Questions are synonymous with inquiry. They can launch and frame learning and provide opportunities to plan and clarify next steps. They can invite students into their schooling experience and help share the landscape of learning with one another and with their teacher. Questions can deepen inquiry to move beyond the superficial and towards the meaningful, the impactful, and the transformational.
However all too often a focus on the depth and sophistication of questions in the inquiry classroom is overlooked. Teachers get caught up in “covering the curriculum” and fall into transactionary learning experiences, ones in which learning lands in the realm of recall, rote study, and regurgitative performances. Teachers feel the pressure from government enforced examinations, standardized tests, and mandated summative assessments, ones in which are often misconceived as having one pathway towards their execution and achievement. Often teachers teach the way they were taught. They take on actions and make decisions, and they utilize structures and adopt frameworks that they themselves experienced in schools. As a profession, we fall into certain pedagogies because we ourselves experienced these pedagogies and had particular learning experiences that have metaphorically shaped our teaching DNA.
To be direct, in order to teach differently and to adopt a stance different from what we typically do, we must first see the benefit of doing something differently. We must first see that in taking a different path we will get to a different destination. We must understand that by investing our efforts and time into different experiences, we will, indeed, yield a different return on investment from our teaching. If we always do what we have always done, we will always get what we have always got.
Questions, when done well, done with intention, scaffolding, and a mindful approach to the type of learning we strive for, have numerous benefits in the inquiry classroom. This is precisely why I have written Inquiry Mindset Questions Edition. Have a look at the 8 Benefits to Question Routines sketchnote for a glimpse into the book and stay tuned for release updates in the coming weeks.
