What+makes+a+good+inquiry?

Good guiding or essential questions ..... eg Essential - would it be better to live in Vietnam or Austrailia? contributing - what is the average income of Vietnam? Based on Clinton Golding (Melb Uni) & Rod Traver (Harvard) work
 * lead learners to higher, meaningful, insightful achievement
 * sparks curiosity ... we want to find the answer
 * strengthens school curriculum and gives coherence
 * provides a goal of learning
 * directs the serach for understanding and everything in the curriculum is studied for the purpose of answering it
 * directs the author's choice of ideas / activities and can transform disparate topics from a scattered survey into a logical co-ordinated instrument for attaining knowledge
 * deals with rich concepts and issues that are of great importance
 * only way to find the answer is through complex thinking
 * breaks the pattern of minimal amount of thought to all questions... encouraging students to think deeply over a longer time
 * will have subsidary or contributing questions that can be a mix of information gathering and essential
 * the subsidary or conntributing questions are the means to answer the really essentail/ guiding questions

steps to develop a guiding question
 * 1) agree on a rich and relevant topic for students ( usually something that is prevalent in current news, topic has potential to go across domains, engaging for your students )
 * 2) create guiding question/s .. eg Why are we here? How do we prove something true? what does it mean to be healthy? How can we make and sustain a helathy garden? Is Melbourne the world's most livable city?How should we live? Do leaders know they are leaders?

guiding question criteria
 * open-end is accessible to all domains and learners, it invites inclusive discussion, there are many possible answers, a range of pathways, students can return to frequently during the inquiry and we must ask other questions to answer the guiding question
 * non-judgemental - it doesn't dictate the direction or outcome of the thinking, we are exploring the conclusion not advocating it, invites research and answering them requires a high level of cognition
 * intrinsically interesting - it contains emotive force, provocative, would the community beyond the school be interested in exploring it, does it lead to action and intellectual bite eg when are laws fair?
 * succinct - use a handful of words but demand alot, use words like who, what, when, where, how and why, the word good in front of a theme or object can work

//__Level Task__ Generate some guiding questions for your current or future unit without worrying too much about the criteria Look at criteria and refine your list ( some of the questions cut back could be subsidary / contributing questions Share your ideas on the discussion page for other levels to see//