Designing inquiry questions  (Page 4/5)

For example, Inquirer A might look up J.S. Bach's descendants, note how many were composers, and include that as a "fact" in the report. But Inquirer B might become very interested in those sons and how their lives and music were affected by the fact that J. S. Bach was their father. B's final report might even focus on a musical family "dynasty," a phenomenon that is fairly common in the world of music but that B had never thought about before, making this question one that led to new insight.

On the other hand, Inquirer B might find that discussions of "well-tempered" tuning employ many unfamiliar terms and so require too much background knowledge to pursue during this inquiry, while the same question leads Inquirer A to new insights about tuning systems and the history of keyboard instruments.

So the goal of this creation is to develop some insights about you as an inquirer. What types of questions led you simply to discover facts that you found easy to understand and use in your report? Although they are useful during an inquiry because they lead to relevant information, "fact" questions do not make good inquiry-guiding questions , because they do not encourage you to stretch your understanding, abilities, or the ways you think about music.

Which kinds of questions became the focus of your investigation, causing you to ask more questions, dig deeper into the literature, think about what you found, question or compare the answers you found, or change the way you think about music and musicians? Investigation/insight questions make the best inquiry questions. Did you have only one question in this category, or was there more than one? Consider carefully what it was about these questions that put them in this category for you.

Finally look at the questions that you could not pursue because understanding the answer requires more background than you have right now. Some of these questions may have lost your interest already. However, there may be a question or two in this category that really frustrate you because you would like to have that background and be the kind of person who can understand the answer to that question. Questions that require more background than you have right now do not make good questions for your next inquiry; however they can serve as guide-posts to keep you on track in a long-term series of inquiries .

Setting a long-term goal for a series of inquiries

Inquiry based learning is often driven by a long-term "practical" goal. Typical goals in music learning are often a bit vague, for example:

Vague long-term music-learning goals

• I want to know more about music.
• I want to play an instrument better.
• I want to be a better composer.

In inquiry, it is much more useful to have very specific learning goals that are stated in terms of being able to do something that you cannot do now. This helps to keep you on track and measure your progress over the course of a series of inquiries. For example:

Specific long-term inquiry goals

• I want to be able to understand what "well tempered" means.
• I want to be able to play my favorite tunes by ear.
• I want to be able to include counterpoint in my compositions.