Essential Questions

Essential Questions

Figuring out what you actually need to know makes it easier to find what you actually need.

Your research always gets down to the essentials - essential questions.

Essential questions are not "what is" questions. Essential questions ask you to make a decision or choose among various plans, strategies, or courses of action.

Instead of asking, "What is acid rain?" you might ask, "How does acid rain affect air quality and how can those effects be changed?"

The Right Questions

For example, a student comes to the librarian while developing a proposal for an investigative science project. He asks, "What plants continue to grow in the winter?"

After a few exploratory questions about plant dormancy and growth, the librarian asks, "How are you going to use these plants that still grow in the winter?"

The student replies, "I'm going to feed each of them different substances to see how growth is affected." It turns out that winter is not one of his variables, and that all he needs is some houseplants that he can use for his test since they will still grow in the comfort of his home where the investigation will be conducted. Asking the wrong question will get you an answer, but not necessarily the one that answers your questions.

To develop your essential questions, you need to first identify what you already know and then figure out what you want to know. For the student in this example, he already knows that plants grow, but he wants to know what affects their growth. He plans to feed the plants different substances such as water, water with fertilizing nutrients added, and water with sugar added.

What is his essential question?

One possible essential question might be:

Asking an essential question that leads to original thought and ideas takes your research to a higher level.