What process do we have in place to help learners think and act in the face of  uncertainty to keep taking next steps? What is the tone of the atmosphere in our learning spaces?

Good questioners tend to be aware of, and quite comfortable with, their own ignorance (Berger, 16 pag.)

How are we encouraging questions about what is not known? How often do we hear learners say “I know this is a dumb question but, …” and how do we respond?

One of the most important things questioning does is to enable people to think and act in the face of uncertainty. As Steve Quatrano of the Right Question Institute puts it, forming questions helps us “to organize our thinking around what we don’t know.”  (Berger, 19 pag.)

Summer Reading using VTR: Sentence-Phrase-Word:
A More Beautiful Question
Chapter 1: The Power of Inquiry

MIT’s Joi Ito says that as we try to come to terms with a new reality that requires us to be lifelong learners (instead of just early-life learners), we must try to maintain or rekindle the curiosity, sense of wonder, inclination to try new things, and ability to adapt and absorb that served us so well in childhood. We must become, in a word, neotenous (neoteny being a biological term that describes the retention of childlike attributes in adulthood). (Berger, 24 pag.)

How might we become more neotenous to notice and note without labels? What if we create conditions where what we don’t know is safe to discuss?

To do so, we must rediscover the tool that kids use so well in those early years: the question. Ito puts it quite simply: “You don’t learn unless you question.” (Berger, 24 pag.)

Again…

What process do we have in place to help learners think and act in the face of  uncertainty to keep taking next steps? What is the tone of the atmosphere in our learning spaces?

Berger, Warren (2014-03-04). A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas . BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING. Kindle Edition.