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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.

Cover of the book Failure by Stuart Firestein

Rothstein and Santana have put together a straightforward and accessible book about what seems like a simple idea – get kids to ask questions, questions they care about. Don’t be deceived. It’s one thing to get kids or anyone to ask a question or two; it’s another to get them take possession of the questions, to recognize that learning is asking questions and not just memorizing stuff. The art of making questions, nearly lost, is thankfully revived in [Make Just One Change].

— Stuart Firestein, Professor of Biology, Columbia University, New York, NY

Asking questions is a step in creating change.

— 11th Grade Student, Los Angeles Unified School District, Los Angeles, CA

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

Just when you think you know all you need to know, you ask another question and discover how much more there is to learn.

— 6th Grade Student, Palo Alto, CA

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