We had a delightful visit to The School of the Future in New York City the other day. Lots of engaged kids, a great blend of instruction and constructivist work, and an obvious intellectual culture. And as the picture illustrates, everywhere we went we also saw helpful visual reminders of the big ideas and essential questions framing the work we were watching: School of the Future staff have long been users of UbD tools and ideas.
But far too often over the years I have seen plenty of good stuff posted like this – but no deep embedding of the EQ into the unit design and lessons that make it up. Merely posting the EQs and occasionally reminding kids of it is pointless: the aim is to use the question to frame specific activities, to provide perspective and focus, to prioritize the course, and to signal to students that, eventually, THEY must – on their own – pose this and other key questions. (Note: I am not criticizing what we saw and heard at SoF, rather using this teachable moment to raise an issue that needs addressing by almost all faculty using our work.)
Let’s start with a simple example from my own teaching. The EQ for the unit: Who sees and who is blind? The readings: The Emperor’s New Clothes, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Oedipus the King. Students are instructed to take notes around the EQ and other questions that arise related to it (e.g. Why do people deceive themselves?). We alternate between small-group discussions of the previous night’s reading, Socratic Seminar on the readings with the whole class, some mini-lessons on reading and note-taking skills, and a teacher-led de-briefing of what worked, what didn’t in Seminar as well as a discussion of confusing points in the texts. The final assessment? An essay on the EQ.
At every turn, in other words, the EQ looms large in the unit. Students are not only encouraged to keep pondering it across each reading, but they take notes on the question and routinely remind one another that this question is the focus.
This is far different than what we typically see in walk-throughs where EQs are being used. The only person that keeps referring to the EQ is the teacher; the main use of the question is by teachers in which they point out “answers” to the EQ. Rarely is the EQ central to the assessment – in part, because all too often the EQ is too convergent and has a right answer that the teacher wants learned. Almost never does there appear to be a plan whereby the question goes from the teacher’s control to the students’ control.
All well and good in English, Grant; what about math?
Same thing. Georg Polya over 50 years ago provided a fantastic set of EQs at the heart of genuine problem solving in math:
- What is the unknown?
- What are the data?
- What is the condition?
- Do you know a related problem?
- Have you seen the problem before?
- Could you restate the problem?
- Can you check the result?
- Can you derive the answer differently?
- Can you use the result, or the method, for some other problem?
Here is how Polya described their use:
“There are two aims which the teacher may have in view when addressing to his students a question or a suggestion…: First, to help the student to solve the problem at hand. Second, to develop the student’s ability so that he may solve future problems by himself…If the same question is repeatedly helpful, the student will scarcely fail to notice it and he will be induced to ask the question by himself in a similar situation. Asking the question repeatedly, he may succeed once in eliciting the right idea. By such a success, he discovers the right way of using the question, and then he has really assimilated it… [Appropriate questions and suggestions] have two common characteristics, common sense and generality. As they proceed from plain common sense they very often come naturally; they could have occurred to the student himself. As they are general, they help unobtrusively; they just indicate a general direction and leave plenty for the student to do” [How to Solve It, pp. 3-4]
Thus, the whole point of the questions is similarly for them to become the students’ questions in a “gradual release” model, in the face of intellectual challenges, just as in my class. So, subject matter has nothing to do with it – despite the fact that many math teachers seem positively stubborn on this myopia of theirs. Everything depends upon whether the units have been set up to focus on genuine inquiry as opposed to pseudo-questions or pseudo-problems that have a simple approach and a preferred correct answer. (But then they aren’t real problems, are they? More here.)
Let me remind you of a basic point, then: in UbD we list Essential Questions in STAGE 1. In other words, the EQ is a goal. i.e. the QUESTIONING is the goal: the box does not say Essential Answers to Nice Questions.
