1. A New Vision for Strengthening Our Communities
Northern Essex Community College
A New Vision for Strengthening Our Communities
March 30, 2018
Luz Santana
The Right Question Institute
Cambridge, MA

2. Acknowledgments
We are deeply grateful to the John Templeton Foundation and The Hummingbird Fund for their generous support of the Right Question Institute’s Million Classrooms Campaign.

3. Today’s Agenda
Welcome & Overview of Our Beginnings and the Idea of Microdemocracy
An Experience in the Question Formulation Technique (QFT)
Unpacking the QFT: Three Thinking Abilities
Classroom Examples
Why is the skill of question formulation so important now?

4. We’re Tweeting…
@RightQuestion

5. LAWRENCE, MA, 1990
“We don’t go to the school because we don’t even know what to ask.”

6. The Right Question Strategy
Core components of the strategy:
The Question Formulation Technique (QFT)
The Framework for Accountable Decision-Making

7. Over 200,000 teachers using the strategy
Family Engagement
Health Care
Innovation
The Classroom
Over 200,000 teachers using the strategy

8. RQI prepares parents to advocate, to participate in decision-making processes and to hold decision-makers accountable…What I appreciate about  the Right Question [Institute] is its effort to meet parents where they are. Equally important is its recognition that no system, no professionals, no individual dealing daily with large numbers of people can meet all their needs without the avid involvement of those whose needs are to be met...
-Professor Martha Minow of Harvard Law School, in The Justine Wise Polier Memorial Lecture: In the Meantime: The Gap Between Promises and Realities for Kids, February 2001

9. What is Microdemocracy?
“Individuals using essential democratic skills to participate in decisions made in their ordinary encounters with public institutions”

10. The need to build skills…
Asking questions
Participating more effectively in decisions
Foundational skills for learning, participating and taking action

14. What happens when people learn to ask questions and advocate for themselves?
“What ever it takes to get the information I need.”
Session participant in a homeless shelter in Louisville, Kentucky

15. Building Democratic Habits of Mind
The Question Formulation Skill

16. “In both science and industry, the ability to ask the right questions is probably the greatest talent one can have.” (p. 22)
– Leonard Mlodinow,
Physicist & Screenwriter

17. “We must teach students how to think in questions, how to manage ignorance.”
Stuart Firestein
Former chairman of the Department of Biology at Columbia University

18. College Presidents on What Students Should Learn in College
“The primary skills should be analytical skills of interpretation and inquiry. In other words, know how to frame a question.”
- Leon Botstein, President of Bard College
“…the best we can do for students is have them ask the right questions.”
- Nancy Cantor, Chancellor of University of Illinois
The New York Times, August 4, 2002

19. Yet…only 27%of students believe college taught them to ask their own questions
Alison Head, Project Information Literacy at University of Washington, 2016

20. But, the problem begins long before college...

21. Percentage of Basic Skill Attainment
Sources
Data on question-asking based on parent and teacher feedback

22. Percentage of Basic Skill Attainment
Sources
Data on question-asking based on parent and teacher feedback

23. What happens when students do learn to ask their own questions?

24. Research Confirms the Importance of Student Questioning
Self-questioning (metacognitive strategy):
Student formulation of their own questions is one of the most effective metacognitive strategies
Engaging in pre-lesson self-questioning improved students rate of learning by nearly 50% (Hattie, p.193)
John Hattie
Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800
meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, 2008

25. Thinking Together Using the Question Formulation Technique

26. Rules for Producing Questions
1. Ask as many questions as you can
2. Do not stop to answer, judge, or discuss
3. Write down every question exactly as stated
4. Change any statements into questions

27. Producing Questions Ask Questions Follow the Rules
Ask as many questions as you can.
Do not stop to answer, judge, or discuss.
Write down every question exactly as it was stated.
Change any statements into questions.
Number the Questions

28. Question Focus
More structure in the curriculum, advising, and student support services will be implemented in the next school year.

29. Producing Questions Ask Questions Follow the Rules
Ask as many questions as you can.
Do not stop to answer, judge, or discuss.
Write down every question exactly as it was stated.
Change any statements into questions.
Number the Questions

30. Categorizing Questions: Closed/ Open
Definitions:
Closed-ended questions can be answered with a “yes” or “no” or with a one-word answer.
Open-ended questions require
more explanation.
Directions: Identify your questions as closed-ended or open-ended by marking them with a “C” or an “O.”

31. Closed-ended Questions
Discussion
Closed-ended Questions
Advantages
Disadvantages

32. Discussion
Open-ended Questions
Advantages
Disadvantages

33. Improving Questions Closed Open Closed Open
Take one closed-ended question and change it into an open-ended question.
Take one open-ended question and change it into a closed-ended question.
Closed
Open
Open
Closed

34. Prioritizing Questions
Review your list of questions
Choose the three questions you consider most important.
While prioritizing, think about your Question Focus:
More structure in the curriculum, advising, and student support services will be implemented in the next school year.

35. Prioritizing Questions
After prioritizing consider…
Why did you choose those three questions?
Where are your priority questions in the sequence of your entire list of questions?

36. Next Steps From priority questions to action plan
In order to answer your priority questions:
What do you need to know? Information
What do you need to do? Tasks

37. Share Questions you changed from open/closed
Your three priority questions and their numbers in your original sequence
Rationale for choosing priority questions
Next steps

38. Reflection
What did you learn?
How did you learn it?

39. Today’s Agenda Welcome & Overview
An Experience in the Question Formulation Technique (QFT)
Unpacking the QFT: Three Thinking Abilities
Classroom Examples
Why is the skill of question formulation so important now?

