A review and blueprint application of the inquiry design model

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Notes

1. The authors’ second collaboration, Inquiry Design Model: Building Inquiries in Social Studies (Swan et al., 2018), goes more in depth on framing, filling, and finishing an inquiry unit and extends the discussion to include finding the right “content angle,” elaborates on what makes a question genuinely compelling, and expands on how to build curiosity through proper staging and extension of questions and activities. Volume three, Blueprinting: An Inquiry Based Curriculum (Swan, Grant, & Lee, 2019) elaborates even further on the IDM, providing pathways for making inquiry-based instruction part of the norm in a social studies classroom as well as the focus of a comprehensive curriculum plan. This excellent study classifies different types of inquiries and explains how to scaffold student performance up to the point of “handing the blueprint over to students” and “looping” across courses. Both subsequent publications offer more complete examples, like the one I provide here in Figure 2. Swan & Grant (2015, 2018) and Swan, Lee, & Grant (2019) also edited NCSS bulletins with lessons devoted to teaching within the C3 Framework.