Learning to Ask Questions: A Pathway to and through College for Students in Low–Income Communities

I know poverty. I've raised a family on welfare. I've worked on the factory floor. I've been laid off. And I've had some breaks. I'll always remember the encouragement I received from a caseworker at the welfare office. It eventually led me to pursue higher education—an associate's degree, bachelor's degree, fellowship at MIT, and ultimately, a master's degree.

I'm no longer poor, but I've seen firsthand the importance of higher education when it comes addressing the opportunity gap, and in my professional life I've continued my journey by helping others grasp their own opportunities and steer their own decisions.

Through my work as codirector of The Right Question Institute, a nonprofit that helps people learn to advocate for themselves and participate in decisions that affect them, I've worked extensively in the realm of education. We have continued to learn from people in low–income communities, who have a lot to teach us all about fighting poverty. Through trial and error, we've developed a simple technique that can help prepare students for success in high school, college, and beyond, regardless of their family's income or background. It's a technique relevant to educators at all levels, from kindergarten through graduate school, and I'd like to tell you about it.

The technique grew out of our experience working with parents in the low–income community of Lawrence, Massachusetts, a former center of the textile industry that, after World War II, fell on hard times. We were working on a dropout prevention program sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, trying to recruit parents to participate more actively in their children's educations. The parents told us they did not participate, did not even attend meetings at their children's schools, because they “didn't know what to ask.”

At first we tried to solve the problem by giving parents a list of questions to bring with them to school meetings, but we soon realized this only reinforced their dependency on us. We needed to figure out how to teach parents to ask their own questions.

How do you teach the skill of question formulation to people with limited literacy or education? In working to solve this problem, we learned the ability to ask one's own questions is a foundational skill, essential for thinking, learning, and taking effective action. Moreover, as with reading, writing, and arithmetic, the absence of this foundational skill was holding people back.

Eventually, the parents in Lawrence began to use their new question–asking skills to get more involved in their children's educations. Teachers reported they'd never had such productive conversations with parents as they had with those who came in with their own questions, ready to talk.

The parents, it turned out, had important questions about a variety of issues. They asked about what their children were learning in school, the school curriculum and how it was being taught, their involvement in school activities and decisions, the overall school environment, the school's budget and the budget process, the decisions being made at different administrative levels and how they impacted their children, and resources available to help them and their children.

They quickly took their new question–asking skills to other places, as well: to the doctor's office, the job–training center, and the welfare office. They demonstrated that learning to ask one's own questions created greater self–confidence, effective advocacy, and more productive partnerships.

Since that revelation, and through years of hands–on fieldwork with educators, students, and parents, we've established and honed a simple, easy–to–teach, and easy–to–learn process for building question–asking skills in all people. It's called the Question Formulation Technique (QFT), and it can be used to help students take control of their own educations so they can position themselves for college admissions and, as important, succeed in the world of higher education once they arrive on campus. It can also help parents—including those who never attended university—guide their children along the path to a college degree.

At the moment, urban, suburban, and rural school districts around the United States are using the QFT as part of their curricula. State departments of education have begun to promote its use as a method for meeting Common Core standards. Community colleges, four–year colleges, and graduate school programs, including medical schools, are incorporating it into their pedagogy. We have a network of 12,000 (and growing) educators from around the world who have signed up on our website, rightquestion.org, and, no doubt, the number of teachers using this process in classroom settings is much greater.

Teachers like the simplicity of the QFT. It's easy to adopt and weave into their lesson plans. The QFT has a “high return on investment,” especially because the investment isn't cumbersome and the results are immediate and profound.

At its core, the process teaches students to produce their own questions, improve those questions, and formulate strategies for further action based on the questions. Here's how it works:

The teacher presents a Question Focus related to the curriculum–specific content they are teaching (it can be something like a debate proposition, a data set, a news article, an image, a map—anything to provoke thought). Students then do the following: •

Produce questions using a set of four rules: Ask as many questions as you can; do not stop to discuss, judge, or answer any question; write down every question exactly as it is stated; and change any statement into a question. These rules give the process structure and aid creativity, and you'll see how it works in an example below.

