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About the Strategy

Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions: Best Practices in the Question Formulation Technique

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RQI has appeared in major media publications

In the Press

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Make Just One Change

Partnering with Parents

The Right Question Institute makes it possible for all people to learn to ask better questions and participate more effectively in key decisions.

Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions

The Question Formulation Technique, created by the Right Question Institute, is a simple yet powerful strategy to teach students how to formulate their own questions. Learn the Question Formulation Technique today, facilitate the strategy tomorrow, and watch students become more curious, engaged learners.

Questioning, Advocating, and Participating in Democracy

Learn how asking questions and partnering in the decision making process can fundamentally change how individuals participate in democracy.

Cover of the book Future Wise by David Perkins

…it wouldn’t be hard to supercharge the Question Formulation Technique with big questions. Teachers could choose Question Foci with big understandings in mind. Learners could include criteria related to insight, action, ethics, and opportunity as they sort their questions for importance. The main point is this: putting learners in charge of questions.

— David N. Perkins, Professor of Teaching and Learning, Emeritus, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA

Students working on their computers in a classroom.

For me, their questions and the young man’s comment made my day. I wanted the students to own the class. I wanted them to have a say in what we learn and how we learn it. After using the QFT just one time, I was already noticing a change in the engagement of my students.

— Rob Evans, High School History Teacher, Chadwick School, Palos Verdes

It helps me by getting me to think about questions on my own. Also, it gets my mind in motion to think about the questions other people make.

— 8th Grade Student, Gus Garcia Young Men's Leadership Academy, Austin, TX

I’d also enjoy seeing more teachers take a page out of the Right Question Institute and help students learn to formulate great questions.

— Adam Grant, Professor of Management and Psychology, The Wharton School, Philadelphia, PA

Today I learned how to alter and improve my research question. This has already helped my research question become more manageable and fit within the requirement of the project better. This helped me zero in and pinpoint which section of my topic I am truly interested in.

— High School Student, Petaluma City Schools, Petaluma, CA

Hundreds of thousands of people across many fields are enthusiastically using RQI’s resources to help individuals develop their own ability to ask better questions and participate more effectively in decisions.

Facilitate student curiosity and engagement

Resources for Teaching + Learning

Build effective school-family partnerships

Resources for Schools + Families

Make it easier to identify decisions that affect us and to see the connections between decisions on different levels that have an impact on us each day

Resources for Voter Engagement

Microdemocracy communicates a simple vision: effective participation in a democracy can start when people begin to participate in decisions that affect them in their ordinary encounters with public or publicly funded institutions.

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Over 300,000 educators around the world have used the Question Formulation Technique, and the Right Question Institute and its strategies have appeared in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Education Week, and many other publications. See RQI in the Press