THE POWER OF THE QUESTION

Last week, I took part in an educational retreat at the Opal School in Portland Oregon. The experience invited us to consider the connections between empathy, agency and change-making. There were many powerful ideas to engage with: the child as a competent learner, the environment as a teacher, documentation as communication and playful inquiry as the school’s stance on learning.

I was particularly struck by what I would like to call the ‘the power of the question’. Teachers and children at the Opal School step into the unknown when they investigate ‘real questions’. These questions facilitate authentic meaning rather than following a pre-determined path. They are found everywhere in the school and support everyone with the co-construction of meaning and the sharing of ideas and perspectives.

‘In inviting children to consider “real questions”, ones that hold many possibilities, we engage and sustain their curiosity and imagination, creating a culture of inquiry, where diverse hypotheses, theories and ideas can live and develop’ The Opal School

My thinking about questions reminded me of a recent interview on the Podcast ‘On Being’. Pádraig Ó Tuama describes a certain Zen tradition that supports community members with re-considering their questions. When someone asks a ‘closed’ question, someone will say ‘MU’. This is a sign, meant to invite someone to come up with a question that holds more possibilities.

“Un-ask the question because there’s a better question to be asked. The question that’s asking is limiting, and you’ll get no good answer from anything. This question fails us, never mind subsequent answers. I think that’s a really delightful way to understand the world. And asking a wiser question might unfold us into asking even more wiser questions.” - Pádraig Ó Tuama

Wiser questions also solicit wiser answers so I embarked on my own journey of ‘unasking questions’ In Portland. I started with thinking about the courageous stance and strong pedagogical identity of the Opal and wondered: How can international schools reflect the context and honour the cultural, political, personal and local? How do we avoid standardization and duplication and create a truly authentic experience in our schools?

Then I wondered if we should start with thinking first about the experiences, ideas and points of view of all stakeholders in our schools: How can their theories, values and ideas become catalysts for learning?

From this question, I started to think about the research that is needed to grow our practices and theories about learning: How do we engage with ‘what is in front of us’ in a way that we grapple with what we don’t know? How can we see our mistakes as opportunities? How can we discover something new?

The next question evolved from the one before as I considered learner agency, change and the aims of an international education:

Viewing children as citizens took me to a question about the image of the child and the power dimensions between adults and children: How can our listening to children be powered by curiosity and involve a willingness to be surprised, to let go of our assumptions, take in ambiguity and examine our perceptions?

How can we recognise and attempt to alter the cultural climate which shapes the ideas adults hold about children?

This took me to a question that is perhaps the most important one. The conversations around learner agency are often infused by words listed below. If we do not reflect on the cultural, political, individual forces that impact the way we look at children, I am afraid that we will only end up in a space of ‘proxy agency’: How can we examine structural language such as ‘children’, ‘giving voice’, ‘autonomous’ or ‘empowerment’ in children’s participation and avoid the risk of reproducing inequalities?

How can we avoid ‘domesticated’ forms of agency where students are manipulated to want what the teachers and curriculum designers want them to want? (Matusov, von Duyke and Kayumov, 2015)