good evening so tonight I want to talk a
little bit about questioning so in a
little over 15 years as being an
educator I’ve asked a lot of questions
I’ve asked students questions like what
instrument family is a trumpet in whose
Louis Armstrong how many counts does a
whole note get questions to teachers
like out what routines are you working
on building in your classroom and what
are the expectations you have for your
low-performing students what strategies
do you use to engage students at the
time asking those questions I thought
those were pretty good but they all have
something in common and let’s look at
this taxonomy here to kind of talk about
what it is they have in common so this
kind of gives us different levels of how
deep we go into our thinking for
questioning and looking back at the ones
that I asked they’re all pretty much
low-level questions you know what
instrument family is a trumpet in well
it’s in the brass section so not very
complicated we’re just recalling the
information what I learned from
cognitive coaching training was that if
we really want to help somebody with
their thinking we want to take them
deeper we don’t want to just ask them
questions that they can just recall and
answer off the top of their head and
then they’re done and so when the
application first came out for this I
thought well that’s a really great thing
to talk about as I was interviewing with
the leaders of TEDx at TCC is they asked
me well how does that apply to students
which kind of stumped me at the moment
the the training I went through was
probably a 10 to 12 days of in-class
training over months of time and not
real realistic for students but it
intrigued me because I thought about
well what’s the basic premise of
cognitive coaching and really it’s about
how
being others think about their thinking
and that really fit with what the
objective of tonight is is to rethink
which for me was okay well what’s a
common everyday thing that I don’t think
too much about and let’s look at it from
a different perspective so with
cognitive coaching how can I rethink it
and make it work for students and not
just students it’d really be for anybody
so I’ll talk about cognitive coaching
and what it is a little bit about how it
can be a positive influence on people
and then we’ll talk about does it work
with everybody else and then at the end
you can kind of be the judge as to
whether I’ve made my case or not so
through the cognitive coaching training
we can see how questioning changes by
this being one question I may have asked
a teacher at one point and moving it to
how might routine support management and
allow for students to be more engaged
the more open-ended question should take
the teacher a little bit deeper into his
or her thinking as to what routines are
using why are they using them and how
are they going to support the students
more as opposed to I can make a list of
the routines I’m using same thing for
these two high expectations for low
students well hopefully we have high
expectations for our low-performing
students but really we want to talk
bigger and if we’re asking teachers a
question we want them to go deep in
their thinking as you look at those you
can see how we’ve gone from simple
recall to a much bigger topic so how
does cognitive coaching work well the
basic idea is according to garm strim
lender and Whitacre it’s a process
during which teachers explore the
thinking behind their practices and
really it was started for teachers but
we could take that word out and use
coachy the person the coach is talking
to because really it works for anybody
they explained that in cognitive
coaching quest
Asians asked by the coach revealed to
the Kochi areas of thought that may not
be complete or consciously developed and
when people talk out loud about their
thinking their decisions become more
clearer to them and their awareness
increases that’s the whole idea of what
we’re going for
somebody’s thinking about whatever the
topic is is somewhere here and we try to
help them get up here the coach does
that through by leading their Kochi
through planning reflective or
problem-solving conversations by
paraphrasing what the person says and
asking them questions so to give you an
example it’s always easier to understand
things by using a context my last job I
supervised the receptionist for the
school districts main office and he was
really great at welcoming people to the
main office giving him instructions
about where to go or walking them there
but he had other jobs for example he
needed to put job announcements on our
school website he posted teacher
openings on websites across the region
at universities managed reservations in
the boardroom managed applications for
volunteers to put it nicely he wasn’t
great at any of that
my supervisor worked with him for a year
without finding much success and decided
that that next year he would become my
project and my job to help him become
more successful I’m not very proud to
say but my opinion was that if he wasn’t
doing his job we should just fire him
which really shouldn’t be my focus as an
educator I should and have since changed
my opinion in that if somebody’s got the
desire we should be able to build the
ability within them it’s hard to build
desire but we can build knowledge and
skills
