Using enquiry questions in secondary History is nothing new. Questions have probably always been central to studying History. In fact: ‘The Greek word historia originally meant inquiry, the act of seeking knowledge, as well as the knowledge that results from inquiry’ [1]. Over the past several years, however, teachers in different parts of the world have been refining the various ways in which crafting clear and discipline-specific enquiry questions can be valuable for students learning history in secondary schools [2].
This piece is an attempt to synthesise my own reading of and work with enquiry questions in history education focusing mainly on secondary settings (though I suspect there could be some application in certain post-secondary contexts too). I make no claim that the idea or many of the approaches outlined here are completely original and I have tried to show some of the debt of gratitude I owe to others by referencing a range of other commentary and examples throughout.
Why bother with enquiry questions?
The purpose of setting enquiry questions for a unit of work in history is to guide teaching and learning and bind it together. They ensure that there is a major problem or question that underpins the teaching and learning throughout a course, a unit of work and/or an individual lesson. In describing the ‘buzz’ that enquiry questions created in England during the early 2000s, Christine Counsell has claimed that ‘enquiry-led planning began to be contrasted with the trudge through algorithmic, atomized work …’ that had become common in many schools [3].
At a slightly deeper level, good historical enquiry questions also synthesise content that students are learning and the unique modes of thinking that working within the discipline of history require (such as working with historical evidence, change and continuity, perspectives, significance, etc.). In this way, they help to give meaning to the content points and the skills and concepts that underpin most contemporary history syllabi.
Perhaps the best summary of what enquiry questions ‘do’ and, therefore, why they are useful was captured in the recent Ofsted ‘Research Review Series: History’ report which surveyed educational research into history teaching. Though the report is problematic in some areas, it does make a clear and reasonable case for what enquiry questions in history can do claiming that:
Enquiry questions are a sophisticated device for shaping curriculum content. High-quality enquiry questions organise historical content to enable pupils to develop disciplinary and substantive knowledge simultaneously, with their understanding of each supporting the other … Enquiry questions are a curricular tool to organise content … They are likely to be most effective when applied across a series of lessons. This allows pupils to develop the depth and breadth of knowledge they need to think and argue about the question. Pupils are then able to adapt and develop their judgements as their understanding deepens across a series of lessons … Enquiries are likely to develop more accurate disciplinary knowledge when they are designed to engage with the past in ways that reflect the complexities of academic history, challenging misconceptions and modelling accurate disciplinary knowledge [4].
Importantly, even many schools that practice traditional, teacher-centred pedagogy have placed enquiry questions at the centre of their teaching and learning [5]. If nothing else, this demonstrates that the use of enquiry questions may begin to transcend the simplistic (and often tired) dichotomy between ‘traditional’ and ‘progressive’ teaching philosophies – they are a useful tool that can be used no matter what pedagogical assumptions or convictions a teacher might have.
The final thought I will offer in terms of why I think enquiry questions are worth the time and effort is that, in my experience (and probably preference), they offer a more flexible way of organising student learning than lesson-by-lesson programming. For example, an enquiry question could be allocated 4-6 lessons within a broader topic and the time allocated expanded or contracted as necessary without disrupting the clear aim of the lesson sequence.
Types of enquiry questions
There are a variety of ways to think about and categorise enquiry questions in History. Generally, I think two basic characteristics help to make distinctions between different types of enquiry questions:
The historical thinking that they foreground (e.g. historical significance, perspective, evidence)
The scale at which they are applied to the learning. That is, are they designed for 1-2 lessons, a longer sequence of lessons, an entire topic or even an entire course?
The first is the aspect of historical thinking that they foreground. For example, one historical inquiry question might require students to engage directly with the idea of change and continuity while another might require them to engage with discipline-specific issues around historical evidence while another might require them to analyse historical significance. Changing the emphasis can have a dramatic effect on the type of thinking that students do and the kinds of evidence they might need. For example, one enquiry question for teaching Australia’s Federation in 1901 focusing and ‘causation’ might read: ‘Account for the success of the Federation movement by 1901’. This will require students to explore the political campaigns, the referenda and other factors. An alternative might be to focus on ‘change and continuity' by asking: ‘To what extent did Australia change as a result of Federation in 1901?’. This requires very different thinking and different evidence that would allow the students to explore issues both prior to and after Federation in 1901. In short, questions that place emphasis on different aspects of historical thinking can powerfully shape the teaching and learning of any given content.
The second way in which enquiry questions might be distinguished is according to the scale of the learning that they target. For this, I roughly distinguish between at least three scales: the lesson, the sequence and the topic (or unit as a whole) [6]. Beginning with the largest scale, enquiry questions designed for a topic are those that an entire unit seeks to explore. These can often be questions that would form the basis of formal assessment tasks at the end of the unit requiring a substantial piece of work such as an essay or a class presentation. For example, if you are planning to teach the the Romanovs, a topic-level enquiry question might be: 'Why did the Romanov Dynasty collapse in 1917?' . This question would underpin all of the learning across that topic and give the students a central historical issue to return to on a regular basis. At the end of a several-week unit on this topic, if students cannot respond in any substantial way to this question it is a clear sign that something has gone wrong along the way.
