Why This Matters

"My inquiry questions are just comprehension questions with question marks."

Here's the giveaway: if you can answer all three of your inquiry questions correctly using only a single paragraph from a textbook, they aren't doing what inquiry questions are meant to do. Most new teachers write three factual questions, then relabel one of them "debatable" without changing its actual demand. Students notice, even if they can't say why — the third question just feels like the first two with different words.

Inquiry questions are the bridge between your statement of inquiry (the thesis, from Article 12) and the actual lesson-by-lesson experience of the unit. Get the question types right and the unit has a visible spine. Get them wrong and the SOI stays locked in the planner, disconnected from what students are asked to do each day.

Understand the Idea

MYP planning practice organises inquiry questions into three types, each with a distinct job. This three-part structure is common in current MYP planning guidance, though schools vary in how strictly they enforce a fixed number of each — treat the categories below as functional descriptions rather than a fixed quota you must hit.

Factual questions ask for information that has a correct, checkable answer. "What was a factory system?" "When did mechanised textile production begin in Britain?" These aren't lesser questions — they're the foundation. Students can't reason conceptually about something they don't know factually. The mistake isn't asking factual questions; it's stopping there.

Conceptual questions ask students to explain relationships, patterns, or why something works the way it does — moving from "what happened" to "why does this kind of thing happen." "Why might a change in how goods are produced also change who has power in a society?" This is a step up from recall: it asks students to reason using the factual base, not just report it. Conceptual questions are usually where students first start using the key and related concepts as tools rather than as vocabulary.

Debatable questions ask for a position that a reasonable, informed person could argue against — they require students to weigh evidence, not locate it. "Was industrialisation, on balance, a story of progress?" This only counts as debatable if there's a genuine case on both sides available in the classroom's evidence base. A question is not debatable just because it uses the word "should" or ends in a value judgement — it's debatable if a thoughtful, well-informed student could land on either side and defend it.

The reason all three matter, together, is sequencing. A unit that opens with only debatable questions asks students to argue before they know anything — that produces opinion, not inquiry. A unit that stays factual throughout never asks students to reason or take a position — that produces recall, not inquiry. The MYP's inquiry cycle assumes movement: factual grounding, then conceptual reasoning, then a debatable question substantial enough to carry the unit's argument — often the same territory as the statement of inquiry itself, restated as a question a student could investigate and answer with evidence.

⚠️ Common trap: the false debatable question. "Was industrialisation good or bad?" looks debatable but usually collapses into a factual list-of-effects exercise, because most classes only have evidence readily available for "bad." A question is genuinely debatable only if your classroom has (or you plan to give it) real evidence for more than one position.
🧠 Teacher insight: A quick classification test that works even under time pressure: ask "could I check this in a single source?" (factual), "does this ask me to explain a relationship using ideas I already know factually?" (conceptual), or "could two students, both well-informed, land on opposite answers and both be defensible?" (debatable). If you're unsure which bucket a question falls in, it's usually because the question is doing two jobs at once — split it.

Inquiry questions also aren't meant to live only in the teacher's planner. Current MYP practice treats them as visible artefacts of the unit — commonly displayed on a classroom wall, printed on task sheets, and referenced explicitly in lessons — precisely because their purpose is to organise student thinking, not just to satisfy a planning document.

📌 Official source: For the current official description of the three inquiry question types and how they're expected to function across a unit, check your subject guide and the MYP: From Principles into Practice guide via the IB programme resource centre — exact wording has shifted across guide revisions.

See It in Practice

Continue the Grade 8 I&S industrialisation unit. Recall the statement of inquiry from Article 12: "Rapid change in a society's systems of production can force different groups to compete over whose account of progress is believed."

Before — three questions that were secretly all factual:

  1. "What changed during the Industrial Revolution?" — factual, and correctly labelled.
  2. "Why did factory owners and workers disagree about industrialisation?" — labelled conceptual, but as written it just asks students to recall the disagreement, which is documented in every source they'll read. There's no relationship being reasoned through — it's fact retrieval wearing a "why" on the front.
  3. "Was the Industrial Revolution a good thing?" — labelled debatable, but with the evidence this teacher actually planned to give students (mostly accounts of factory conditions and pollution), there was only one side available. Students didn't debate; they agreed and listed reasons.

