Ability to raise questions as a modern skill
Danylova, V. and Karastelev, V.
Introduction
One of the issues, relevant for modern society, is the need to cooperate with people who speak another language (either literally or metaphorically), have different life experiences and worldviews. This problem is aggravated by the fact that the most fundamental beliefs are not usually discussed — they are too obvious for those who believe in them and too incomprehensible for those who believe in different things.
The situation worsens when people meet and have to collaborate outside of their familiar frameworks (protocols, contexts, social roles and statuses). These situations are becoming more and more disturbing. Every complicated issue demands cooperation of different professionals and coordination of efforts of many stakeholders. Often enough the situation appears in everyday life as well, for example at school when parents of our students belong to different cultures and confessions, or in volunteer projects. Their dissimilar “languages” and hidden contexts frequently lead to misunderstanding and conflicts. This is manifested not only within the specifics of modern post-Soviet countries, but also in the global processes that are engendered by current technological and socio-economic shifts.
The challenge is the same for both business and public organizations: how to ensure effective collaboration in these conditions. Obviously, communication can help and it is necessary to discuss not only ways and processes of working, but also interests, goals and frameworks of different participants. This communication should serve to develop norms and frameworks for cooperation in new situations (Habermas, 1992; Shchedrovitskii& Kotel’nikov, 1988).
We assume that an important place in such communication is occupied by questions that participants ask each other. This assumption is based on the communicative practice of the Moscow Methodological circle (Maracha, 2014; Rozin, 2017) and experience of Organizational-Activity games (Shchedrovitskii & Kotel’nikov, 1988; Rotkirch, 1996), in which the exchange of questions was very important. It helps participants to understand the issue as a whole, to find a solution and to coordinate their actions further.
The practice of working with questions has been widely discussed since the end of the last century. Referring to these studies and relevant practice, it is possible to distinguish between two strategies for raising and using questions.
The first of them can be called a “vertical” questioning. The peculiarity of it is that functions of asking questions and answers to them are divided between different participants of the communication. Very often questions are developed and asked by a trained professional (interviewer, facilitator, teacher and so on). Within the framework of this strategy, techniques are being created that help professionals to prepare the most effective set of questions (Dillon, 1990), or, in the simplest case, to develop checklists of questions which must be asked in a particular situation. Normally, the one who asks questions has some power in the situation.
The opposite strategy can be called “horizontal”. In this case, each participant has the right to ask questions and he chooses to whom he wants the question to address. This form of communication is usual for some scientific communities. It can arise spontaneously among people who are discussing a complex problem and are used to think together. However, such work with questions is rarely discussed in modern studies. We have found this only in one work devoted to teaching students to ask questions (Rothstein & Santana, 2011).
In our work, we focus on conditions, forms of organization, and the technique of “horizontal” questioning. We assume, that “horizontal” questioning allows people to manifest their interests and expectations in the most conflict-free manner. The discussion and substantiation of questions makes it possible to clarify general framework and tasks. Such questioning practices are an important condition for self-organization of teams and communities. Hence, they can be relevant for the current issues of civil initiatives and public self-organization.
Three techniques of “horizontal” questioning
In recent years we have developed three techniques of working with questions: Creative questioning, Map of questions, and Positional questioning. They were used to organize strategic resolution discussions in Ukraine and Russia.
Creative questioning
The idea of this technique was offered by Moscow psychotherapist Lev Belgorodsky in 2016. It is a kind of communicative games. Basic requirement of this game is simply to discuss a chosen topic for a certain time (usually 20–25 minutes), using only interrogative form of the sentence. During the discussion participants move around the room depending on how they relate to the questions being raised. A participant can support a previous question, standing next to his author, silently or by asking a question that has a close meaning. Also, one can differentiate his question from the previous one, moving away from its author. After the next question, he can move to another place. In addition, it is necessary to show in gestures to whom the question is addressed: to another participant, to himself or to an external source of information. These nonverbal interactions can make the discussion very dramatic. The interaction is particularly active in the group, due to the presence of several candidates for leadership.
When the only opportunity to assert yourself is to raise a new and meaningful question, deep and unexpected questions appear. And we often saw how during such discussions a non-figurative topic initially starts to provoke genuine interest among the participants. This kind of game helps to restore the semantic space of abstract issues and to discover a personal meaning within them. The procedure is the most effective for discussing fundamental ideas. Among the most successful applications of it is the discussion of the idea of freedom at the workshop of the Ukrainian-German seminar “New Media — New Education” (Kharkov, 2016).
Map of questions
Drawing up a map of questions gives an opportunity to present interests of various participants and discuss relations between them. The procedure includes three main steps. First of all, each participant formulates one or two questions that most interest him in the framework of a common problem. Each of the questions must be written on a separate sticker.
The next step is to place these questions in a common space and to group them. As a result, all questions should be placed on a board or a flipchart in such a way that similar questions are placed together, forming a certain locus (“territory”) on this map, and the distance between these “territories” would correspond to how much, in opinion of the participants, the meanings of the resulting groups of questions are close. Thus, on this map, there will be “continents”, “archipelagos” and individual “islands”, sometimes consisting of a single question, which could not be combined with anything else. The last word in assigning a question to the group belongs to the author of the question, although other participants can also express their opinion.
