Questions for Opening Wide and for Probing

At the center of your Map should be an issue that concerns you in the sense that you may want to know more about it, advocate a change, design a curriculum unit or a workshop, and so on. The following questions allow you to tease out considerations that are connected to this issue.

Where is this an issue—where is the controversy happening?

Who are the different groups implicated?

What changes could be promoted?

What are arguments for the change and counter-arguments?

What categories of things (and sub-categories) are involved in your subject?

What definitions are involved?

What related questions have other people investigated?

Where is there a need for primary versus secondary research?

What is the general area and what are specific questions?

What are the background versus focal issues?

What is your provisional proposal?

What are the research holes that need to be filled?

What would you be able to do with that additional knowledge?

What ambiguity emerges in all this—what are tensions and oppositions?

(See Phase C)