Social Justice Action Project

Powerful Questions - A powerful question will be the foundation of your Action Research Project and will help to guide your research. 

Powerful questions:

1. Require more than one-word response;
2. Help to identify, interpret and evaluate perspectives and relationships;
3. Analyze significant events, trends, and developments about a topic or issue;
4. Reach conclusions about issues that you can support with evidence. 

Asking and responding to powerful questions provides a focus for research and inquiry and helps you think critically. Powerful questions:

• ​promote curiosity, encourage creativity, and lead to more questions
• are open-ended - there might not be just one "right' answer
• encourage responses that promote deeper understanding and require decisions and jusdgements that can be supported by evidence or criteria

Tips for Creating Powerful Questions:

• Does your question promote inquiry?
• Does your question require a judgement?
• Powerful questions begin with the following words or phrases:
  • Which . . . 
  • What if . . . 
  • How . . . 
  • Why . . . 
  • Should . . . 
  • To what extent (how much) . . . 

Think about the following when formulating your question:

• What . . . 
  • is worth knowing?
  • is uncertain?
  • is unclear or needs explanation?
  • requires exploration?
  • requires a decision or judgement?
  • leads to a deeper understanding?
  • connects to other familiar events or developments?
  • incorporates existing knowledge?
  • sparks imagination? 
  • engages people's interest?
  • requires a shift in perspective?
  • makes people think?
  • requires people to express an informed opinion? 

Thinking Critically

Responding thoughtfully to powerful questions requires you engage in critical thinking. 

Critical thinking requires you to :

• make reasoned judgments about an issue
• consider evidence from a variety of sources
• use criteria to arrive at a judgement

How to become an effective critical thinker:

1. Investigates, analyzes and interprets a variety of available and relevant evidence
2. Makes reasoned judgments (supporting your opinions and thinking with facts and evidence)