The Impact of Inquiry in the Social Studies Classroom on Short-term and Long-term Retention of Information

In this age of instant access to information, increased scrutiny should be given to the process of thinking within historical context. How do we assess this new knowledge? This study investigates the effectiveness of one solution advanced by the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS), which is inquiry-based learning using the C3 Framework and Inquiry Design Models (IDMs). These IDMs emphasize the use of a compelling question and several supporting questions to scaffold the presentation of several primary and secondary sources to students, who use them to answer these over-arching questions and form historical meaning and relevance for themselves.