so I also found out when I first got him
that firing him wasn’t an option
he was so good at talking that you know
he’d built quite a relationship with the
superintendent and they were great
buddies at that point so it was really
how do we help him grow and basically
the way I did it was using a rubric
having him begin identifying where he
felt he was on that scale was 1 2 4 4
being the highest and he went through
and basically circled where he thought
he was but some evidence and then
through a reflective conversation we
began talking about is that where you’re
at and why do you think that what’s your
evidence some things he moved down some
he left him where they are by the end of
our conversation he pretty much was one
in twos all the way through the entire
evaluation however you would think that
somebody leaves that kind of meeting
little on the dejected side you know how
can you be happy about your job
performance when you’ve left a talk
you’re at ones and twos you really need
to be at threes and fours however
through the paraphrasing and the
questioning he had been able to come up
with a few areas where he could see ways
to start making growth where he could go
from a 1 to a 3 or a 2 to 3 and he had
come up with plans for getting there so
he was excited about going out there and
trying that over the course of about six
months I worked with him and his
progress was amazing to put it one way
he still wasn’t going to be a model for
the top worker in the district but he
was no longer that guy that did really
good at greeting people and that was all
he did well he was actually managing all
the other stuff he was supposed to which
in a lot of ways surprised me that he
could make that quick a jump the
important thing I learned was that as
the cognitive coaching training talked
about the change doesn’t come from
outside the reason he made those
Changez wasn’t because I told him how to
do the job I could have and it would
have been easier but because he
identified ways to grow and get better
and it was from inside that he made the
change and so really the point to take
from it is that coaching is guiding
others through their thinking and not
solving their problems for them and the
questions are ones that students could
ask or anybody else
for example questions like what might be
your thoughts about fill in the blank
what are some of the possibilities as
you examine the data what are some of
the trends that you notice all of these
questions they’re not just simple here’s
the answer and it really is somebody
asks them and you start thinking about
them the way I ant might answer them
would be different than somebody else
might answer them and so they’re
personal in that sense and it relies on
that person’s their knowledge to help
get there so what is effective and
ineffective questioning look like and as
I’ve been working on this talk
ineffective I didn’t want to change it
but I think it’s worth noting that I’m
not sure there are necessarily
ineffective questions in general it
depends on what its ineffective at if
the point is we’re going to go deeper
and if I ask a question like what
instrument family is a trumpet in that’s
not an effective question for going deep
it’s a brass instrument and that’s kind
of the end of the talk so as I say
ineffective here it’s we want to go
deeper and we want to make sure
effective questions will take us there
so Richard Paul and Linda elder
explained in their critical thinking
handbook that thinking is not driven by
answers but by questions that that
should be the focus of education they
explained that questions define tasks
express problems and delineate issues
answers on the other hand often signal a
full stop and thought only when an
answer generates a further question does
that
thought continued its life is such and
so what we kind of have to do is decide
where is it that we want to go with our
thinking doctors has said in chambers in
their book mindful learning described
three levels and they bit our thinking
as well as our learning so surface
learning is doing as little as possible
and still passing achieving is
attempting to get the highest grade
possible without any real care or
concern about how does this apply to me
in the future and deep learning is
focusing on becoming as competent in
that skill as possible the types of
questions we ask indicate where we see
ourselves falling so a surface learner
might ask how much do I have to do to
get a passing grade is that going to be
on the test an achieving student might
ask how much do I have to do to get an A
or a seven where a student focusing on
deep learning might ask questions such
as this what could have led to this
what do you think would happen next if
in fill in the blank how might these
people be connected again we’re looking
at open-ended questions they’re not
simple there’s no straightforward answer
and they may actually lead to more
questions as we talked about that
definition that that’s a good thing we
want to ask more questions so I’ve
mentioned open-ended a couple times so
let’s look at what that is real quick
closed-ended one answer or so it’s
simple there’s not a lot to it
necessarily so for example at what
temperature centigrade does water boil
we could say a hundred degrees we could
be a stickler and talk about pressure
