Welcome to our newest installment of inQuiring Minds, where we feature a slice of online conversation that has caught our attention recently. We hope to hear your comments and opinions, and as always, help us keep the conversation going through Facebook and Twitter!
- In “Conversations: What Are You Learning?” Deborah Owens shares her own use of the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) in a 10th grade project on bioengineering. She excerpts some interesting conversations with her students about their research projects – check it out!
- Chantelle, a BYU student pursuing a degree in Education, engages in her own version of the QFT and in “The Art of Asking Questions,” she reminds us that the worlds greatest innovations were born out of questions.
- Elementary school teacher, Ms. Kristin Hauser, relates her experience with a process similar to the QFT in her blog post “Common Core Lesson: Asking Questions.” Ms. Hauser urged her students to form questions based around the book Grandfather Twilight, and she includes their reactions to the process in quotes and pictures.
- Karen Brinkley from UT Knoxville asks her readers in a recent post: “Are You Asking the Right Questions?” She also explains the long-term advantages of honing questioning skills, both inside and outside the classroom.
- Lastly, Jana Mohr Lone discusses the inquisitive nature of children in her post, “Asking Questions,” and argues that for question formulation skills to be developed later in life, we should engage them in conversations in which their questions are central. Ms. Lone is the director and founder of the Northwest Center for Philosophy for Children.
That is it for this week. We also want to encourage our readers to register for RQI’s Second Annual Summer Seminar occurring in both Boston and Los Angeles this July! The seminar will offer an immersion in the Question Formulation Technique, an opportunity to deepen one’s understanding of the QFT’s pedagogical principles, and an exploration of its practical applications across many subject areas, grade levels, and demographic groups.
Until then, let us know, what have you been reading?
Reading Stanford Medicine Magazine Summer 2012 and came across this quote in an article on the digitalization of biomedical research, an interview with Atul Butte, MD PhD he is quoted as saying:
“In traditional biology research, people ask a key question, or run a trial. They make clinical and molecular measurements to address that question. They use some statistics or computation. Then they validate what they’ve found in another, more advanced trial. I would argue that three out of these four steps are now completely commoditized. We can outsource all that stuff and save a lot of money. But what you’ll never outsource is asking good questions. As scientists, that’s what we’re really supposed to do best.”
Katherine,
this is a precious quote. thanks so very much for sharing it! Stuart Firestein has a great book called Ignorance: How it Drives Science. It’s a great quick read. Lots of fun, very stimulating. thanks again for sharing this!
dan