Do kids learn BETTER by asking questions?

May be. May be not. It depends.

Here’s a facebook status by Abhishek Ghimire, a well respected and renowned educationist from Nepal. He has been doing amazing works in trying to bring positive changes in the education sector of Nepal.

What I like about his FB posts is that they generate a lot of discussion in the comments section. Mostly by teachers from all around Nepal. And, just a quick glance at those comments show that there are many truths, half-truths and even “wishes” about how teachers should teach, how learning should happen.

So here’s his recent post and my rough translation from Nepali to English:

“In today’s classroom, we need to create an environment where kids ask question, not rote-memorize the book to give answer.”

Or, this might make more sense:

“In today’s classroom, don’t make the kids rote-memorize the book to give answer but create an environment where kids ask question.”

Either way, the insistence is in the idea that kids learn better whey they are allowed to ask questions, but not when told to rote-memorize the answers written in the books.

Also, the emphasis is on “In today’s classrooms” which might be pointing towards the idea of how education should be in the 21st century.

The post also reflects a general progressive way of thinking about learning: teachers should not feed information/answers into the heads of students, students should be allowed to “inquire” “explore” and “experiment” on their own. Teachers should not be teaching all the time, students should be taking charge of their learning. Students should be able to construct (co-construct) their own knowledge through inquiry, not through books.

In simple words, the progressive position is: don’t teach, just facilitate.

I am quite happy that I don’t have any hard philosophical stance on this. Neither a moral stance. For me, these philosophies lack the simple reality about how learning happens.

A Time for Question:

I think there’s an appropriate time for questions. And, there’s an appropriate time for reading from the book. Same goes for any teaching/learning activities.

Context matters. The level of the students matters. Their prior knowledge matters. The learning objective matters.

From a cognitive process of learning, these - asking, reading, doing, making, experimenting, writing - are various tools. Some for input, some for understanding, and some for exploring. Some are for analyzing, some are for generating, and some are for reflecting.

Therefore, from the perspective of learning process, you could ask yourself: Is asking questions better for learning than reading from the book?

And once again, I remind myself of what Dylan Wiliam has said:

“What works in education is not the right question. Because in education, everything works somewhere, and nothing works everywhere. The interesting question is: under what conditions does this work?”

What I’m interested is in finding out is:
Under what conditions kids learn better by asking questions rather than reading?

I leave that to you too.