and altitudes and stuff but in general
this is a closed-ended question isn’t
going to take us as far as an open-ended
or an open-ended question might be what
could have led to the worldwide
childhood obesity epidemic that we are
currently experiencing to try and answer
that would begin a list of the whole
of questions like what countries are we
talking about how does the eating habits
in those countries affect this and it’s
digging and digging there’s a whole lot
more to it than just a simple answer and
if we’re thinking about taking somebody
deep in their thinking we want to ask
that type of question so as I’ve said
coaching is involving those questions
those open-ended questions but also
paraphrasing and before we even start
doing that we have to make sure that
we’re aware of our own biases so that we
can listen non-judgmentally if we’re
truly helping somebody think about their
thinking and salt become more self
reflective and self directed then it has
to come from the inside for them and if
we’re aware of our biases if we’re
listening non-judgmentally then we’re
not pushing on them how we think they
should deal with a situation or solve a
problem for example I said that with the
receptionist he was in charge of setting
up the boardroom well I spent a lot of
time in college setting up stuff rooms
in a Student Union and had some
experience in that so he would come up
with ideas as I was coaching him and in
the back of my mind I’m saying yeah
that’s really not the best way to do
that or it’s really inefficient
however it’s pushing that thought out of
your mind and letting them go later on
it might be another coaching
conversation to have them reflect on how
efficient they are but for now he was
coming up with ideas that would work for
him as I said when you come out of a
conference where you’ve just been told
your job performance is really bad but
you’re excited because you’ve got a plan
for getting better that’s the positive
side of that so the first thing we do is
listen non-judgmentally then looking at
paraphrasing which merriam-webster
defines is a restatement of a text
passage or work giving the meaning in
another form or basically taking
something and putting it in your own
words that’s what you do a coach spends
most of their time doing that
and basically the reason is is that if
you’re trying to help somebody think and
they tell you something and you say it
back to them in a different way it gives
them the opportunity to hear that from a
different perspective or hear their
thought from a different perspective and
then you give them the opportunity to
say well yeah I hadn’t thought about it
that way and I agree with what you’re
saying as a paraphrase it also gives
them the ability to say wait that that
really wasn’t what I was saying and so
they have to say what they were saying
or thinking again which helps them
clarify their thinking better and they
become clearer on their thinking in that
process which ties us to the next thing
with questioning is clarifying questions
so our paraphrase may help them with
clarifying but then we also specifically
asked questions that help clarify to ask
them to be more specific and less vague
because how can we think about what’s
working and what’s not if we’re thinking
about things in a broad general term the
other ones I mentioned were mediated
questions which engage and transform the
thinking of the coachee it’s the
questions where as opposed to saying
specific things you’re asking questions
more like what might the answer be so
that you’re leaving it as broad as you
can so that I’m not guiding them down a
pathway I’m simply asking a question
that they can go where they need to go
for their own thinking now however as I
talk about the clarifying in the media
t’v if you have no training in that
really the focus is to try and ask
open-ended questions so this is what it
looks like for a coach or really anybody
else it’s trying to help somebody in
their thinking we ask questions
open-ended questions we paraphrase it
could be paraphrase paraphrase
paraphrase paraphrase we throw in a
question paraphrase a question it just
depends on the person you’re working
with it could be as simple as a few
paraphrases
they hit that aha moment that because
you’ve set it back to them it’s
completely changed how they see their
own thinking and they’ve gotten to a new
point which is the what we’re looking
for
that’s the big picture about helping
another person go to a higher level or a
deeper level in their thinking thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
little bit about questioning so in a
little over 15 years as being an
educator I’ve asked a lot of questions
I’ve asked students questions like what
instrument family is a trumpet in whose
Louis Armstrong how many counts does a
whole note get questions to teachers
like out what routines are you working
on building in your classroom and what
are the expectations you have for your
low-performing students what strategies
do you use to engage students at the
time asking those questions I thought
those were pretty good but they all have
something in common and let’s look at
this taxonomy here to kind of talk about
what it is they have in common so this
kind of gives us different levels of how
deep we go into our thinking for
