Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning

[00:01] Justin Baeder:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high performance instructional leadership, Justin Baeder. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

I'm your host, Justin Baeder, and I'm excited to be joined today by Ivan Hanel. Ivan helps schools develop a practical pedagogy of questioning. He is a trial attorney and a former classroom teacher who works with schools around the country and is the author of A Pedagogy of Questioning.

[00:35] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:37] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Ivan, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Well, thanks, Justin. I really love your show. Well, thanks very much. First of all, why do we need a pedagogy of questioning? Benjamin Bloom lived and spoke his taxonomy into the world.

[00:50]

Why do we need more than that? And we've been talking a lot in our profession the last couple of years about questioning. Why do we need a pedagogy of it?

[00:58] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Well, let's first start with the idea that there's nothing wrong with Bloom's Taxonomy, especially the revised version. It certainly describes a good way of approaching or structuring questioning. But the reality is that even though teachers have been exposed to Bloom's Taxonomy, there really hasn't been much outcome or product with respect to them planning better questions. And so that's kind of a puzzling thing. We have Bloom's Taxonomy, but it hasn't really done much to influence the way teachers plan and ask questions. And so I think one of the missing ideas is that teachers need to understand why Bloom's taxonomy is the way it is.

[01:35]

Even though Professor Bloom didn't necessarily intend it to be a model for questioning per se, it can be adapted and used as a way of planning questions, but you actually have to understand why Bloom's taxonomy is structured the way it is. And in our model called the Pedagogy of Questioning, You know, we provide both what I call a cognitive framework, which describes or discusses why Bloom's taxonomy is one way of looking at questioning and why it is ordered the way it is. And it's based on the work of other people, actually. But in addition to that, They also need a behavioral framework. They need how to approach questioning in the classroom to deal with the most common behaviors that take kids away from participation.

[02:16] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Well, and let's start there because I feel like if we look at bad questioning or the questioning that, you know, if we're evaluating it carefully, maybe using some sort of tool like depth of knowledge or Bloom's taxonomy, often the worst questions are the ones that we just ask to keep kids on their toes, right? You know, we say, oh, what did I just say? Or what's the answer? And they're not questions that are really designed necessarily to get kids to think, but just to kind of tell us as the adult who was paying attention. So, Ivan, what do you see as the most appropriate or the best use for questions when it comes to behavior?

[02:48] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Well, in terms of behavior specifically, teachers need to be given some specific strategies for how to overcome the most common behavioral, what I call behavioral roadblocks that exist that are present when you ask questions. So, for example, students will say, I don't know. And a teacher who doesn't know how to overcome the student's response when they say, I don't know, or act like it by shrugging their shoulders or looking away or looking into the textbook or whatever, is really stuck and is not going to get to better questioning with that student. Likewise, for example, teachers need to know why it is they need to ask what I call the A question to the C or the D student and how to actually do that in a way that's successful. So there are these behavioral things. For example, students also guess things.

[03:33]

at answers or questions. Teachers need to learn certain behavioral techniques or strategies that to overcome some students who want to disengage from participation. You know, I describe that as what I call the cultural disengagement, that some students inadvertently bring what I call a culture of disengagement into the classroom, and teachers need to understand how to overcome that. But you can't just give them the practice. That's one of the big mistakes people People just tell teachers, okay, well, if a student says this, then do this. If a student does this, then do this.

[04:05]

I don't think that works. I think teachers actually need to, we need to examine what we call, in a pedagogy of questioning, we have seven principles, which are really beliefs, which correspond to seven actions or practices. And so we have principles and practices. And teachers need to engage sort of their belief system, which is embedded in the principles. to overcome or to enact certain practices to overcome what I call the seven most common disengagement behaviors. So behavior is a key thing.

[04:32]

If you don't get all students participating, if you only ask the A question to the A student, if you respond to students' answers with negativity in tone or in the actual substance of the question itself, if you promote an attitude of guessing, if you go back to, if you leave questioning and go back to modeling or explanation too often, you essentially you essentially encourage behaviors which leave very few students participating in the conversation. And so to overcome a culture of disengagement, I think teachers need to be given not just the tactics to use, but they need to engage their own belief systems and reasoning so that they understand why some students aren't participating and how to overcome that. So that's why it's very important to have a behavioral framework in addition to a cognitive framework. There's a lot more to questioning than just the questions themselves.