All of this will be addressed at some length in our new book on Essential Questions, due out in early April. But I thought an excerpt from the book on a simple design process would be both a good “trailer” for the book and a useful closure to this post:
We can describe what has to happen in any successful use of EQs in terms of a four-phase process:
A Four-Phase Process for Implementing Essential Questions
| Phase | Goal |
|
Ensure that the EQ is thought-provoking, relevant to both students and the current unit/course content, and explorable via a text/research project/lab/problem/issue/simulation in which the question comes to life. |
|
Use questioning techniques and protocols as necessary to elicit the widest possible array of different plausible, yet imperfect answers to the question. Also, probe the original question in light of the different takes on it that are implied in the varied student answers and due to inherent ambiguity in the words of the question. |
|
Bring new text/data/phenomena to the inquiry, designed to deliberately extend inquiry and/or call into question tentative conclusions reached thus far. Elicit and compare new answers to previous answers, looking for possible connections and inconsistencies to probe. |
|
Ask students to generalize their findings, new insights, and remaining (and/or newly raised) questions about both content and process. |
Note that this process is not restricted to a single unit. We can use this framework to string different units together so that Phase 3 could be the start of a new unit in which a novel perspective is introduced and explored using the same question(s).
Here is a simple example from science using the question: What is science? In many middle school and high school science courses, teachers often devote an initial unit or lesson to the question. Typically, though, after an early reading and discussion, the question is dropped, never to return that year as attention turns to acquiring specific knowledge and skill. And no genuine inquiry into the question ever really occurs, ironically enough. (This pattern is aided and abetted by most textbooks.)
Let’s see how the framework helps us more clearly see an alternative approach in which the Essential Question becomes more prominent throughout the course.
A Four-Phase Process for Implementing Essential Questions
(example – secondary Science)
| Phase | Goal |
|
What is science? How does it relate to or differ from common sense and religious views on empirical issues? |
| 2.Elicit varied responses and question those responses. | Students read 3 different short readings that address the EQ, in which there is great disagreement about what science is, how it works, and how much stock we should put in its answers. |
| 3.Introduce and explore new perspective(s) | Students are asked to do 2 different experiments in which methods vary and margin of error is salient. They also read about a few controversies and false discoveries in the history of science,: read Karl Popper on how science is inherently testable and tentative – “falsifiable” – where by contrast ideology can always ‘explain’ anything; read Feynmann on how most people misunderstand what science is; read Hume on why we should be inherently skeptical about science as truth. |
| 4.Reach tentative closure. | Ask students to generalize their findings, new insights, and remaining (or newly raised) questions about the nature of science. |
As the example suggests, proper treatment of the question would demand not only that the question be constantly revisited throughout the year – “Based on the previous two experiments and our lively disagreements about the findings in the Global Warming research, what would you now say science is?” – but that the course must also therefore include a look at pseudo-science and the danger of confirmation bias, as well as consideration of the very counter-intuitive aspects of modern scientific thinking (which often give rise to common and persistent student misconceptions in the sciences and about science itself).
Here is an example from elementary social studies:
A Four-Phase Process for Implementing Essential Questions
(example – Elementary Social Studies)
| Phase | Goal |
| Introduce a question designed to cause inquiry. | After a cursory lesson on the typical names and characteristics of US regions, ask: Could we carve up the map differently? What kinds of regions might be just as useful for us to define? What “regions” do we live in? How many regions do we live in? |
| Elicit varied responses and question those responses. | To what extent is defining an area as a “region” useful? Compare and contrast the benefits and weaknesses of various regional maps and categories for school, town, and state; and alternate regions of the US, based on cultural aspects (e.g. regional sports affiliations). |
| Introduce and explore new perspective(s) | Pursue the idea of regions based on cultural aspects (food, leisure, jobs) and thus the extent to which talking about regions like the “south” or “northwest” may be unhelpful because it can cause us to stereotype and overlook uniqueness or diversity in every region. Related questions can then be explored: To what extent do we usefully define ourselves in “regional” terms, e.g. southerner, coastal, West Tennessee, Upstate NY, Northern California, etc. as opposed to by state or nation? When is it useful to define region by physical characteristics and when is it useful to define it by sociological characteristics? etc. |
| Reach tentative closure. | Ask students to generalize their findings, new insights, and remaining (or are newly raised) questions about regions and the usefulness of the idea. |
In other words, inquiry by design, not mere teacher rhetorical questioning, makes an EQ come to life and go into depth. The texts, prompts, rules of engagement, and final assessments provide the key elements needed for the design to succeed, in light of the just-noted criteria: an intriguing and key question, inherent ambiguity, clearly different points of view, and shades of gray that will require careful questioning and discerning observation and research.
