Skill: Asking Questions

One of the oddest things in secondary (and sometimes tertiary) education is that questions such as those in textbooks, homework, tests and exams are derived from perfected answers. That is, someone composes the answer before creating the question. This more often than not results in poor questions because one ends up trying to jam in several ideas into a brief question that usually maps to a lengthy and detailed answer. And because the question-creators are adults, the context of the questions are often poorly selected. When I became a postdoc, I realized that the “art” is being able to ask questions on the fly as information/knowledge is revealed – in simpler terms, to be able to ask questions skillfully with the intention to have the knowledge provider (a seminar speaker, for example) to clarify, reiterate or verify (if you think the speaker may have made a mistake). The skill of asking purposeful questions is a highly creative one, and something we can pursue to develop upon in our YCISL students. This is especially timely to help students go beyond a single perspective on a topic (like a textbook or a state curriculum), and is a skill that will continue to pay dividends over time – for example, to be able to ask helpful questions efficiently in a cross-functional team meeting; questions that can foster improved decision-making and leadership. To start, I intend to include in the application form a section that lists a selection of objects as “answers” and the students have to create questions for those object answers. This will reveal whether the student has the propensity to employ “normal” ideas or creative ones in their problem solving (at least at the stage of framing the problem in the form of a question).