Questions in the Classroom

Acquiring the ability to formulate one’s own questions could be the simplest, most powerful “great equalizer” of any skills and content taught in schools today. But, the deliberate, explicit teaching of the ability to formulate questions is rarely done. Most people acquire the skill through exposure to an elite education, or years of higher education, advanced training and much professional experience.

The skill of question formulation is considered so difficult and worthy of learning that when The New York Times asked several college presidents what a student should learn from four years of college, Leon Botstein of Bard College said the best a college can do is prepare them to ask “strategic questions,” and Nancy Cantor of Syracuse University affirmed that the best a college can do is prepare its graduates to “ask the right questions.” (8/4/2003).

RQP has figured out how to teach the powerful skill of question formulation in a short amount of time, and in a way that could be integrated into any subject matter at any level of education.

RQP’s teaching methods have been featured at national conferences of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Teachers who have always valued inquiry-based learning are astounded by the simplicity and power of RQP’s methods to do something they valued in theory, but often had trouble producing in practice: students formulating their own questions.

Teaching RQP’s question formulation methods in the classroom requires one simple change: from the teacher preparing all the questions and posing all the questions of students to the teacher helping students learn how to formulate their own questions. This one deceptively small change reflects a challenging and significant change in behavior for both teachers and students. When it is put into practice, the results are impressive. One teacher, after using RQP’s methods, put it clearly: Teaching students to pose their own questions is teaching students how to learn.

Teachers who are accustomed to encouraging inquiry-based learning, and are comfortable with promoting student participation, find that they can make this change quite easily. Another high school teacher commented: Although I have had my students formulate questions, this method is more generative. It also creates a community of questions that help to drive learning. Another teacher observed how the RQP invites students to be thinkers- to articulate what they don’t know but want and need to know. A teacher in an adult diploma program for 16-18 year old high school drop-outs was struck by how the process engaged traditionally disengaged learners and transformed them into independent learners. The RQP strategy, she said, is the tool to use if you want to encourage your students to be self-directed learners and take responsibility and charge of their own learning. Students who use RQP methods to formulate their own questions are able to organize their ideas about what they do not know and what they need to know.

RQP methods directly help struggling students develop higher order thinking skills. But, the methods are relevant not only to struggling students. RQP methods have helped students at the highest level – law students, medical students, graduate students in public policy and education – discover new ideas and questions they had never before considered. These students use RQP's question formulation methods to increase their ability to understand an issue more deeply and reach that understanding more quickly.

Educators working with young adults who did not finish high school, discuss the impact of RQP on their students in: “Why Didn’t We Learn This in High School?”