Developing Effective Questions in Civic Education

	Students need a substantial and broad context in which to "see" their issue.
	Students practice applying inquiry across many disciplines to authentic problems.
	Research maintains rigor and curriculum integration.
	Research informs service and civic action, improving responsibility and quality.
	Research provides students independent skills for developing their individual voices.
	Balanced research directs student attention to alternative possibilities and multiple viewpoints, and acknowledges diversity.
	Research trains students to be critical thinkers.

This lesson is one of many ways to help students develop good research questions on their KAT topics. Chapters five and six in the KAT Manual provide additional tools for research and analysis.

As educators, our task is to help students move beyond the obvious and trivial questions, to get to the root of the problems, and propose fresh, effective ways to address them.

In doing so, consider core strengths that each discipline has to offer problem-solving.

Science suggests careful observation, measurement, prediction and testable hypotheses. Science suggests we inquire into cause and effect, structures and functions, relationships and cycles. Through the various fields of science, we ask about environment, materials, resources, forces, technologies, and health.

Mathematics also helps us measure and predict. Using math, we can inquire about relationships, trends, patterns. Math asks us to compare, time, plan, organize, compute, account, sequence, and consider costs/benefits using graphic tools beyond the English language.

Boundless inquiries stem from the many social studies. Economic relationships, power and governance, resource allocation, utilization pattersn, regulations, history, mobility and status, cluture, geneder, age, institutions, dispute resolution, ideaology, religion, language are some rich subtopics from which research questions can be drawn.

KAT teachers seldom have trouble weaving literature and the arts into student work, since these fields so clearly raise questions on aspects of the human condition. Inquiry here yields insight into communications, heroes, ambiguity, conflict, and diversity.

The more meaningful the questions, the more valuable your KAT projects...

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