About the Book
"What does it mean to learn? Most of us eventually realize that genuine learning is less about delivering the right answers and more about asking the right questions. In an age of automation, questioning is a uniquely human skill, one we should foster in school and in life. This book is an essential read for educators at every level."
— Daniel H. Pink, author of ‘WHEN’, ‘DRIVE’, and ‘A Whole New Mind’
"For teachers around the world there is a moral urgency to work with young learners in innovative ways that nurture agency, curiosity, agile thinking and problem solving. The role of questions in this cannot be underestimated."
— Kath Murdoch. Consultant in Education and Author of ‘The Power of Inquiry.’
Why does engagement plummet as learners advance in school? Why does the stream of questions from curious toddlers slow to a trickle as they become teenagers? Most importantly, what can teachers and schools do to reverse this trend? Beautiful Questions in the Classroom has the answers. This inspirational book from Warren Berger and Elise Foster will help educators transform their classrooms into cultures of curiosity. The book explores the importance of questioning and how inquiry leads to learning, innovation, and personal growth.
Readers will find:
- Strategies to inspire bigger, more beautiful student questions
- Techniques to help educators ask more beautiful questions
- Real-world examples, case studies, practical ideas, and question stems
- Videos showing strategies at work
Great teachers help students to ask bigger, more beautiful questions. This book will prepare and inspire educators to develop a powerful teaching approach that creates a classroom full of student driven inquiry.
Table of Contents:
Publisher’s Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1. Why Questioning Matters Now More Than Ever
What This Means for Students and Their Teachers
Critical Thinking Is Even More Critical Now
Questions Give Humans an Edge Over Technology
Producing Future Leaders
Chapter 2. What Discourages Student Questioning?
The Decline of Kids’ Questions
The Five Enemies of Classroom Questioning
Chapter 3. Model the Behavior
Become a “Beautiful Questioner”
Start With Why
Become a Student of Your Own Work
Adopt a “Beginner’s Mind”
Be Curious in the Classroom
Chapter 4. Create a Culture of Inquiry in the Classroom
Foster an Appreciation of Questioning
Create a Stimulating Environment for Questioning
Make It Safe to Question
Make Questioning a Team Sport
Provide a Basic Questioning “Starter Kit”
Reward and Celebrate Questioning
Chapter 5. Inspire and Activate Student Questions
Provoke Curiosity
See Think Wonder
Release the Questions!
The Question Formulation Technique
The Origins of the QFT
Learning to Use the QFT in Classrooms
The Question Focus
The Question Generation Stage
Chapter 6. Help Students Improve and Take Ownership of Their Questions
Improve the Questions That Have Been Generated
Other Ways to Improve Questions
Evaluate and Prioritize Questions
Reflect on What Has Been Learned
Take Ownership of Questions
Turn Questions Into Projects
Help Students Find Their Own, Personal Big Beautiful Questions
Chapter 7. Be a Questioning Leader (in Your School, Community, and the World)
Ask Questions That Clarify
Ask Questions That Help You Rethink and Reinvent
Ask Questions That Help You Help Others
Ask Questions That Can Help You Enact Change
Taking Action
References
Resources
Index
About the Author :
Warren Berger is the creator of the popular website AMoreBeautifulQuestion.com and author of The Book of Beautiful Questions: The Powerful Questions That Will Help You Decide, Create, Connect, and Lead (Bloomsbury, 2018) and A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas (Bloomsbury, 2014)—all focusing on the power of inquiry to improve your daily life.
Before focusing on questioning, Warren wrote the internationally acclaimed Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Business and Your Life (Penguin Press, 2009), published in several editions worldwide. Business Week named Glimmer one of the “Best Innovation & Design Books of the Year.”
Warren writes for a wide variety of publications, including Fast Company and Harvard Business Review, and was a longtime contributor at Wired magazine and The New York Times.
He has appeared on NBC’s Today, ABC’s World News Tonight, and CNN, and as an expert on NPR’s All Things Considered. As a speaker, Warren has keynoted at the Oracle Connect Conference, the Cusp Conference, the Fuse Conference, the Design Thinkers Conference, and the International Women’s Forum in Rome. He has spoken about questioning, and conducted questioning workshops, with the NASA Space Center, the U.S. Army, General Electric, Starbucks, Microsoft, Disney, and many other organizations. The education world has particularly embraced the power of questioning. He has been a guest lecturer at the University of Virginia, the University of Oregon, University of South Carolina, Bowling Green State College, New York’s School of Visual Arts, and Virginia Commonwealth University, where he gave the 2011 commencement address for graduating business students.
Elise Foster is a leadership coach who enables education and industry leaders to tap into capability and unlock potential inside their organizations. She has conducted significant research in the field of leadership within education systems and is coauthor of The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside Our Schools. She has a deep passion for helping leaders become better equipped to navigate the increasingly complex demands of work and life. She works with leaders to make lasting change, by uncovering and making sense of the underlying beliefs preventing them from fully realizing their personal leadership vision. She has found that often, if not always, curiosity and the art of asking questions are central to making progress in the areas of leadership, innovation, and change.
Elise has had the privilege of sharing the research and ideas behind multiplier leadership with school leaders at national conferences, such as the conference of the National Association of Elementary School Principals; local districts, including Gwinnett County Public Schools and Chicago Public Schools; and universities, including the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Arizona State University. When she is not working with education or industry leaders, she delights in learning alongside her school-age daughter and her daughter’s classmates as a classroom volunteer and Girl Scout leader. She has taught and coached students at Indiana University (Kelley School of Business) and as a management fellow at Harvard University. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering from Virginia Tech and a master’s in education from Harvard University.