Finally, grounds for such grouping and relations between the groups are discussed. At this stage, each group of questions should be named — for example, by formulating the general question to which it answers. Such discussions help to move deeper in understanding of questions and the entirety of the problem.
This work helps participants express their interests, get acquainted with other perspectives of the problem and find their own place in the general “field of questions”. It is especially useful when the problem is complicated by contrasting views of stakeholders (for example, the problem of school reform).
Positional questioning
Questions can point out new points of view and approaches to the topic, but they can also help people coordinate their plans and actions during joint efforts. The posing of such questions requires taking a deliberate position in process of communication. In this case, it would not just be ‘a point of view’ (perceptual position), but rather a position in regard to joint activity, i.e. realization of one’s responsibility, capacity and necessity of contacts with other participants.
The positional exchange of questions suggests that before the beginning of process several positions (functions in a common activity) are identified. In the most simple case those positions are each participant’s functions within the framework of joint task. The procedure is that each of participants determines which questions he or she should answer to form the position that he or she occupies, and asks questions to those who are important for his/her activities. During questioning it will be possible to discover whether some important tasks are not covered by anyone, while others are inadequately organized in terms of time, logistics and inventory. It will be useful to create a certain checklist, which can be used in further activity. This technique is especially useful when communicative public events (e.g. festivals) are being organized by a group of volunteers.
That is, successful participation in joint activity requires understanding one’s place (position) in “division of labor”, presence of other positions and one’s necessity to stay in touch with those, who occupies these positions. That exchange of questions is an effective tool for both self-organization (to formulate questions that no one except you can answer) and the organization of interaction (expressing what you expect from others in the form of questions). The technique is especially useful when the division of labor is just being formed.
Effects of “horizontal” questioning
Our experience shows that even a relatively short (2–3 hours) discussion using these techniques allows the participants to raise the common problem more precisely, clarify individual interests and preferences, discuss common values, putting emotions and disagreements aside. It helps participants to discuss their differences in understanding and attitudes without getting into conflict. Active work with questions makes people more proactive and independent.
Due to such sessions, the working relationships are rapidly developing in the communities. Participants begin to understand each other better. Those who put the most meaningful questions get authority in the group. This is especially useful when unfamiliar people need to organize a joint action quickly.
The same socio-psychological effect can create certain difficulties for groups where an internal hierarchy has already developed. We met with cases when the leader of the group is so confident in his statements that he/she can neither ask a new question, nor understand the questions that are asked to him. Also, the exchange of questions can reveal the group’s dissatisfaction with the ideas of the leader and the availability of alternative proposals in it. Such situations are useful for the effective problem solving and development of the community, but can be painful for existing authorities and lead to refusal to work with questions.
Ability to work with questions and modern education
Questions are useful. They can help people to develop new forms of collaboration and to manage with new situations. However, all this will be possible only if the ability to ask relevant and meaningful questions will become a mass phenomenon in society. Currently almost no one teaches this, and even those who understand the importance of questions have little opportunity to learn how to put them.
In our experience school teachers are most afraid of questions. It turned out that they prefer to raise questions to what they already know the answers (or believe they know). This looks strange, but it is consistent with their usual practice of working with questions. A professional teacher usually creates and uses questions to test the knowledge of students. He/she does always formulate questions within the well-known material.
Very often a teacher is lost when he/she is publicly asked an unexpected question. In every teacher group, one can hear about student who asks too many questions and prevents working. As a result, during the time of schooling, students do not learn to work with questions and also get used to avoiding them.
Then some university students have opportunity to learn to raise questions in the framework of scientific research. But this is not enough for modern life. In our time, people should be able to use questions within the framework of collective intelligence and collaboration in new situations.
We believe that the ability to work with questions should become a form of modern literacy. It should be trained, starting with school. As practical steps it is possible to propose:
· to develop methods for testing the ability of a person to raise questions and use them in the organization of individual and team work;
· to develop small courses and trainings that teach how to work with questions;
· to integrate “horizontal” questioning with modern methods of learning, in particular, with project-based, problem-based and team-based learning.
References
Dillon, J. T. (1990) The Practice of Questioning. London and New York, NY: Routledge.
Habermas, J. (1992) Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Maracha, V. (2014) System-Thinking-Activity Approach: Thinking Response to Global Challenges. In EMCSR | 2014. Book of Abstracts. Available from: http://emcsr.net/book-of-abstracts/
Rothstein, D. and Santana, L. (2011) Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions. Harvard Education Press.
Rotkirch, A. (1996) The playing -80’s — Russian Activity Games. In Danny Saunders, Fred Percival and Matti Vartiainen (eds): The Simulation and Gaming Yearbook Volume 4: Games and Simulations to Enhance Quality Learning. London: KoganPage. Pp. 34–40. Available from: http://www.fondgp.ru/lib/int/10.
Rozin, V.M. (2017) The Moscow Methodological Circle: Its Main Ideas and Evolution. In Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy. Vol. 31, 2017. Pp. 78–92. Available from: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02691728.2016.1227395
Shchedrovitskii, G. P. and Kotel’nikov, S. I. An Organization Game as a New Form of Organizing and a Method for Developing Collective Thinking Activity. In Soviet Psychology, Vol. 26. 1988. Pp. 57–88. Available from: http://www.fondgp.ru/lib/int/0