Sequence-level enquiry questions are those that underpin a smaller group of lessons within a unit of work. These are less likely to be useful as questions at the centre of an entire formal assessment task but they are likely to contribute to it in some measure. They might bind learning together over a 4-5 lesson sequence and result in a substantial task such as a shorter essay, 1-2 paragraphs of writing or a brief presentation to the class. To keep with the Romanovs case study example, a sequence-level enquiry question might be: Who was Nicholas II and what do contemporary sources reveal about his character and rule? This is a question that I would consider to be too narrow for an assessment task at the end of that topic, but it would certainly help students move towards an understanding of one key aspect of the broader topic-level question that requires students to explain why the Russian Empire collapsed in early 1917.
At the smallest scale, enquiry questions might be used for a single lesson (or a short 2-lesson sequence). These will probably look something like a learning intention but I prefer to keep the language of enquiry questions. For the Romanovs, if students are working through the sequence-level question ‘Who was Nicholas II and what do contemporary sources reveal about his character and rule?’, a lesson-level enquiry question might be: 'How valuable is the evidence provided by Sergei Witte to understanding Nicholas II’s character and approach to ruling?’. This might underpin a lesson (or two) in which students closely examine extracts from Witte’s memoirs, contemporary writings and other documents to draw conclusions about the evidence Witte provides.
What makes a meaningful enquiry question?
In his now widely read and insightful piece from Teaching History (England’s version, not the HTANSW version) in 2000, Ned Riley argued that at least three criteria can be used to begin shaping strong enquiry questions [7]. He asks, does the question, and I quote directly:
capture the interest and imagination of your pupils?
place an aspect of historical thinking, concept or process at the forefront of the pupils' minds?
result in a tangible, lively, substantial, enjoyable 'outcome activity' (i.e. at the end of the lesson sequence) through which pupils can genuinely answer the enquiry question?
This is an excellent starting point but I would argue that it can be expanded on. In my view, what makes a meaningful enquiry question will depend to some degree on the scale of the question (lesson, sequence or topic). Generally, though, I would use the following criteria to design, evaluate and refine strong enquiry questions in secondary History.
Good questions ... | Elaboration |
|---|---|
Help make sense of the syllabus material that you and the students are required to work with. | Content points in history syllabi can often seem a bit stale and disconnected. Good enquiry questions often give more life to these points and reveal what the points are actually there for. In other words, enquiry questions can contextualise content points and reframe them from issues that students simply know about to issues that students can ‘work with’. |
Help the students organise and frame their learning. | Enquiry questions give the learning purpose so that lessons and activities do not remain ‘atomised’ (as Counsell put it). They give students something to focus their attention on in and across lessons. |
Focus on a central aspect/theme/issue from the syllabus topic. | In history, most syllabus topics revolve around several major themes. While there may be many fascinating historical questions about a particular period, event or individual that could be asked, strong enquiry questions in the context of secondary History remain focused on central issues to the topic rather than obscure or eclectic tangents (though there may be opportunities to explore these too). |
Place historical skills and concepts (disciplinary knowledge) at the forefront of student learning. | Enquiry questions (especially at the sequence and topic levels) should unambiguously force students to contend with key aspects of the discipline such as change and continuity, cause and effect and evidence. |
Provide the class and individual students with a broad and interesting question to solve or answer (often over the course of several lessons or more). | By nature, enquiry questions should not simply allow students to repeat factual knowledge (though obviously that will be important to any response they make). Instead, they require students to work analytically to explain, argue and discuss key issues within the topic being explored. |
Allow for differences in interpretation, conclusion or emphasis. | Meaningful enquiry questions (especially sequence and topic-level questions) should not be leading (i.e. force students to take a particular position), rather they should allow for a variety of positions to be taken up in response. |
Be a question that historians in the field would actually discuss, explore and debate. | Although this is not necessarily universal, some of the strongest sequence and topic-level historical enquiry questions are ‘realistic’ and perhaps even prominent in the historical literature. There is no need for a good historical enquiry question to be completely ‘new’ – there are many old historical debates that can be translated into clear and meaningful enquiry questions for secondary students. Some of the best questions we can ask have been asked countless times before. |
Be achievable for students of the age/stage you are teaching. | It is pointless posing a brilliant historical question to a Year 7 class that would be better suited to a post-graduate seminar. It may be realistic and interesting but if it is not achievable then it will be a waste of time. Worse still, if it is too complex for the majority of students, it may actually turn them off the learning sequence or history more generally. |
Provide an opportunity for students to complete a larger, substantial task at the end of the enquiry. | It can often be helpful to actually define the task as the question is posed. For example, you might tell students that: “Over the next two weeks we will explore Question X and, at the end, you will write a formal essay that responds to that question drawing on the ideas and evidence that we examine”. By making this clear, students know exactly what their main question is, and they also know how they will be required to communicate their response to it. |
Strong sequences and learning resources
Although it may seem obvious, it also deserves mentioning that good historical enquiry questions must be supported by strong teaching and learning structures and purposeful resources. No matter how good a set of guiding questions for a topic are, they could never save a poorly-sequenced or poorly-resourced unit of work. Sometimes too, what seems like a poor historical inquiry question might turn out to be genius when the content, resources and activities are revealed.
