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Helping Families Ask Questions Could Be Your Most Powerful Engagement Tool

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.

A student who hadn’t said a word all summer led his group in identifying open and closed questions.

— Sun Ezzell, Professor, Mt. San Antonio College, Walnut, CA

Sometimes, I have a lot of questions, and this way I can express those without being judged… I get to learn a lot more.

— 8th Grade Student, Belfry Middle School, Belfry, KY

[The QFT] helps you form ideas, new ideas, and like prepare yourself for what you’re about to learn or what you’re learning.

— 6th Grade Student, Belfry Middle School, Belfry, KY

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

Cover of the book To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink

In the world of sales, being able to ask the right questions is more valuable than producing the right answers. Unfortunately, our schools often have the opposite emphasis. They teach us how to answer, but not how to ask. The folks at the Right Question Institute are trying to correct that imbalance. They’ve come up with a method that educators can use to help students learn to ask better questions—and that can assist even those of us who graduated back in the twentieth century.

— Daniel H. Pink, New York Times Bestselling Author

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