[05:24] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Yeah, well, let's get into that a little bit, because I think as administrators, when we see that teachers are engaging in a style of questioning that's basically just a plea for someone in the class to say the correct answer. You know, if the first kid says, I don't know, all right, well, I'm going to call in a kid who's more likely to at least try to answer. And if that kid gets it wrong, I'm going to desperately search the class for someone who can answer this question correctly in front of the principal. You know, that's kind of a of the worst case scenario, right? What are some tactics or some approaches from your work that teachers can use? You know, if I ask a question and the first student that answers says, I just don't know, or they don't want to answer, they don't want to make eye contact, where do we start, you know, to pull more kids in behaviorally and get that engagement?

[06:10] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Well, there's a number of things that are brought up in what you've just discussed. You kind of talked about this idea of getting all students to participate. So that's literally our very first principle. And teachers must feel that they have the right and responsibility to call on all students in the classroom. That's a very first principle. you must call on everybody in the classroom.

[06:29]

But for various reasons, you know, some teachers don't believe that all, you know, that principle number one is literally we believe all students come to school with the need to learn, and when they're in school, they don't have the right not to learn. And when you break that principle down, which we do in workshops by having teachers pair up and discuss it, they come to the conclusion that they do have the right to call on all students in the classroom. And that in and of itself, when you feel the power to call on all students, And realize you're not doing it to impose on anybody, to create a gotcha moment, to embarrass anybody. But literally, I can't do your thinking work for you and make you an independent learner. I have to engage your brain in the process. I can no more do your thinking for you as if I were going to the gym.

[07:14]

I could do your exercise for you. It's just not possible. So that very first principle. gets, you know, gives teachers the power or the belief that they do have the right to call on all students. Now, another thing you brought up was this idea of calling on students who are more likely to give the correct answer. And that's because many, you know, and that stems from a certain belief system, which we talk about.

[07:36]

And many teachers are afraid to call on students and get the wrong answer, get a divergent response, sometimes for practically good reasons. You know, it's going to take long to, you know, we don't have much time and I need to move forward in the curriculum. But But in reality, there's a lot of fear. And that's really an interesting point to talk about. Many teachers are afraid in part for what we describe as fear for the student. You fear that the student is going to feel badly that they didn't answer a particular question right, that they're going to have a moment where their self-esteem is affected, whatever you want to call it.

[08:08]

But then there's also the corresponding fear. What happens if the principal is watching me? What happens if I ask this question and I'm The student doesn't give me the feedback I'm looking for and the principal notices that and then that makes me look bad. So there's this like tandem thing going on where you have both I feel badly for the student and I also may feel badly for myself. But when we realize that, we begin to understand that where this comes from is this belief, this almost crazy belief that we need to have immediate success in our questioning. We've adopted what I describe as a culture of immediate success rather than a culture of effort.

[08:45]

There really is no reason logically to think if a kid doesn't get a particular question wrong on a random Tuesday in 2016 at 1 p.m. or whatever it is, why should that be such a serious thing? Instead, we must recognize and reward effort rather than immediate success. So what we're talking about, some of the things you've described, fewer students participating, looking for immediate success in students responding, those sorts of tendencies come not because teachers want to ask poor questions or want to only have few students respond or just want to hear only success, but But we've actually adopted a culture in schools that rewards that. And we have to confront our beliefs and our fears about students before we can give them the chance to participate and succeed.

[09:38]

And so a pedagogy of questioning really has a pretty robust behavioral framework. To overcome what I consider the most common things that happen.

[09:45] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

I love your starting point there. We moved on from it pretty quickly and got into a lot of other things. But the idea that students come to school to learn and they don't have the right not to. I love that.

[09:56] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Yeah.

[09:57] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Not learning is not an option.

[09:59] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Well, right. It really isn't. I mean, there's nothing to do in school but learn. It's not set up to assemble the new iPhone 7. You know what I mean? We have nothing to do.

[10:06]

That's their obligation when they come to school. And it's our obligation to try to reach them. And that means all of them. And that means that I have the right to call on you. And it's not, again, it's not a bullying thing. It's not to get gotcha moments.

[10:18]

That's far from the purpose of questioning. But But but it's an important belief that and if you don't think that you have the right to call on students, if you think, well, you know, questioning is good for some students, but for these other students, I just won't ask them questions. It's not their preferred modality of learning. You really do leave people behind. All of us have eyes, ears. You know, we can listen.

[10:35]

We can be asked questions. and we can participate. And so it's really important, this idea. And to overcome the behaviors that lend to disengagement so that the culture of disengagement is diminished. We all know students who come to school from maybe home life, which is very directed, which is very be quiet, don't say too much, whatever it happens to be. But that's not going to work in the world of the future.