By the end of this process, students will have practiced three distinct thinking abilities: divergent thinking, the ability to generate a lot of ideas and think broadly and creatively; convergent thinking, the ability to focus, analyze, and come up with answers and conclusions; and metacognition, the ability to think about your own thinking—what you've learned and how you learned it. The synthesis of these three thinking abilities, studies have shown, is central to the creative process and a skill common to successful people in all fields, from engineering to business, art, scholarship, science, and more.

Question Formulation Works, from High–Poverty Schools to University Classrooms

What happens when you teach this technique to students in high–poverty schools? Would students with limited reading and writing skills be able to use it and learn from it?

Teachers in low–income communities shared with us that their students were not accustomed to being challenged to think for themselves. They expected their teachers to give them information and direct their tasks. When introduced to the process, they often needed some time to adjust to such an active learning strategy.

Ling–Se Peet, a Boston Public School teacher, deliberately taught the skill of question formulation to her students in a remedial summer program for ninth graders who were at risk of being held back. The class was confronting provocative issues stemming from a powerful memoir, “All Souls: A Family Story from Southie,” by Michael Patrick MacDonald, about growing up in South Boston in the 1970s, a time when neighborhood residents fiercely opposed Boston's efforts to desegregate the schools.

At the beginning of the five–week program, Ms. Peet's students, who were primarily African American and Latino, struggled with the process of asking questions. They would get distracted. One student spent the whole session looking at herself in a makeup mirror. Others played with the felt–tipped markers. Some students held separate conversations, which frustrated other students who were trying to complete the activity.

But over the course of the summer, Ms. Peet stuck with it, believing her students could become better and deeper thinkers by asking their own questions. Soon, she saw students sitting up straight in their seats, excited by the process and interested in the questions their classmates were asking.

By the end of the summer, students were grappling with some of the profound issues addressed in the memoir, issues that were related to their own experiences as well.

For instance, Ms. Peet facilitated a QFT session where the Question Focus was, “A person's environment determines whether they are successful or not.”

Here are some of the questions students formulated around that topic, and remember, these questions were written down exactly as they were asked, and there was no time to judge, discuss, or answer the questions as they were formulated: •

How can a person's environment determine whether they are successful or not?

After discussing the difference between closed– and open–ended questions, and rewriting and improving their questions, the students prioritized three questions: •

What type of environment can determine if you are successful?

At the end of the summer, one of the students wrote in his final evaluation of the class that, as a result of learning how to ask questions, he now “feels smart, because I'm asking good questions and giving good answers.” His classmates, both male and female, echoed his comment. Ms. Peet noted the QFT was “the most effective strategy for engaging African American and Latino male students” that she had seen.

Ms. Peet asked her students to name the most important thing they had learned the whole summer. Eighty–seven percent of the students said it was learning how to ask their own questions.

Students at colleges and universities who have also used the QFT have walked away from the experience with an appreciation for the process similar to that expressed by Ms. Peet's students.

Teachers across the country report that students who learn to ask their own questions consistently are more engaged, take greater ownership of their learning, and learn more. It has great potential to increase college success rates.

The Skill of Question Formulation and the Road Away from Poverty

There is no one easy pathway out of poverty, but higher education is an important piece of the puzzle, and this requires students to engage with their learning and take control of their educational destiny. Being able to ask your own questions certainly won't guarantee anything, but I've seen that not being able to ask questions ensures dependency, both inside and outside of the classroom.

We must learn from the great educational insight of the parents in Lawrence. All people need the opportunity to learn how to ask their own questions. If we do not deliberately teach this skill to students in low–income communities, we are making it more difficult for them to find a way to college and out of poverty.

Furthermore, the ability to ask questions is essential for academic achievement and success once students reach higher education. In short, the skill of asking questions needs to be taught and reinforced at every step of the educational ladder.

If we believe there is a connection between academic success and ending poverty, then we should invest in the potential of all students to learn to ask their own questions and to think for themselves.

I know what it's like when people don't believe in your ability to think for yourself. I also know what it's like when people do believe in you. It makes a difference.