PS: In light of a basic confusion that causes some of the problems described above – i.e. assuming that ‘essential question’ means ‘essential to my lesson’ – I am also including the paragraph from the new book in which Jay and I define an EQ:
A good Essential Question:
1) is open-ended; i.e., it typically will not have a single, final, and correct answer.
2) is thought-provoking and intellectually engaging, meant to spark discussion and debate.
3) calls for high-order thinking, such as analysis, inference, evaluation, prediction. It cannot be effectively answered by recall alone.
4) points toward important, transferable ideas within (and sometimes across) disciplines.
5) raises additional questions and sparks further inquiry.
6) requires support and justification, not just an answer.
7) recurs over time; i.e., the question can and should be re-visited again and again.
Questions that meet all or most of these criteria qualify as “essential.” These are questions that are not answerable with finality in a single lesson or brief sentence – and that’s the point. Their aim is to stimulate thought, to provoke inquiry, and to spark more questions, including thoughtful student questions, not just pat answers. They are provocative and generative. By tackling such questions, learners are engaged in “uncovering” the depth and richness of a topic that might otherwise be obscured by simply “covering” it.
POSTSCRIPT: as I promised in a reply to a post here are some elementary units in the UbD Template: Elem Units from UbD Guide to Unit Design.
17 Responses
Hooray!! This is what education needs!!!! Now!!! I wish my kids had this in all their classrooms. But, alas, they must practice bubbling in on scantron sheets, answer 5 multiple choice questions on FCAT reading samples, writing a formulaic 5 paragraph essay (FCAT style), and rush through because there is no time for actual learning. High stakes testing leaves no space for this type of teaching. It’s a very sad reality. I hope some legislators get wind of your book. It sounds amazing!
We notice the same problem with “driving questions” in project-based learning. Teachers will announce the DQ at the beginning of the project, maybe put it up on the wall, and that’s it. It becomes more like a theme, and it lives only in the teacher’s head rather than being something students actually work with and have to answer.
btw, I’m sure you’re well aware of this and maybe it’ll be in your book, but a pet peeve of mine is the common misuse of the term Essential Question these days. Many people think it means simply, “a question that is important or that must be asked” or “it is essential that we ask this.” Not what Ted Sizer, you & Jay mean!
Indeed, John. You would think that, having defined it MULTIPLE times since the 1990s, that I would not hear people make this mistake of defining it as ‘important to me’, but it happens daily.(Indeed, my first published article was for American Educator in 1987 defining EQs and describing their use in the Coalition.) Sigh…
BTW, I gave it the name ‘essential questions’ to reflect the Essential Schools mantra of student as worker, teacher as coach – and because it was a sort-of pun. Ted liked it, so off we went with it. Amusingly, I heard a group of teachers at a CES conference years later arguing about EQs as being in the 9 core principles of CES (which, of course, it’s not, since those principles were written before I came on board, as the project started).
In light of your good comment, I added the ‘official’ definition from the new book at the end of the article.
I would imagine you have seen many examples of essential questions for high school math units. What % of the time would you estimate that simply using Polya’s list instead would be an improvement?
Do you think math teachers would like to see students more frequently asking themselves the questions on Polyas list, but are just not explicit enough in emphasizing that type of thinking, and not consistent enough in providing tasks that require that type of thinking? I would put myself in that boat.
Most math EQs aren’t worth much; most aren’t even essential, e.g. What is a linear relationship? is surprinsingly common. I’d go with Polya in a heartbeat.