[11:01]

Our students need to hear their own voices. And as an attorney, which I also am, I particularly think that's important. in terms of preserving our democracy. For me, this is both an educational mission, but it's also a personal mission that these behaviors that we want to encourage, where everybody participates, where everybody justifies answers, where we tend to guess less, we tend to bring our reasoning with our answer, where we tend to approach the questions and the responses in a positive manner, where we're willing to be wrong and to learn from it and to put forth effort rather than expect immediate success. All of these ideas lend to, I think, a democracy that's strong and robust and includes everybody. So it's a kind of a combined thing.

[11:41]

But yeah, I think our behavioral framework is something that a lot of teachers really enjoy hearing about. They enjoy discussing. And the way we teach it in the book or in the workshop lets them develop their own thinking. And I think that's very important. You can't just tell teachers, call on all students or ask everybody the question or discourage guessing or don't be negative. You have to really engage the underlying belief So my belief is if we have to develop critical thinking in our teachers and encourage that process, if we're going to get critical thinking from our students, we can't just come and say to teachers, here's a list of words, here's a list of verbs, here's a list of adverbs, just call on everybody, here's Bloom's Taxonomy, memorize it.

[12:25]

That's not going to work, and it hasn't so far in terms of increasing the quality of questioning that goes on.

[12:32] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

and what I'm hearing underneath there is a respect for teachers thinking and teachers professionalism, as well as a respect for students thinking, you know, if we're going beyond, uh, I'm searching for someone in my class who can share the right answer in front of the principal, you know, we're really not just interested. And as you said, in whether a kid can say the correct answer at one o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon, we're interested in the thinking and we're interested in developing that thinking. And as teachers, instructional leaders, we're interested in developing that thinking and that capacity among our staff as well. So I appreciate that that's more than just a, just more than just a technique, you know, more than just to, you know, make sure all the kids raise their hands, but there's actually thinking behind that.

[13:14] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Yeah, I call that those approaches to me are very mechanistic, both with respect. And that's why even our pedagogy is a very flexible one. You know, we say if you don't like something about it, or if you want to change a principle or a practice, as long as you understand it, you have freedom to deviate. You know, our model isn't a one size fits all thing. And so this applies to the students and this applies to the teachers. You know, you can do all sorts of different variations in the questioning, but you have to have the concepts and you have to think about your own thinking.

[13:39]

You have to be metacognitive. This goes for the students, this goes for the teachers, this goes for us all. We haven't gotten the results, you know, so far by just saying, here's Bloom's taxonomy and here's, you know, use who, what, where, when, how, and why, and here are these verbs and adverbs and, you know, whatever. That so far has not produced the kind of conversations that we want to see happening in classrooms. And that's really the point. How do we create really robust conversations at least a few times a week with our students that really challenges and makes their brains work hard and in a way that really leads to learning.

[14:15]

So definitely that's a goal of ours.

[14:19] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Yeah, and that idea that students really should be doing some pretty hard work in that moment to participate in that discussion. And I wonder if we could talk a little bit about preparing to ask good questions, because I've spoken with a number of authors and consultants about questioning. And one thing that they have all said, regardless of which specific field within education they're in, whether it's science or math or literacy, is and regardless of the grade level, is to a person. They have all said good questions have to be prepared in advance. You just don't think of them on the spot. And I wonder if that lines up with your experience in helping educators ask better questions.

[15:02] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Yeah, you know, that's a perfect point, and it's one of our key points. When you're talking about the cognitive framework, you have to invest time in planning, and that means literally writing out the questions you intend to ask. It doesn't have to be that many. It can be, you know, 15, but it means going well beyond just sort of the, you know, what used to be called the essential questions of the lesson, you know, the big few questions or the purpose of the lesson. You really do have to actually get in some detail, write out some of the questions you might ask along a cognitive scaffold, and the benefits of planning are which we call a process of premeditation, thinking about your questions before you ask them, is very important, because what it turns out that the brain actually does, the neocortex, the mind, actually, when you write out a question, you actually anticipate or imagine the response the students are likely to give, and you probably think about, you know, well, John's going to say this, but Maria will say that, and maybe somebody's going to say something ridiculous, or just say, I don't know.

