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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

Resources

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.

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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Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions

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.

I think it helps us build higher level questions. When we go over our questions and try to make them better, it helps us think. The questions help us dig deeper and go beyond basic facts and we develop questions that give us more than yes or no answers.

— 11th Grade Student, Oxnard Union High School District, Oxnard, CA

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 believe all of us, including our students, should spend far more time thinking about the right questions to ask. Most of us spend too much time worrying about having a right answer in both our professional lives and personal lives. But the truth is, the answer can only be as good as the question asked.

— James Ryan, Former Dean, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA

Their level of engagement in the activity and each other’s ideas was not only exhilarating, but literally heart-warming.

— Erica DeVoe, High School English Language Arts Teacher, Westerly High School, Westerly, RI

I have seen students that are on IEPs or been receiving Title 1 support excel in the classroom when participating in the QFT. I would have never discovered what was going on in their brain if we didn’t allow for this opportunity.

— Todd Poole, Assistant Principal, Holden Elementary School, Kent, OH

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