From Story to Judgment: The Four Question Method for Teaching and Learning Social Studies

The Four Question Method identifies the questions that drive the thinking that real people do when they take the human world seriously. The authors, Jonathan Bassett and Gary Shiffman, have figured out how to describe and teach what it takes to answer those questions well. This inquiry method gives educators a way to integrate content ''coverage'' – through storytelling! – with practice in thinking skills that are central to history and its affiliated academic disciplines, together called social studies. The Four Question Method helps teachers to plan more effectively and students to learn more effectively. It provides guidance for writing research essays. And it transfers: the skills our students practice will work for them when they encounter and make their own history.