[15:57]

And so your mind subconsciously actually imagines many of those scenarios and then predicts or begins to put itself into the frame of the next question. And so when you write out 15 or so questions for, let's say, a 10 to 25 minute period or interaction, conversation, whatever you want to call it, you end up really actually thinking about 50 to 100 questions. Your mind has actually gone forward in time and created a much more robust and fluid cognitive scaffold. So you actually The process of premeditation or thinking about the questions you intend to ask and writing them out before you ask them is super important. One of the mistakes, though, is to think that we can simply give teachers, you know, via the textbook, the questions that they should ask. Because guess what?

[16:41]

When you're given questions from a textbook, I'm not saying that's a bad practice or idea. But when you think, oh, well, you know, we'll just write out the questions that the teacher should ask. Here they are. The problem is that teacher didn't actually think of those questions. There was no premeditation. So they're left usually at a very superficial level just saying, well, I'll just ask this question.

[17:00]

And they're just as surprised as maybe the teacher thinks, oh, well, this is my answer. But they don't really think through the process of what the student is going to respond and what maybe a divergent response is going to be and what happens if there's a behavioral issue. So because you didn't write out the question yourself, you were simply given it, that's not going to work. Teachers actually need to spend the time to write out a series of questions. It doesn't have to be that many, but they should be along a cognitive scaffold. And that planning of questions is super important.

[17:32]

Even as an attorney, I can tell you, I've seen attorneys who walk into depositions or to trial and they think they have all the questions in their head. And those times are really bad times. And I would discourage that heavily. You plan your questions out. You imagine those conversations before they happen, just like you would In our own lives, sometimes maybe we're going to a job interview and we prepare ourselves for questions we anticipate someone may ask us. And sometimes we're even taught to ask questions to them.

[18:00]

When you're about to have a serious conversation with somebody and you want them to tell you about some things, you think about the conversation you're going to have. And so it's not just about asking a bunch of questions over 15 to 25 minutes. It's about actually taking those 10 or 15 minutes beforehand to think through the questions you intend to ask along the cognitive scaffold.

[18:21] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

I love that because earlier this year I was putting together my interview questions that I would ask for my dissertation study and have to get those approved. People have to look at them and make sure they're okay and they're not going to violate any of the standards of research. And I realized that I had two questions that, you know, after interviewing people, they would answer both of those questions the same way. So one of those questions really needed to be reworded if it was going to provide new information. And if I had just imagined, you know, what are people going to say to this question and what are people going to say to this next question, I could have saved myself a lot of wasted time So just by doing that thinking in advance and not just coming up with the question, but as you said, thinking through, you know, how are people going to respond to that? How are different people going to respond?

[19:07]

And what can we do to make this an optimal learning experience for everyone with that in mind?

[19:12] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Yeah, I completely agree. And then, you know, in addition to taking that time for premeditation, you do actually have to plan the questions along a cognitive scaffold. There's some really interesting ideas about why that is. And that's, you know, of course, part of the cognitive framework of pedagogy of questioning.

[19:27] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Yeah, I mean, I totally agree that that planning is so critical. And back to your point about asking questions in a job interview, that's one of the big things that I coach people on when they're prepping for an administrator's job interview. Often the interview team will ask, you know, do you have any questions for us? And a lot of people honestly will say, no, I don't have any questions for you. Or they'll ask a question that they could have just looked up on the website. How many students go to this school?

[19:54]

Or they'll ask a question that has a no answer and leaves everybody feeling kind of negative. That thinking is so powerful. And thinking about the classroom and the cognitive work that we want students to do What are some of the processes that you help teachers go through to ask more cognitively demanding, more cognitively appropriate, better scaffolded questions?

[20:18] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Well, that's a great question in and of itself. You know, we do have a cognitive scaffold that we propose. It's similar to Bloom's Taxonomy. It uses some different language. I think the key idea, again, is, you know, you have to understand why the scaffold is the way it is. And it tends to, you know, in our work, we talk about a person whose name is Jeff Hawkins.

[20:36]

He actually is the inventor of the Palm Pilot, believe it or not, which was the old personal device from back in the day, which recognized him. But he went forward and he created a kind of a new theory called hierarchical temporal memory. And another theory called sparse distributed learning. And those are big mouthfuls of words. But basically, he says that the human neocortex produces intelligence as an emergent condition or emergent system or property, whatever you want to call it, because of its inherently hierarchical structure, which means that we must ask questions according to cognitive scaffold. So once you understand, okay, I do need to ask questions in a scaffolded way, which means that their complexity must increase incrementally over time, then we have a particular cognitive scaffold that really only has five levels.

