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What are Essential Questions? - The Second Principle
The Second Principle
The work of Leslie Owen Wilson, Ed. D.
CREATIVITY
HOMEPAGE
RECOMMENDATIONS
INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN
OPTIMAL LEARNING
TEACHING ESSENTIALS
What are Essential Questions?
©Leslie Owen Wilson, 2014
Essential Questions – A key part of the instructional design process
Besides creating a vision of your learners, developing “essential questions” that
direct your choices in content and processes are also an important component
of quality teaching and learning. Comprehensive, well-crafted questions ground
intellectual pursuits giving students some sense of direction, purpose, and
relevance as they are engaged in the work of the subject. Good questions
direct students to dig deeper into content and processes, and delve deeper into
a subject or the content. More importantly they propel students to learn to ask
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What are Essential Questions? - The Second Principle
their own questions. And within a subject
they help focus content on the crucial and
important parts of that subject.
Essential questions can also help teachers
organize course content and direct their
instructional choices about what to include
and what to omit. Remember because it is in
the textbook may not mean it is essential to
understanding the content or discipline. Textbook companies are about making
money, not about revolutionizing education. I give you permission to cull
content, to think outside your text — you are after all the professional — the one
in control of the content due to your interests, advanced training, and
accumulated expertise!!!
Jacobs (1997) notes that essential questions are often tools for creating clarity
and precision and for communicating pivotal parts of ideas, subjects or
disciplines. As students problem solve, read, inquire, sift and sort related
knowledge and skills, essential questions become end points, beacons to final
destinations, and landmarks marking the way.
Another definition of the essential question I have modified from Math Star NM
and is that these are:
“
Questions that probe for deeper meaning and set the stage for
further questioning, ones that foster the development of critical
thinking skills and higher order capabilities such as problem-solving
and understanding complex systems.”
In essence it is noted that “a good essential question is the principal component
of designing inquiry-based learning. It is” essential questions that encourage
collaboration among students, teachers, and the community and integrate
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What are Essential Questions? - The Second Principle
technology to support the learning process. (sic)” (Source:
http://mc2.nmsu.edu/mathnm/exploration1/unit/content_questions.html)
Please note that essential questions are non-judgmental, open-ended,
meaningful, purposeful. They have emotive force with an intellectual bite, and
readily invite the exploration of ideas. These are questions that ask students to
develop gauged and seasoned opinions, ones requiring decision making skills, or
plans of attack, or courses of action. They are big questions; they are not little
questions about factoids or facts that can be memorized easily. They are meant
to be wrestled with, chewed on, pondered over, read and talked about, as
answers to these types of questions frequently have no right or wrong answers.
Often, these are questions that have either moral or ethical foundations the
students will have to take a stand on and defend as they engage in constructing
individual meaning.
Since part of the process in backwards course design hinges on using essential
questions to help create a viable course framework, McTighe and Wiggins (2013)
wrote a book on the topic. Here are several samples they offer of the differences
between essential and non-essential questions.
“Essential Questions
Not Essential Questions
• How do the arts shape, as well as
reflect, a culture?
• What common artistic symbols were
used by the Incas and the Mayans?
What do effective problem solvers
do when they get stuck?
• What steps did you follow to get
your answer?
How strong is the scientific
evidence?
• What is a variable in scientific
investigations?”
(Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J. (2013) Essential questions: Opening doors to
student understanding. Alexandria, VA: ASCD (Association of Supervision and
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What are Essential Questions? - The Second Principle
Curriculum Development). #ad
May I offer additional examples:
What are the ramifications of cloning?
What is intelligence?
Are we really free?
Where does perception end and reality begin?
Does history really repeat itself?
Are there any absolutes?
Are there other more pressing issues that deserve consideration before
space exploration?
What was the greatest invention of the 20th Century?
