Quotes About Inquiry

Always the beautiful answer Who asks a more beautiful question. —E.E. Cummings

In some ways, Meier was trying to extend the kindergarten experience through all grades. Teaching kindergarten "was such an extraordinary intellectual experience, and I thought, Why couldn't we just keep doing that?" Only in kindergarten, she told me, "do we put up with kids asking questions that are off-topic.

Importantly, the professor was also "willing to ask questions without knowing the answer. Teachers and professors, we think our authority rests on having answers. But students find it really liberating to have a teacher say, 'I don't know the answer—so let's figure this out together.

We come out of the womb questioning," noted the small-schools-movement pioneer Deborah Meier.

to ask powerful Why questions. To do so, we must: •  Step back. •  Notice what others miss. •  Challenge assumptions (including our own). •  Gain a deeper understanding of the situation or problem at hand, through contextual inquiry. •  Question the questions we're asking. •  Take ownership of a particular question. While a fairly straightforward process, it begins by moving backward.

at least temporarily, it's necessary to stop doing and stop knowing in order to start asking.

So perhaps the first rule of asking why is that there must be a pause, a space, an interruption in the meeting, a halt of "progress," a quiet moment looking out the window on the bus. Often, these are the only times when there is time to question.

What do you want to say? Why does it need to be said

A question can reside in the mind for a long time—maybe forever—without being spoken to anyone.

embrace ignorance

One good question can give rise to several layers of answers, can inspire decades-long searches for solutions, can generate whole new fields of inquiry, and can prompt changes in entrenched thinking," Firestein writes. "Answers, on the other hand, often end the process.

What Dan Meyer did in showing the video and then holding back as he waited for that question to form in students' heads was to transfer ownership: Instead of asking the question himself, he allowed students to think of it on their own—at which point it became their question.

Rothstein maintains. "Just asking or hearing a question phrased a certain way produces an almost palpable feeling of discovery and new understanding. Questions produce the lightbulb effect.

we all live in the world our questions create.

Fear is the enemy of curiosity

The more we're deluged with information, with "facts" (which may or may not be), views, appeals, offers, and choices, then the more we must be able to sift and sort and decode and make sense of it all through rigorous inquiry.

In studying "master questioners," Hal Gregersen inquired about their childhoods and found that most had "at least one adult in their lives who encouraged them to ask provocative questions." The Nobel laureate scientist Isidor Isaac Rabi was one such child; when he came home from school, "while other mothers asked their kids 'Did you learn anything today?' [my mother ] would say, 'Izzy, did you ask a good question today?

Great questioners "keep looking"—at a situation or a problem, at the ways people around them behave, at their own behaviors. They study the small details; and they look for not only what's there but what's missing. They step back, view things sideways, squint if necessary.

The answer is, through questioning. Rather than run from a failure or try to forget it ever happened, hold it to the light and inquire, Why did the idea or effort fail? What if I could take what I've learned from this failure and try a revised approach? How might I do that?

Basic formula: Q (questioning) + A (action) = I (innovation). On the other hand, Q – A = P (philosophy).

Exploring What If possibilities is a wide-open, fun stage of questioning and should not be rushed.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Hackett Fischer observed that questions "are the engines of intellect5—cerebral machines that convert curiosity into controlled inquiry.

Being willing to question is one thing; questioning well and effectively is another.

Cooperrider says that "organizations gravitate toward the questions they ask.