The teacher believed she had a factual, a conceptual, and a debatable question. She had three factual questions in different outfits.

After — genuinely differentiated by type:

  1. Factual: "What specific changes took place in how goods were produced in Britain between roughly 1760 and 1850, and who was affected by each change?" (Note: this is now explicit about what kind of factual grounding students need — changes and who was affected — so it actually sets up question 2.)
  2. Conceptual: "Why might people who experience the same period of change — factory owners, workers, and later historians — end up with different accounts of whether it counted as progress?" This asks students to reason from the factual base toward a pattern: that perspective shapes how change gets narrated, which is precisely the relationship in the SOI.
  3. Debatable: "Whose account of industrialisation — the factory owner's, the worker's, or the historian writing a century later — deserves the most weight in deciding whether it was progress?" This is debatable because the teacher now plans to supply genuinely conflicting sources (a factory owner's letter celebrating output, a worker's testimony to a labour inquiry, and a modern historian's revisionist reading) — so a well-informed student really could argue for any of the three and defend it with evidence.

Notice the "after" set does something the "before" set never could: question 3 is nearly a restatement of the SOI itself, turned into something a student can investigate and answer. That's the sequencing working as intended — factual grounding, conceptual reasoning, then a debatable question that carries the unit's actual thesis.

🧭 Planning decision: Write your debatable question, then check it against your SOI. If your debatable question and your SOI aren't clearly talking about the same relationship, one of them needs to move.

Apply It

Teacher Activity: Write six, classify, fix the fakes.

  1. For your own unit, write six inquiry questions without labelling them yet — just get questions down, roughly two aimed at "what," two aimed at "why/how," and two aimed at "should/which is more defensible."
  2. Now classify each one using the test from "Understand the Idea": checkable in one source (factual), explains a relationship using known facts (conceptual), or arguable both ways with real evidence available (debatable).
  3. For any question you're tempted to call debatable, name — specifically — the evidence you'll give students to support each side. If you can't name evidence for more than one side, it's not debatable yet; either find that evidence or reclassify the question as conceptual.
  4. Pick your strongest three (aim for at least one of each type) and check the debatable one against your statement of inquiry, the way the worked example did above.

Artefact to produce now: A three-question set — one factual, one conceptual, one debatable — written in final form, plus a one-line note under the debatable question naming the two (or more) sources or perspectives you'll actually give students to make it genuinely arguable.

Avoid This

The relabelled factual question. Swapping "what" for "why" without changing the cognitive demand doesn't create a conceptual question. Fix: check whether answering it requires reasoning about a relationship, not just retrieving a fact with an extra clause attached.

The one-sided debatable question. If your classroom's evidence base only supports one answer, your "debatable" question is a factual question with a value judgement bolted on. Fix: audit your sources before finalising the question — no genuine opposing evidence means no genuine debate.

Questions that never left the planner. Inquiry questions written once and never posted, referenced, or handed to students function as decoration. Fix: build them into the physical classroom — on the wall, on task sheets — and name them explicitly in at least the first and last lessons of the unit.

No connection to the SOI. Three well-classified questions that have nothing to do with each other, or with the unit's thesis, still fail. Fix: check that your debatable question and your SOI are visibly about the same relationship — that's what makes the question set feel like this unit's questions rather than generic ones.

Check Yourself

Take your debatable question from Apply It. Without looking at your notes, can you name the specific evidence or source you'd give a student arguing each side? If you can name at least two genuinely different, defensible answers with evidence behind each, your question is doing its job.

Continue Learning

→ Next: Article 14 uses this question set — especially the debatable one — to design the summative task students will actually be assessed on.

📎 Download: Inquiry Question Guide (stems + classification test) — sentence starters for each question type plus the checkable/reasoned/arguable test.
📌 Official source: Check your subject guide via the IB programme resource centre for the current official framing of factual, conceptual, and debatable questions in your subject group.