EduCon Reflection 1: Inquiry and the Asking of Questions
It’s taken two weeks longer than I wanted, but I’m finally getting my EduCon reflections down in written form. It’s from no lack of reflecting on my part . . . I haven’t really stopped thinking about the conversations and experiences, but oddly enough all of that thinking has left me without energy to write. But now’s as good a time as any to get started. I’m going to go backwards in talking about the sessions I attended and then hopefully zoom back out for an overall perspective.
I’ve mentioned former SLA teacher Zac Chase before; his presentation with Diana Laufenberg at the 2011 EduCon was a real kickstarter to some of the things I’ve tried to do in the last year, and I’ve been following along as he talks about his studies at Harvard, so I didn’t want to miss his session about inquiry. Promoting and cultivating a sense of inquiry is one of my major goals as a teacher; I don’t think you can get into the philosophy business without a healthy sense of inquiry, but my own enthusiasm isn’t something I can just bottle and pass on.
There was an interesting dynamic in this conversation. Fairly often the conversation moved from addressing inquiry head-on to discussing themes like power relationships in the classroom. There was a slight tension in the room between people who wanted to take the conversation even further in that direction and others who weren’t sure what the devil authoritarian structures in the traditional classroom have to do with the sense of inquiry. (It’s very easy to look at that as a case study in the messy nature of inquiry – one question can lead to any number of places.) I think I get where the overlap is – if students aren’t empowered to ask questions and follow where they lead, there’s not a real sense of inquiry. And the traditional classroom structure where the teacher is presumed to have the answers and the students need to figure out those answers can short-circuit the sense of the true unknown that’s required for inquiry.
That said, I think I’m a bit more conservative than Zac, at least based on an exchange near the end of the conversation. I mentioned that as a teacher, it’s very hard to figure out how to phrase a question in such a way that students don’t feel lost when they try to answer it but also don’t feel hemmed in by the search for One Right Answer. Other people had similar thoughts, and Zac asked the question, “Why are the teachers the ones asking question? Do we think that the students need to be taught how to ask questions?†As I nodded my head yes, Zac continued. “Why do they have to be taught? They seem to be naturals at it. You don’t have to teach a kid to walk . . . they see people doing it, they figure out for themselves.â€
And that’s the point where I got off the train. When I look at the adults of the world, I do not see a lot of expert questioners. Unlike walking, where the rewards are pretty obvious and most of our evolution has worked to build up the structures of the body that make it possible, we don’t always have the incentive to think and ask questions. Asking questions takes time, and by the time you formulate a really good question about the importance of carnivorous behavior to lion survival, you’re lion food. So there are parts of our brain and nervous system pushing us to inquiry, and some parts pulling us away from it. If you look at the people who don’t really question the world around them, I think you’d agree that the pull is pretty strong. There’s an anti-intellectual aspect of our culture, and there’s a comfort in certainty that many of us are unwilling to give up.
So even though we can all imagine the little kid who never stops asking questions, we shouldn’t presume that every one of those little kids will keep asking questions and get better at asking good questions. (And I do think there are some questions that are better than others, but that may be another story.) I absolutely believe that as educators we need to give students room to frame and pursue their own questions, but I also believe that we should help prime the pump and spur them on with questions of our own. As it so often is, the trick is finding the balance.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.