Questioning strategies are the focus of this chapter.  The Guided Inquiry Design (GID) Framework puts student-led questioning at the heart of inquiry learning (see Chapter 3 and the November blog posts beginning with “School-Wide Inquiry Learning.” In the Open, Immerse, and Explore phases of the GID, educators and students frontload their learning so that the questions they pursuit are deeper and more personally meaningful than their off-the-tops-of-their-heads questions might have been.

Figure 5.3 (page 81) shows the questioning strategies spotlighted in Maximizing School Librarian Leadership. All of these questioning strategies can be used effective in the GID Framework: Question-Formulation Technique, Question-Answer Relationships, Question the Author, Text-Dependent Questioning, and Socratic Questioning. Chapter 5 includes descriptions of each of these strategies and provides references for those seeking more information about each one.

Essential Questions
Coteachers can develop essential questions to frame an inquiry. These questions describe big ideas for which individual students or groups of students can drill down deeper into one or more aspects of these big ideas to find their most pressing genuine question(s). Educators’ abilities to think in terms of big ideas that connect required standards and students’ interests can capitalize on these questions during the Open, Immerse, and Explore phases of the Guided Inquiry Design (GID) Framework.

Still, it is important that students have the opportunity and responsibility to take the educators’ essential questions in student-initiated directions. Supporting students as they dig deeper into the sub-questions that shape responses to the complex overarching essential questions is teacherly work. Through conferencing in the Identify phase of the GID, educators can push students’ thinking and help them find the “third space” between curriculum and students’ authentic interests (Kuhlthau, Maniotes, and Caspari 2015, 17).

Questioning Develops Analytical Skills
“Only if we continuously work to develop and use our complex analogical and inferential skills will the neural networks underlying them sustain our capacity to be thoughtful, critical analysts of knowledge, rather than passive consumers of information” (Wolf 2018, 62). This idea that analyzing information and situations and drawing inferences help us think critically and ask better questions rings true to me.

For example, the Right Question Institute applies the skills of thoughtful questioning and listening to their vision for “microdemocracy.” In this context, thoughtful (and respectful) questioning can help people engage in decision-making conversations and participate more fully with governmental and public institutions whose decisions impact their lives.

If I were in charge of the world, students would be in school today on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. They would be focusing the entire day on studying and asking questioning about Dr. King’s legacy. They would be thinking together about human rights and planning or taking action to further his dream–our dream…

Cross-Discipline and Discipline-Specific Questions
Figure 5.1 in Chapter 5 may be especially helpful to school librarians who are developing their practice as inquiry framers and skillful questioners. Cross-discipline questions can relate to the purpose for reading or the reader’s background knowledge on the topic. The figure offers discipline-specific questions for these content areas: arts and language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and technology

All of these questions and questioning strategies can support student reflection and double back to two essential questions for inquiry learning:

1. Why is/was this question meaningful to me?
2. What will I do with the data, information, and knowledge I gain/gained from this inquiry?

If educators’ goal is to ensure that students are self-reflective thinkers and learners have long-lasting connections to their learning and who put their knowledge to use, then these two questions can be used at the beginning as well as at the culmination of any inquiry learning cycle.

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

1. Which “new” questioning strategy/ies can you add to the mix, and how will you share it/them with colleagues and students?
2. What cross-discipline or discipline-specific questions would you add to Figure 5.1?

Works Cited

Kuhlthau, Carol C., Leslie K. Maniotes, and Ann K. Caspari. 2015. Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century, 2nd ed. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

Wolf, Maryanne. 2018. Reader, Come Home: The Brain Reading in a Digital World. New York: Harper.