Different types of Inquiry questions
Factual questions
Conceptual questions
Debatable questions
• Knowledge/fact-based
• Content-driven
• Skills-related
• Supported by evidence
• Can be used to explore
terminology in the statement
of inquiry
• Frequently topical
• Encourage recall and
comprehension
• Enable exploration of big
ideas that connect facts and
topics
• Highlight opportunities to
compare and contrast
• Explore contradictions
• Lead to deeper disciplinary
and interdisciplinary
understanding
• Promote transfer to familiar
or less familiar situations,
issues, ideas and contexts
• Encourage analysis and
application
• Enable the use of facts and
concepts to debate a position
• Promote discussion
• Explore significant ideas and
issues from multiple
perspectives
• Can be contested
• Have tension
• May be deliberately
provocative
• Encourage synthesis and
evaluation
Example of factual, conceptual and debatable questions in a
unit of inquiry
KEY CONCEPTS: INTERACTION CHANGE
STATEMENT OF INQUIRY: “Human/environmental interactions can become unbalanced, leading to changes with
unintended consequences”.
(Enduring understandings: To move students’ thinking beyond the local examples to the global perspective so that
students can see the parallelism between local and global issues of concern. /For students to know which areas of the
world have the greatest and least availability of natural resources / To understand that scarcity of natural resources can
lead to conflict.)
INQUIRY QUESTIONS:
FACTUAL: Does our state (country, region) have areas of dense population? What issues in our region would suggest the
danger of overpopulation? What areas of the world have very dense population centres?
CONCEPTUAL: Why do nations develop concentrated “population centres”? What would indicate that a population
centre is “overpopulated”? How do increasing human/environmental interactions change the environment? How might
these interactions lead to scarce natural resources? How do communities with scarce natural resources meet their
survival needs? How can scarce natural resources lead to conflict between groups of people or nations?
PROVOCATIVE/DEBATABLE:
• How can governments ensure that their citizens have the necessary natural resources for survival?
• Should nations with plentiful natural resources be required to share with nations who have scarce natural resources?
Be prepared to defend your position.
JANUARY 2014- E.Cosh Adapted from Developing MYP units (excerpt from the forthcoming MYP: From principles into practice. For use from September
2014/January 2015) & IB position paper: Erickson, L. 2012 Concept-based teaching and learning