But I think the key is that there are not enough truly puzzling and unscaffolded problems given to kids – without which Polya’s questions are moot. But if the questions are not modeled, then required, in a gradual-release-of-responsibility model, then students will do no better internalizing them and drawing pro-actively from them than they now do when teachers over-prompt in the use of reading strategies or coaches do in barking out orders from the sideline.
The issue of autonomy is arguably the most important overlooked goal in all of education – true in the finest schools and colleges as well as average and poor schools. We conflate difficulty of content with demanding intellectual challenges; even teachers in high-level classes over-direct student learning for too long.
I am going to make intellectual autonomy the next post topic.
Another excellent post Dr. Wiggins. Thank you. Have you seen the ways in which the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme and Middle Years Programme ask teachers to plan? It is very much along your suggested lines, starting with Lynn Erickson’s ideas about concepts
I have indeed seen the PYP and mYP planners. Our UbD template played a small role in their work.
Grant…your posts are always thoughtful and right on. Do you have any sample elem units with the EQ and/or big ideas?
Thanks
You’ll find lots of sample units including good elem. ones as part of the digital downloads that come with the last 2 books on Unit Design from ASCD. But I’ll attach a few at the bottom of the post as a PS.
I can’t seem to find the PS you indicate in this post that will provide us with sample elementary units.
Thanks!
OOPS! I never followed through. Thanks for the reminder. You’ll see it now, at the bottom of the post.
Reblogged this on mpnENGAGED and commented:
Great point. Synthesize the good stuff within a larger context.
i teach at SOF and can testify to the power of your contribution to our work – which has infused much of what we do for my entire time here. the momentum and logical clarity of your “4 phase sequence” serves as a good example.
your criteria for a good essential question used to be more popular in SOF classrooms. i remember one where the EQ for the year supposedly centered around “What is Justice?” – pretty equivalent to your example of “What is science?” since those days we’ve made refinements in attempting to focus on questions that might be less “essential” to Plato and more essential to our students. (btw – hard not to laugh when people use the phrase “socratic seminar”). i believe for many of my colleagues a question like, “What dynamic combination of internal and external factors led to the transformative but limited success of the Civil Rights Movement 1954-1968?” better sparks student curiosity, engagement with significant content, and meaningful construction of conceptual frameworks than the previous focus on a receding mirage of a particular “essence”.
Thanks for your comment. I am not saying that an essential question has to be as broad and philosophical as What is Justice? Certainly, in history, science, and math the questions may be as tightly focused as your example (though your example seems AWFULLY complex a phrasing to my old ear; see below). The form or format of the question is of course not what matters. As we have said for years the only thing that matters is whether the question yields the desired result: interested and sustained inquiry, on matters of substance. But don’t dismiss the power of an ‘essence’ question, especially for revisiting material from another new perspective repeatedly through the course, e.g. Who is an American? Says who?
Here are some edits to your example to make the point that brevity has its virtues:
How transformative was the Civil Rights Movement?
To what extent did the Civil Rights Movement achieve its goals?
The Civil Rights Movement: why then?
How vital to the Civil Rights Movement was white involvement?
PS: I don’t like the phrase socratic seminar either, but it’s become too common to avoid. Socrates was often far too meddlesome in the conversations – a point ironically brought home by Mortimer Adler in his demo seminars where he completely over-dominated as facilitator. (I’m a St. John’s College grad. so I know the real deal about student-led seminars, and I taught that way. Adler was viewed with much scorn at StJ and his annual Friday night lecture became a hoot because there was always a prank).
Thanks for the revised EQs – I agree with your focus on the outcome of sustained and meaningful inquiry (by their fruits we shall know good teaching).
I think we can get rid of the “socratic seminar” absurdity – “one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin, where it belongs.”
Probably we just need a better substitute phrase?
I appreciate that your examples in this post cross grade levels and subjects. The criteria of an EQ listed is fantastic! The parts that I think will have the most impact on the teachers I support is that EQs don’t have a single correct answer (that helps us tease out “open ended”) and that they require justification. This synthesizes so many of the moving parts educators are grappling with daily. Thank you!