Consider the following macro enquiry question for a Year 11 Modern History class studying the First World War: What was the First World War? Upon first reading, this might seem like a poor enquiry question. Suppose, however, that this class will spend several lessons exploring several micro questions to support this including:
When did the First World War begin and end? Most commonly, this conflict is dated between 1914 – 1918 but is that accurate? The Paris Peace Conference that formally ended the conflict was conducted in 1919 and the negotiations for some of the treaty lasted into the 1920s. Localised conflict initiated by the First World War continued in some parts of the world past 1918 [8].
Can the First World War be considered a total war? For some nations such as Britain, France, Germany and Russia, perhaps it can. For Australia, probably not and even less so for Japan which was involved but only to a limited extent. Now the students can begin to answer the question: what was the First World War? It was a diverse conflict in which some nations experienced total war while others contributed to a more limited extent.
With just two examples, we can see that students are encouraged to start developing more complex answers to the question: what was the First World War? And so, what might appear at first to be a poor macro enquiry question could actually be very powerful with the right micro questions and strong teaching and learning activities and resources used to develop students’ knowledge and understanding.
The importance of disciplinary expertise
All of this assumes that the teacher creating and using the enquiry questions has a strong background in the discipline of History and the individual topic(s) that these questions are designed for. What we emphasise in any specific topics will be dependent on what we think is relevant, possible, reasonable and important and all of that will be determined by the teacher’s substantive and disciplinary knowledge. For better or worse, I would argue that a teacher’s knowledge in history often acts as a boundary on the learning of students in their class – this is particularly the case with novice learners. An expert teacher might rule certain ideas and interpretations off limits for good reason. A novice teacher, on the other hand, might allow students to spend a great deal of time on issues that are actually peripheral only that they seem important to someone without expertise in the discipline or the topic in focus.
Another way of making this point is to say that creating meaningful enquiry questions is not a generic art – do not ask me to help your Science faculty develop enquiry questions for Year 10 Chemistry courses and keep them away from my Year 10 History programs [9]. As calls for more ‘evidence-informed’ practices in education become louder, it is important to recognise that discipline-specific concerns and opportunities can easily be sidelined in favour of more generic education ideas such as cognitive science – especially from policy-makers who can often have a superficial grasp of the issues. As important as approaches such as cognitive science are, they are just one tool in our understanding of education and learning. When they are applied without consideration to disciplinary complexities, they can quickly and easily become counter-productive [10].
In the end, enquiry questions are not a tool to circumvent expertise or subject specialism, rather they are an important expression of those characteristics. In fact, I would argue that there are few ‘generic’ shortcuts in quality teaching and creating meaningful enquiry questions for secondary history classes is no exception.
Endnotes
[1] Katy Steinmetz, ‘This is Where the Word ‘History’ Comes From’, Time, 23 June 2017: https://time.com/4824551/history-word-origins/ (accessed 10-10-2022)
[2] For just one example among many, see this video by Nick Dennis: https://community.oerproject.com/events/oc-for-social-studies-2021/designing-inquiry/m/media-gallery/155 (accessed 10-10-2022)
[3] Christine Counsell, ‘History’ in Sehgal Cuthbert, A and Standish, A (eds.) What Should Schools Teach? Disciplines, Subjects and the Pursuit of Truth (2nd Ed), UCL Press, London, 2021, p. 159
[4] Research Review Series: History, Ofsted, 2021: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/research-review-series-history/research-review-series-history (accessed 10-10-2022)
[5] See, for example, the following blog by the head of History at Michaela College in England: https://thesitesofmemory.wordpress.com/2018/03/06/history-at-michaela/, (accessed 10-10-2022)
[6] I think there is also a good case to be made that entire courses could be framed by enquiry questions but, for an introduction such as this, I have decided to keep the discussion to these three scales.
[7] Michael Riley, 'Into the Key Stage 3 History Garden: Choosing and Planting Your Enquiry Questions', Teaching History, Issue 99, May 2000, pp. 8 – 13
[8] See for example, ‘When did the First World War Really End?’ by the Imperial War Museum: https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/when-did-the-first-world-war-really-end
[9] This is not an outright criticism of interdisciplinarity – something I actually believe to be extremely valuable within a school’s broad curriculum. But effective interdisciplinary study, in my view, is predicated on expert disciplinary foundations that are leveraged through collaboration.
[10] This appears to be a concerning trend in England where examples of generic and poorly understood and/or applied cognitive science has resulted in some poor policy thinking at government and school levels. For just one example, see: Arthur Chapman and Sandra Leaton Gray, ‘Until the DFE understands curriculum its well-meaning pilots will run off course’, UCL Institute of Education Blog, 7 August 2018: https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/2018/08/07/until-the-dfe-understands-curriculum-its-well-meaning-pilots-will-run-off-course/