Review :
What does it mean to learn? Most of us eventually realize that genuine learning is less about delivering the right answers and more about asking the right questions. That’s why BEAUTIFUL QUESTIONS IN THE CLASSROOM is so important. Inquiry develops self-direction and deepens curiosity. And in an age of automation, questioning is a uniquely human skill, one we should foster in school and in life. This book is an essential read for educators at every level.
Warren Berger and Elise Foster maintain that the more questions children ask, the better questioners (and ultimately innovators) they become. This inspirational and highly practical book focuses on the why and how of creating "cultures of curiosity and inquiry" in our classrooms, where students (not teachers!) are the ones asking the questions, living the learning, making a difference for themselves, each other and the world.
In this book, the "questionologist" Warren Berger and co-author Elise Foster show us why it′s so critical to encourage more student questions in class, particularly in today′s world. But they also show how to do that, with practical examples, exercises, and activities. The result is an inspirational call to action for educators everywhere.
Warren Berger and Elise Foster’s new book is a vibrant restorative effort, seeking to help us all recover the flood of questions typical of our 4 year-old neighbors. They ask us to think about the debilitating effects on our civic affairs and worklives of the mere trickle of questions asked by those same once curious explorers when they reach high school. The book documents and lays out in crisp, clear prose hopeful interventions that give us confidence that a revolutionary embrace of questioning is within our reach.
I celebrate the teacher who keeps the spark of curiosity alive in their classroom. And to be the change you want to see? No easy thing. Berger is a master "questionologist" and this book is an essential tool.
Warren Berger has already shown us brilliantly how questions can indeed ‘change the world’. In this book, Berger and Elise Foster provide schools and educators concrete ways to make questions and questioning an essential part of the learning experiences we design every day. In doing so, they offer us simple and elegant ways to change what we do as teachers, administrators, and students thereby improving our schools in fundamental ways.
With engaging prose and compelling insights, Berger and Foster unravel the vexing puzzle of why our kids, who are born curious, grow less curious with each passing year they sit in our classrooms and schools. We know, of course, that curiosity drives all learning—and that at the heart of curiosity is questions. Yet as Berger and Foster demonstrate, the most important questions in the classroom aren’t teachers’ questions, but rather, students’ questions. With its many practical classroom examples and go-to strategies, I’d recommend all teachers have this book on their shelves—so they can return to it time and again to unleash their own curiosity and that of their students.
Who better than a journalist to guide us on the power of asking questions? Berger and Foster pull in expert testimony from various fields to share concrete ways we can help students of all ages lean in to their curiosity through inquiry. This book is not only brimming with evidence-based practices but is beautifully-written and thoughtfully designed for the busy educator. This is my new ‘go to’ book for guiding students as questioners!
The title of this brilliant book says it all. By the time you’ve finished it, you will understand why questioning is so critical in unleashing curiosity and inquiry - and you will have a rich toolkit to help you get there! This is a must read for those seeking to help young minds make sense of an increasingly complex world - by encouraging - and teaching them - to question.
This book, this work, found me at a critical time in my career. I have long sought better ways to engage my kids in their learning. And I believe, now, I have found my next better in this book, a beautiful better that will transform me, my classroom, and ultimately my kids as they pursue their questions, their answers, their learning.
I want to read this over and over again! This is a book that EVERY teacher, regardless of their grade level or content area, should read if they want to see student learning transformed in their classrooms with JOY and EXCITEMENT! Questions matter!!
The difference between a good teacher and a great teacher is the questions they ask. Beautiful Questions in the Classroom is a timely reminder that, beyond any content we might teach, the art of question posing is a gift that will serve students for the rest of their lives. This easy to read book provides useful, efficient strategies to cultivate curiosity in our classrooms and beyond.
In BEAUTIFUL QUESTIONS IN THE CLASSROOM, Warren Berger and Elise Foster make the case for why questions deeply matter in the learning process. This book offers deep insight and practical applications. I recommend it as a fantastic book study for a staff, a reflective read for individuals, and an important resource to support focused lesson design to teach students how to ask questions that matter to them and to their learning.
Warren Berger’s book, A More Beautiful Question, is one of those books that I regularly pull off the shelf and dive into. It is lovingly marked up with post-its and several of my own questions scribbled in the margins. As an educator passionate about inquiry learning, it was thrilling to read the words of a journalist outside the field of education extolling the virtues of curiosity and wonder and to learn more about the way questions lead to innovation. Berger’s work certainly added fuel to my own fire. So it was with great delight that I learned of this new offering: Beautiful Questions in the Classroom. This book is a rich and thorough contribution to the field - and has come at an incredibly important time. As I write, fires raging through my country are among many issues weighing heavily on the minds and hearts of people everywhere. For teachers around the world there is, I believe, a moral urgency to work with young learners in innovative ways that nurture agency, curiosity, agile thinking and problem solving. The role of questions in this cannot be underestimated.
This book not only invites the reader to deepen their understanding of the significance of questions in the classroom; it also provides a wealth of practical and inspiring ideas and strategies expertly sourced from educators. In fact, this is what makes Beautiful Questions in the Classroom such an impressive read. Unlike many books (including my own!) written by educators for educators, Berger’s journalistic skills in sourcing, investigating, analysing and curating ideas bring a freshness of perspective and scope to thinking about cultures that support inquiry. This will be another book by Warren Berger to which I return over and over. It’s beautiful.
Berger and Foster make a compelling case for bringing curiosity to the forefront of classroom learning. The authors draw from their wide-ranging experience as self-proclaimed questionologists to inspire and inform, challenging teachers and students alike to create Big Beautiful Questions. The reader is left with many questions, including "What might happen if I encouraged every student to express their curiosity every day through more beautiful questions?"