Significant learning is sometimes messy as there are many layers, many dots to
connect before the picture emerges and becomes intelligible and clear. Essential
questions help learners see patterns, and fit pieces of the puzzle together. These
types of questions can also tantalize and motivate students moving them
forward into the very heart of a discipline and helping to create an appreciation
for doing the work of a subject. And it is important to acknowledge from the
beginning that often essential questions are usually ones that don’t have right or
wrong, or definitive answers. Some are also existential in nature. Many are the
BIG questions that we ask throughout our lives.
Try it out
1. Create five new essential questions to direct your teaching. Or, from
previous course content, reflectively distill at least five essential
questions covered in your course. You can do this by examining the
directions of your content and where it is taking your learners. If you
cannot answer where you are taking your learners and to what end,
then you have some serious work to do!
2. In my earlier pieces on this website concerning instructional design, I
have asked you to create an end vision of your learner. Now I am
asking you:
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a. How are the essential questions you created for your course tied to
your end vision of the learner?
b. Do they help direct the learner to some specific end point, or to
greater or deeper knowledge within the discipline, or to other essential
questions, or to creating their own questions about the discipline?
3. How will you know that students have understood and attempted to
discuss or answered these important questions? What means will you use to
assess indicators of understanding, and of finding answers? (Here clearly
molded rubrics help clarify expectant behaviors and also make subjective
grading easier and more balanced.)
Today’s learners can glean accurate facts and figures from numerous, readily
available sources. Part of their educational literacy should demand that they be
able to verify sources and check the reliability of their information. But, essential
questions are the kinds of questions that should exemplify a student’s
educational experiences because these are the types of questions that make
students think!
A Baker’s Dozen – 13 questions to help you determine if yours are
Essential Questions
No
Yes
1. Is the question meaningful and purposeful?
2. Is the question open-ended? Is it one that can be
revisited, or has been revisited over time?
3. Does the question require support, rationale, or
justification, not just an answer or response?
4. Does the question lead students to ask other
questions?
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5. Does the question appeal to or trigger emotional
responses?
6. Does the question encourage intellectual
examination and responses?
7. Does the question center on a topic that is relevant to
students? Is it a major issue, a problem, of particular
interest or concern to their generation?
8. Does the question encourage discussion and/or
collaboration?
9. Does the question ask the student to consider moral
or ethical issues?
10. Does the question encourage discourse, discussion,
or debate?
11. Does the question ask the learner to make a
decision(s), create a plan of action, or come to a
conclusion after examining related facts and issues?
12. Does the question encourage higher levels of
cognitive processing – analysis, inference, evaluation,
predicting, synthesis or creation.
13. Does the question lead the learner to important,
transferable, applicable ideas that may cross disciplines
or subjects, or help unite varied disciplines?
Sources and resources:
(As these hotlinks take readers to Amazon, the FTC requires me to indicate that
they qualify as ads)
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Jacobs, H. (1997). Refining the map through essential questions. In Mapping
the Big Picture: Integrating Curriculum & Assessment K-12 (25-33).
Alexandria, VA: ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development).
Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J. (2013) Essential questions: Opening doors to
student understanding. Alexandria, VA: ASCD (Association of Supervision
and Curriculum Development).
Other books on creating essential questions:
McTighe, J. (2017) Designing and Using Essential Questions (Quick
Reference Guide) Pamphlet. Alexandria, VA: ASCD (Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development).
(2011) The Essential Questions Handbook: Hundreds of Guiding
Questions That Help You Plan and Teach Successful Lessons in the
Content Areas Paperback. Scholastic Teacher’s Resources.
** FTC Notice: For readers’ convenience throughout this site I have placed
hotlinks to Amazon for a wide variety of books that relate to the topics
discussed. Many of these books I have read, while others I not only read but
purchased for my own professional collection. Other entries were recommended
by folks I respect. In compliance with the United States FTC, I am required to tell
readers that if they use the provided hotlinks to purchase linked materials, then
I receive a very, very, very small commission from Amazon. These monies I use to
help offset my website hosting fees.
Learn more about the art of creating questions.
See Five Basic Types of Questions.
Contact Leslie
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