Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions

Enduring Understanding: Social scientists examine cause and effect to see relationships between people, places, ideas, and events.

Why are social scientists concerned about cause and effect?
How can examining cause and effect help us understand relationships between people, places, ideas, and events?
To what extent can understanding cause and effect help us solve problems and make decisions?
How does the study of history help us realize that ideas and actions of individuals and groups have consequences and shape events?

Enduring Understanding 2: Social scientists find the connections between events of the past and present to help understand our world.

Why should we study the past?
How can studying the past help us understand the present world and the future?
How can past events shape present and future events?
Why should we be concerned about future events?
How can we study the past?
To what extent can studying the past events help us predict future events?
How can the study of history help us compare and contrast the relationship between the past and present?

Enduring Understanding 3: Social scientists analyze and recognize how people, places, and ideas change over time.

Why should we understand how people, places, and ideas have changed over time?
How can people, places, and ideas change over time?
How have the actions, ideas, and values of people changed over time?
How have the cultural and physical characteristics of places changed over time?
How have the ideas of people changed over time?
Is the world today a better place than the world of the past? Will our future world be better than today's world?
How can technology help us recognize and analyze change over time?
How can the study of history helps us connect continuity and change?

Enduring Understanding: Social scientists study and compare people, places, ideas, and events to make sense of our world.

Why should we compare and contrast people, places, ideas, and events?
Why should we recognize universal patterns that exist within our world?
What tools can social scientists use to compare and contrast people, places, ideas, and events?
How are people and places alike?
How are people and places different?
Are the people, places, ideas, and events in the world becoming more alike or more different over time?
How can technology help us study and compare people, places, ideas, and events?

Enduring Understanding 5: Social scientists recognize and analyze multiple points of view to explain the ideas and actions of individuals and groups.

Why should we recognize and analyze multiple points of view?
Why should we care about the perspectives of others?
How can looking at multiple points of view help us explain the ideas and actions of individuals and groups?
How can examining viewpoints that are different from our own help us explain the actions of others?
How can looking at different perspectives help us better understand ourselves?
How can recognizing multiple points of view help promote tolerance and understanding of diversity?
How can differing points of view affect relations between and within societies?
How can the perspectives of a group affect their use of and impact on the environment?
To what extent can examining multiple perspectives help us understand conflict and promote cooperation and/or conflict resolution?

Enduring Understanding 6: Social scientists analyze and interpret evidence to solve problems and make decisions.

What evidence do social scientists collect?
How can you determine if evidence is valid and reasonable?
How can you use evidence to solve problems and make decisions?
What types of problems are of concern for historians, geographers, civic leaders, economists?
To what extent can studying evidence from the past help us prevent future problems and make decisions that will affect the future?

Enduring Understanding 7: Social scientists make inferences and generalizations about various types of information and draw conclusions from a variety of sources.

Why are making inferences and generalizations and drawing conclusions important in understanding our world?
How can making inferences about various types of information and drawing conclusions help us understand our world?
How can we use various types of information to make inferences and generalizations about various types of information?
How can we use a variety of sources to draw conclusions?
Why should we use a variety of information and sources to make inferences and generalizations and to draw conclusions?

Enduring Understanding 8: Social scientists gather, classify, sequence, and interpret information and visual data in order to recognize how people, places, ideas, and events shape our world.

Why do social scientists gather, classify, sequence, and interpret information and visual data?
How do social scientists gather, classify, sequence, and interpret information and visual data?
Why is visual data important for understanding people, places, ideas, and events that shape our world?
To what extent does visual data help us to understand how people, places, ideas, and events shape our world?
What types of information and visual data do social scientists gather, classify, sequence, and interpret?
To what extent is visual data more powerful in helping us understand the world than other types of information?
How can we use technology to gather, classify, sequence, and interpret information and visual data?
To what extent can the study of history help us develop chronological thinking?

Enduring Understanding 9: Social scientists recognize and analyze spatial relationships in order to see the relationship between and among people and places.

What are spatial relationships?
Why should we be able to recognize and analyze spatial relationships?
How can recognizing spatial relationships help us to see the relationship between and among people and places?
To what extent do spatial relationships influence the relationship between and among people and places?
How do spatial relationships change over time?