[21:20]

there's a sort of a different scaffold for asking kids questions about test questions. So that's kind of a different thing. But in terms of understanding content, we have a sort of a five-part scaffold. It's very similar to Bloom's and other things. But one of the most interesting parts about it is it's important that teachers understand not just what the scaffold is, but what the cognitive roadblock, I call it a cognitive roadblock, you could call it a cognitive pothole, whatever you want to call it, but what the underlying cognitive roadblock is at each level. level of thinking.

[21:50]

So I guess what I'm trying to say is it's not just enough to know, okay, I'm going to ask these kinds of questions, and then these kinds of questions, and then these kinds of questions. You need to know what the underlying cognitive problem is at all the levels, because one of the mistakes is thinking, oh, well, you know, I'll ask the, you know, basic questions, low-level questions. Some teachers think they're unimportant. Other times, I understand, you know, teachers spend too much time asking them. But in reality, there's an underlying cognitive roadblock, even with questions that which, you know, pretty simple and ask for labeling, identification, finding, noticing information. And if as a teacher, you don't even, you know, you don't know what the cognitive roadblock is for that lower kind of question, then you'll never be able to really overcome it.

[22:33]

And the problem is, is when students stop at the low levels, they don't get to the high levels, you know, or if they stop at the middle levels, they won't get to the high levels. So you have to ascend the scaffold, but you also have to know how to overcome the cognitive roadblock at each level in the questioning. And that's really the interesting thing. But once teachers understand, okay, here are the kinds of cognitive problems that appear. Fundamentally, it's saying, here's why a student would have problems with labeling. Why a student would have problems with comparison or connection or inference.

[23:03]

Why a student would have problems with ordering or organization or sequences or why a student would have problems with change, and so on. Teachers need to know what the questions are designed to do and overcome. So again, it's not just the cognitive, planning questions is one thing, planning them according to a cognitive scaffold is another thing, but also understanding that along that scaffold of questions, you are going to run into consistently certain kinds of cognitive issues. And you need to know why they're happening so that you can figure out how to overcome them. The teacher who doesn't know why they're happening might just ask good questions along a cognitive scaffold, but just get stuck at a particular level and say, well, that's the most that kid can do. And some of these cognitive roadblocks are very interesting.

[23:51] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Yeah, let's talk about one. If we could pick out a level like the labeling, for example.

[23:56] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

You know, one of the funny things is when I first began this work and, you know, it I was following my dad's general scaffold, and the first kind of questions you're supposed to ask for is for labeling, identification, finding, and noticing, and so on. And it would be very strange how I would notice how the students who were good students tended to always look for and identify, notice, whatever you want to call it, the most relevant facts in the set of information in front of them. So they would always notice what I call the relevant facts first. whereas the poorly performing students sort of saw the page sort of with what we would describe as blurred and sweeping perception. They would just look at the top of the page, the bottom of the page, this or that. There didn't seem to be any pattern.

[24:38]

And frankly, our content, our textbooks, often because they were kind of designed to attract every learner's eyes to the page, sometimes the textbooks themselves, because of their color and the way they're laid out and various things, really didn't present the information in a way that would get the students to notice the most important things first. So it was a very strange phenomena to see why are students actually labeling information erratically or poorly. And so in our questioning with teachers, we say, look, it's important that you ask those labeling identification questions, the knowledge questions, the facts questions, whatever you want to call them. I don't care if you use particular verbs or adverbs. But what's important is you understand that when you see a student who goes out and looks at the wrong thing, who seems to be seeking irrelevant information just as often as relevant information, you have to guide them back through your subsequent questions to the relevant facts first.

[25:32]

Now, what's really funny, and I'll give you an example just real quick. In a reading selection, you'll have a title and you might even have subheadings or subtitles. Oftentimes as not, teachers will either skip the title or they won't direct them to the subheadings or the relevant facts first. They'll sort of follow the student who is not, you know, particularly who has a cognitive problem off into the wilderness. And so the kid will just pick out a word on the page and the teacher will say, oh, well, you know, have you, you know, oh, that's true. That does say Italy.

[26:00]

Has anybody here, you know, been here, been to Italy? And it kind of just goes sideways from there because you really haven't taught the student to, you know, to, through the questions that you ask to refocus on relevancy. And there's a lot of fascinating studies in actually sports and in other science that talk about how the players in sports with the most aptitude are not physically different. The reason why they're different and higher performing and higher achieving is because of mental differences. And part of that mental difference comes in where they focus their attention, where they label, what they notice, what they identify. And so this idea of this cognitive roadblock and labeling and this idea of relevant facts first is something that teachers can use to plan their lower level questions in a way that really gets students to notice what they absolutely need to notice in order to move forward in their thinking to higher levels of thinking.

