.
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 questions. The authors of the C3 Framework argue that students can and should play a role in constructing the questions that guide the inquiries in which they engage. Constructing questions is a challenging intellectual pursuit, and students, particularly before grade 6, may need teacher guidance in doing so.
Creating compelling and supporting questions is only one way, however, for students’ questions to play a role in inquiries. Student questions can surface in several ways. For example, students might suggest modifying a teacher’s compelling question, they might propose additional and/or alternative supporting.