As we start early on in one's life, be it at school or home there is an exhaustion to ask questions and comply with the status quo. To quote Neil Postman who said, most of the time children enter school as questions and end up as full stops. Later as managers or leaders in the corporate world when the relationship is between boss and subordinate, the answers are often to please rather than ask a rhetorical question back. This is an intriguing phenomenon as I call it and has become a lethargy for the basis of generating good questions to stimulate thought and inquire about the task at hand.
Questions as a Learning Tool
The ability to ask questions, collect information, and actively explore one’s environment is a powerful tool for learning about the world. How do people decide which information to collect in any given situation? One influential idea is that information-seeking or inquiry-learning are similar to scientific experiments. Science experiments start by asking a question about something you observe, doing background research to learn what is already known about the topic, constructing a hypothesis, experimenting to test the hypothesis, analysing the data from the experiment, and drawing conclusions. Therefore, the art of asking questions becomes paramount to drawing conclusions about the big idea or understanding the essential question.
According to this metaphor, a child shaking a new toy, a student asking a question, or a person trying out their first smartphone, can all be compared to a scientist conducting a carefully designed experiment to test their hypotheses. The core assumption is that people optimize their queries to achieve their learning goals in the most efficient manner possible.
Inquiring students are ones who generate loads of questions, sort the questions, classify the questions and finally synthesize to arrive at answers. When a question follows a question, a thought moves forward. From known to the unknown, curiosity leads to questioning. There may be knowledge gaps and information gaps to initiate solutions to those questions.
Stanley Payne is the pioneer in the field of asking questions way back in 1951. The art of asking questions set the tone of syntax and use of words in questionnaires.
As you enter the work force, those who take positions in the corporate world remain unperturbed for the lack of asking the questions. Do leaders build intrinsic qualities of asking questions? Is it because they inquire, that they can become efficient in their decision-making process? One practice that can engage leaders is to initiate questions early on in all areas of work.
To stimulate our thoughts, we need to find ways to explore more. Answers are stopping points. In some countries the system of education has limited the questioning style and technique more as a means to find the answers rather than stimulate thought. Socrates developed the art of asking questions almost like a culture. The nature of beauty, truth, and goodness leads to prodding and constructing, and deconstructing of questions. It is an important path for interrogation that gives leads and then furthers the understanding of the unknown.
The Power of Conversations
Sara Kelly Mudie and Jeanie Philips feel that Critical thinking is high-level thinking that requires us to analyze, evaluate, synthesize, or apply what we know. Its relationship with questioning is cyclical. Good questions—deep questions—are launching points for critical thinking. Edgar H. Schelm, MIT Sloan believes that communication is essential to healthy relationships in people. The difference between asking and telling. Or better still the gentle art of asking instead of telling. Hence conversation is a fundamental human experience that is necessary to pursue intrapersonal and interpersonal goals across myriad contexts, cultures, relationships, and modes of communication.
We converse with others to learn what they know—their information, stories, preferences, ideas, thoughts, and feelings—as well as to share what we know while managing others’ perceptions of us. People spend most of their time during conversations talking about their viewpoints and opinions when meeting people for the first time. In contrast, high question-askers—those who probe for information from others—are perceived as more responsive and are better liked. Although most people do not anticipate the benefits of question-asking and do not ask enough questions, people would do well to learn that it doesn’t hurt to ask.
From theory, research, and anecdotal experience, we know talk mediates learning. We know that teacher dialogue shapes the types of conversations that occur in a classroom. Furthermore, the kinds of classroom talk that students experience enhance the shape, type, scope, and quality of learning. Understanding how the ways and types of students talk facilitate, learning of language and content, and the way the teachers can invite and support student contributions are of central importance to learning.
Explore with Dialogic Questions
A dialogic stance is characterized by a teacher’s willingness to listen, follow, and selectively support student ideas, purposes, and lines of reasoning; it is represented through the varied form and contingent use of teacher questions and is not tied to the use of a particular form of a question. Dialogic questions are designed to bring out strengths in their students’ classroom talk, to cause coherence across their experiences, and to connect student contributions to particular educational and pedagogical activities.
A key indicator of classroom learning intentions and expectations is the teacher question. Although materials, tasks, and abilities shape learning experiences, expectations for student performance are routinely signalled and signified by patterns and kinds of teacher questions. Relationships between teacher questioning and student learning are long and complex. Questioning is a teacher’s most used, and arguably most powerful, talk move. Questions serve to regulate and direct the immediate scope of classroom talk, to open up or shut down student contributions, and to support student comprehension or stunt student inquiry. Teacher’s use of particular question patterns prompts and sets particular kinds of student talk and inquiry. Questions have traditionally been classified by their form. For example, authentic, genuine, or open questions portray teachers’ inquiry and invite more than one answer. Display, test, or closed questions with expected responses are asked so the teacher can assess students’ learning. This useful typology addresses whether the questioner is inviting multiple divergent possibilities of response. Mostly, research findings substantiate authentic questions and justify display questions, but this should not automatically be the case. Authentic or open teacher questions are associated with increased student talk as they invite a wider range of responses, including what students think, feel, and know, and have become associated with the high-level reading comprehension of the subject that is addressed.
For dialogue and discussion to occur, teachers and students must listen and build on each other’s contributions. There is a need for exploratory talk, for students to “try out ideas, to hear how they sound, to see what others make of them, to arrange information and ideas into different patterns”. Teacher talk shapes the what and how of classroom talk, and teacher questions are the dominant discursive tool of choice in both learning and mainstream classrooms. Teachers who need to initiate thinking or anyone interested in probing thinking at a deep level may construct Socratic questions. Socrates (399-470 B.C.), the well-known Athenian philosopher, believed that the disciplined practice of thoughtful questioning enables learners to produce ideas logically.
Socratic questions can be phrased in three general ways:
Based on the Socratic model questioning technique helps students to think critically by focusing explicitly on the process of thinking. According to Socrates, when questions are disciplined and carefully structured, then, students can slow down and examine their thinking processes. Thoughtful, disciplined questioning in the classroom can achieve the following teaching and learning goals: Support active and student-centered learning; Help students construct knowledge; Help students develop problem-solving skills, and improve long-term retention of knowledge. Questioning is the key means by which teachers find out what pupils already know, identify gaps in knowledge and understanding and scaffold the development of their understanding to enable them to close the gap between what they currently know and the learning goals.
Looking into the Future
How can schools better adapt to an ever-rapidly changing environment? Learning means change. It is not a matter of accretion of adding something. How can schools better capture, convert and create knowledge? Metaphors for questions such as an engine driver or rock climbing are excellent as they define the end. The stopping points. What next? What else? So? Could also be stepping points to further our investigation or inquiry of the thought. The quintessential element is changed. You can change the way you think and learn. Change is the universal constant.
Any questions?
Let’s Inquire about that.