[26:51]

So each of the cognitive levels has a cognitive roadblock that they need to be aware of, and I really think makes them feel much more comfortable in dealing with and anticipating the kinds of problems students are likely to have when they ask questions.

[27:05] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

I love that. And I think that's true across so many different aspects of teaching practice, where with experience, with preparation, we can anticipate the difficulties that students will have. And then because we're prepared, because we know what to do and know how to respond, those obstacles to participating in the lesson in the way that we might have originally envisioned are no longer obstacles to learning. And we can get the learning back on track, that kind of skillful redirection that experienced teachers can do.

[27:32] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Yeah, I think it's a great thing. You know, the funny thing is teachers, there's a study which shows that teachers ask 40,000 to 70,000 questions per year. And I think that's probably about right. They're asking questions all the time. It's not that the questions are intentionally bad. It's not that they're not asking enough questions, but there needs to be a deep understanding on the part of teachers themselves as to why the questions must be scaffolded, how to overcome cognitive roadblocks, and then also, of course, how to overcome the behavioral roadblocks.

[27:58]

And when they have this sort of what I call a basic framework or a pedagogy for questioning, they are so much better off. They feel powerful. They feel like they're able to ask questions effectively. And the results, if you do this thing If you plan questions in this way a couple of times a week and you do it for a few months, pretty soon the model for questioning becomes something that you always understand. It becomes something that becomes native to you. I've seen teachers have so much success, so it's something that both as an educator and as an attorney, You know, I'm so happy when teachers are given a framework and they're free to modify it.

[28:34]

They're free to look at other frameworks. I'm in favor of all manner of questioning. So I'm not an exclusive, you know, exclusionist. This is the only way of questioning. This is simply one way of questioning. But for many teachers, it's proven powerful.

[28:46]

And that's gratifying to me because, you know, I'm a citizen, too. I want all our kids to have the opportunity. you know, to have the power of their own democracy in their heads.

[28:55] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

So the book and the workshop are called A Pedagogy of Questioning. And Ivan, if people want to get in touch with you, learn more about your workshop with teachers, where can they find you online?

[29:05] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

They just need to go to APOQ.org, APOQ.org. And we're doing animations and various other things to help people understand the basic concepts. The book is available on Amazon. It's also on the website.

[29:17]

So So whether they just want to read a book or read a book sample, there's a free book sample there. There's a lot of information there on pedagogy of questioning. And I think the more teachers know it, I just think there should be a basic part of teacher training, a framework for questioning. It doesn't have to be just ours. It can be many others. But teachers need to be – some teachers aren't great at questioning naturally.

[29:35]

And this is something that gives them some guidelines, some ideas, and starts a conversation. And that's what it's all about.

[29:42] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Well, Evan, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio.

[29:44] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

Thank you very much, Justin. I appreciate it.

[29:47] Justin Baeder:

And now, Justin Baeder on high-performance instructional leadership.

[29:51] Ivan Hannel: A Pedagogy of Questioning:

So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation about a pedagogy of questioning with Ivan Hanel? One thing that stands out to me is that this is really low-hanging fruit. If teachers are asking 40,000 to 70,000 questions a year, And a little bit of preparation and a little bit of thought can result in much, much better questions. You know, this is a skill that's within the reach of every teacher, and it's not something that is so difficult and requires a huge investment or requires a huge system wide initiative over a period of years. You know, these are quick improvements to make. So I think we've got to do both as educational leaders.

[30:31]

We've got to look out for those big systemic changes that we need to make, as well as the low hanging fruit. And if questioning is low hanging fruit in your school, if there's an opportunity to help teachers ask better questions, to get more students engaged and leave fewer students sitting there saying, I don't know, or just ignoring questions when they're asked and not really participating in discussions. I mean, imagine how much of our instructional time is being spent on questioning. If teachers are asking 40 to 70,000 questions a year, it's huge. And if even a small percentage of our students are disengaged during that time, this is an enormous opportunity. I mean, we talk sometimes about making a longer school day or a longer school year, but what if we could make better use of the time that we have simply by getting more students intellectually engaged in our lessons on a day-to-day basis?

[31:23]

So I want to invite you to check out Ivan's animations. He's got some pretty cool videos at APOQ.org and learn a little bit more about the approach there. And again, the book is A Pedagogy of Questioning.

[31:36] Announcer:

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