9/2/2020 What are Essential Questions?

- The Second Principle

The Second Principle

The work of Leslie Owen Wilson, Ed. D.

CREATIVITY HOMEPAGE INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN OPTIMAL LEARNING RECOMMENDATIONS TEACHING ESSENTIALS

What are Essential Questions?

©Leslie Owen Wilson, 2014

Essential Questions – A key part of the instructional design process 

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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 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 nal destinations, and landmarks marking the way.

Another de nition of the essential question I have modi ed 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 technology to support the
learning process. (sic)”  (Source: http://mc2.nmsu.edu/mathnm/exploration1/unit/content_questions.html)

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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 o er of the di erences between essential and
non-essential questions.

“Essential Questions Not Essential Questions

• What common artistic symbols were used by the Incas

• How do the arts shape, as well as re ect, a culture?
and the Mayans?

What do e ective problem solvers do when they get

• What steps did you follow to get your answer?
stuck?

How strong is the scienti c evidence? • What is a variable in scienti c investigations?”

(Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J. (2013) Essential questions: Opening doors to student understanding. Alexandria, VA: ASCD
(Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development). #ad

May I o er additional examples:

What are the rami cations of cloning?

What is intelligence?
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9/2/2020 What are Essential Questions? - The Second Principle

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?

Signi cant 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 t 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 de nitive answers. Some are also existential in nature. Many are the BIG questions that we ask
throughout our lives.

Try it out
1. Create ve new essential questions to direct your teaching. Or, from previous course content, re ectively distill at least  ve
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:

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 speci c 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 nding answers? (Here clearly molded rubrics help clarify

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9/2/2020 What are Essential Questions? - The Second Principle

expectant behaviors and also make subjective grading easier and more balanced.)

Today’s learners can glean accurate facts and gures 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 justi cation, not just an answer or
   
response?

    4.  Does the question lead students to ask other questions? 

    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?

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    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)

Jacobs, H. (1997). Re ning 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.

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9/2/2020 What are Essential Questions? - The Second Principle

** 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
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Learn more about the art of creating questions. See Five Basic Types of Questions.                  

Contact Leslie 

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