40. Let’s peek inside the black box

41. The QFT, on one slide… Question Focus Produce Your Questions
Follow the rules
Number your questions
Improve Your Questions
Categorize questions as Closed or Open-ended
Change questions from one type to another
Prioritize Your Questions
Share & Discuss Next Steps
Reflect
Ask as many questions as you can
Do not stop to discuss, judge or answer
Record exactly as stated
Change statements into questions
Closed-Ended:
Answered with “yes,” “no” or one word
Open-Ended: Require longer explanation

42. Three thinking abilities with one process
Curiosity and Rigor
Three thinking abilities with one process

43. Thinking in many different directions
DIVERGENT THINKING

44. Narrowing Down, Focusing
CONVERGENT
THINKING

45. Thinking about Thinking
METACOGNITIVE
THINKING

46. Student Reflection
“The way it made me feel was smart because I was asking good questions and giving good answers.”
-Boston 9th grade remedial summer school student

47. Exploring Examples

48. Question Focus Design Basics
Just one requirement for the QFocus:
It should not be a question
*Key Tip for Designing an Effective QFocus:
The simpler, the better.

49. Classroom Example: Kindergarten
Teacher: Jennifer Shaffer, Walkersville, MD
Topic: Non-fiction literacy
Purpose: To engage students prior to reading a nonfiction text about alligators

50. Question Focus

51. Student Questions Is the alligator camouflaged?
Why do the babies have stripes?
Are those baby crocodiles?
Is it a mom or dad crocodile?
What is the green stuff?
Why are they in the water so low?
Where are they going?
Why are the baby alligator’s eyes white and the mom’s black?
Why are baby alligators on top of the momma alligator?
Why does momma or daddy have bumps on them?

52. Classroom Example: High School
Teacher: Daniel Fouts, Des Plaines, IL Topic: 12th Grade Government unit on the American presidency at moments of crisis Purpose: To engage students at the start of the unit and to help students select a topic for an independent project

53. Question Focus
“Nearly all men can handle adversity; but if you really want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

54. Student Questions How does power challenge one’s morality?
What kind of man can handle adversity?
Should everyone have some type of power?
What can power tell us about a man’s character?
Does power make people corrupt?
How can power be obtained by adversity?
What if the person who is qualified for power doesn’t attain it?
Why are some people affected by power differently?
How is a man’s power tested?
If adversity supposedly makes you stronger, does that mean that power makes you weaker?
What is considered power?
What defines good character?
How can we ensure that the good men get the power?

55. Next Steps:
In groups, students prioritized by choosing their consensus favorite question to add to the class list
Each student selected l question from the class list to work to answer as the class moved through the unit
Students answered their question using research and knowledge from the unit in a two-page reflection paper
Students shared their reflections in a class discussion on the final day of the unit

56. Classroom Example: Professor: Sun Ezzell
Topic: Community college Writing Fundamentals class on Alfie Kohn’s Educational Leadership article “The Case Against Grades.”
Purpose:
To spark student discussion and help them write response to the article.
To engage students in thinking about their own relationship to grades.

57. The Case Against Grades
Question Focus
Group 1 (students who completed the reading):
The Case Against Grades
Group 2 (students who did not complete the reading):
Grades

58. Student Questions Group 1: (QFocus: The Case Against Grades)
Why are students intimidated against grades?
Is the grading process needed?
How does the grading system affect students?
Why do we have a grading system?
Does the grading system need improvement?
Why is it challenging to get good grades?
Why do students think school is challenging?
Why do students focus more on grading than learning?
Does the grading system help students in life?
Group 2:
(QFocus: Grades)
Should our success be based on a letter grade?
Is a grade more important than learning the material?
Are grades as valuable as positive as the educational system thinks it is?
Do grades have a positive or negative effect?
Why should a grade determine your knowledge?
Why is it challenging to get good grades?
What’s the effect of our grades in our personal life?
Can grades stop us from striving to be our best?
What are the consequences of grades?

59. Students’ New Understanding of Question Asking
“I discovered that by asking questions about the article it was easier to understand the article and the meaning behind it.”
“I learned that by doing the question exploration it can help you not be stuck when you do not understand the material.”
“The [QFT] was an amazing group activity... I loved that no one was excluded...”
“I learned I can come up with questions very quickly which is good because it means thinking and creativity is improving and growing.”
“When we come up with our own questions, we think more deeply.”
~ Students at Mt. San Antonio College

60. Why is the skill of question formulation so important now?

61. The Skill of Asking Questions
For moving from ignorance as weakness to ignorance as opportunity
For arriving at better answers (and more questions)
For demonstrating inquiry
And…

62. Individual Skills and Democracy
Image Courtesy of Highlander Research and Education Center

63. Democracy
“We need to be taught to study rather than to believe, to inquire rather than to affirm.” - Septima Clark
See Chapter 6 on Septima Clark in Freedom Road: Adult Education of African Americans (Peterson, 1996).

64. Now, Educators Lead the Work
The Right Question Institute offers materials through a Creative Commons License and we encourage you to make use of and/or share this resource. Please reference the Right Question Institute and rightquestion.org as the source on any materials you use.

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