To what questions are schools answers? And what of our courses? Animating throughline questions to promote students' questabilities.

Abstract

Schools are too often places in which answers are conveyed to questions students are rarely, if ever, asked. This article offers, therefore, some examples of content - animating and throughline questions - and assessment practices that centralize questions rather than answers. While animating questions return teachers to the mysteries that excite us as intellectuals (excitement that is crucial to share with students), they also spark throughline questions - provocative questions that give the content of our courses apparent purpose. Using a notion of dangerous teaching, I argue that such practices serve to disrupt the ahistorical stance of much of social studies and history teaching that offers students little opportunity to connect what they learn in schools to political charged debates over what and how they should be taught.