Asking Open Questions

Throughout the 20th century (and often now), the asking of questions predominantly focused on:

• us as teachers beginning from a position of certainty, not curiosity; which prompts the question, “isn’t curiosity the mother of learning?”
• teacher centred learning and teaching; why do we have to know first? What our students already know would absolutely amaze us.
• filling in the gaps in student knowledge lacking
• the accumulation chunks of information; filling of the bucket
• a fixation on the known; a possession
• us as teachers asking and then very often answering our own questions

We must bury the 20^th century notion that, teaching is telling, learning is listening and knowledge is an object. We need to focus on optimising Dimensions of Learning.

In the conceptual and creative 21^st century, it is essential to transform learning and teaching so that our students acquire capabilities, competencies and the capacity to reason through complex processes, not the ability to regurgitate rote learned material.

We need to move away from asking students closed questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no, such as:

• Did you enjoy completing the assignment?
• Was it difficult?

Asking open questions such as the ones following, require our students to reflect on their learning, which is a good thing.

• What skills did you use to achieve this?
• In what other ways could you have tackled it?
• What satisfied you about the assignment?
• What feedback have you received?
• What things do you have to learn to make your best better?

We must encourage and empower our students by being guides on the side to frame the questions themselves in order to:

• find out more about the world and themselves
• help them discover more about what they already know
• expand their understanding through linking thinking and learning
• create new connections and applications from what they have learnt
• extend from just answering the questions to questioning the answers

We can achieve these aims adopting a greater emphasis on:

• project based, real life learning, which students readily engage with, because they are able to relate more to their learning by seeing it as something they can use; just in time learning
• both student and teacher open questioning, which enables the casting of doubt on previous concepts and ideas through multiple angles of view
• the usage of what is already known to solve problems and make predictions by making problems “real” for students through application
• learning to be based on authentic interest, “want to” and “can do” attitudes rather than “have to” teacher directed learning; moving to multiple dimensional learning from a linear one

This approach has the capacity to nurture personalised learning for each and every student:

- everyone has a personal perspective to be explored, explained and elaborated upon

- no wrongs, no rights, just differing angles and views

Information is so plentiful and being created at such an amazing rate, that “knowing stuff” isn’t the focus or relevant anymore, it’s all about:

• knowing how and why things happen and creating new connections in their worlds
• metacognitive processes, thinking about their thinking and using Habits of Mind, Multiple and Social Emotional Intelligences in their learning
• synthesis of all the pieces to arrive at an overall understanding of their learning; relevance

Assisting students to learn to frame their own open questions will inspire high level authentic learning in our classrooms.

- it will unlock our students’ natural curiosity

- the five E’s will flourish; that is: engage - explore - explain - elaborate - evaluate

“Judge a person by his questions, not his answers” Voltaire