questioning and looking back at the ones
that I asked they’re all pretty much
low-level questions you know what
instrument family is a trumpet in well
it’s in the brass section so not very
complicated we’re just recalling the
information what I learned from
cognitive coaching training was that if
we really want to help somebody with
their thinking we want to take them
deeper we don’t want to just ask them
questions that they can just recall and
answer off the top of their head and
then they’re done and so when the
application first came out for this I
thought well that’s a really great thing
to talk about as I was interviewing with
the leaders of TEDx at TCC is they asked
me well how does that apply to students
which kind of stumped me at the moment
the the training I went through was
probably a 10 to 12 days of in-class
training over months of time and not
real realistic for students but it
intrigued me because I thought about
well what’s the basic premise of
cognitive coaching and really it’s about
how
being others think about their thinking
and that really fit with what the
objective of tonight is is to rethink
which for me was okay well what’s a
common everyday thing that I don’t think
too much about and let’s look at it from
a different perspective so with
cognitive coaching how can I rethink it
and make it work for students and not
just students it’d really be for anybody
so I’ll talk about cognitive coaching
and what it is a little bit about how it
can be a positive influence on people
and then we’ll talk about does it work
with everybody else and then at the end
you can kind of be the judge as to
whether I’ve made my case or not so
through the cognitive coaching training
we can see how questioning changes by
this being one question I may have asked
a teacher at one point and moving it to
how might routine support management and
allow for students to be more engaged
the more open-ended question should take
the teacher a little bit deeper into his
or her thinking as to what routines are
using why are they using them and how
are they going to support the students
more as opposed to I can make a list of
the routines I’m using same thing for
these two high expectations for low
students well hopefully we have high
expectations for our low-performing
students but really we want to talk
bigger and if we’re asking teachers a
question we want them to go deep in
their thinking as you look at those you
can see how we’ve gone from simple
recall to a much bigger topic so how
does cognitive coaching work well the
basic idea is according to garm strim
lender and Whitacre it’s a process
during which teachers explore the
thinking behind their practices and
really it was started for teachers but
we could take that word out and use
coachy the person the coach is talking
to because really it works for anybody
they explained that in cognitive
coaching quest
Asians asked by the coach revealed to
the Kochi areas of thought that may not
be complete or consciously developed and
when people talk out loud about their
thinking their decisions become more
clearer to them and their awareness
increases that’s the whole idea of what
we’re going for
somebody’s thinking about whatever the
topic is is somewhere here and we try to
help them get up here the coach does
that through by leading their Kochi
through planning reflective or
problem-solving conversations by
paraphrasing what the person says and
asking them questions so to give you an
example it’s always easier to understand
things by using a context my last job I
supervised the receptionist for the
school districts main office and he was
really great at welcoming people to the
main office giving him instructions
about where to go or walking them there
but he had other jobs for example he
needed to put job announcements on our
school website he posted teacher
openings on websites across the region
at universities managed reservations in
the boardroom managed applications for
volunteers to put it nicely he wasn’t
great at any of that
my supervisor worked with him for a year
without finding much success and decided
that that next year he would become my
project and my job to help him become
more successful I’m not very proud to
say but my opinion was that if he wasn’t
doing his job we should just fire him
which really shouldn’t be my focus as an
educator I should and have since changed
my opinion in that if somebody’s got the
desire we should be able to build the
ability within them it’s hard to build
desire but we can build knowledge and
skills
so I also found out when I first got him
that firing him wasn’t an option
he was so good at talking that you know
he’d built quite a relationship with the
superintendent and they were great
buddies at that point so it was really
how do we help him grow and basically
the way I did it was using a rubric
having him begin identifying where he
felt he was on that scale was 1 2 4 4
being the highest and he went through
and basically circled where he thought
he was but some evidence and then
through a reflective conversation we
began talking about is that where you’re
at and why do you think that what’s your
evidence some things he moved down some
he left him where they are by the end of
our conversation he pretty much was one
in twos all the way through the entire
evaluation however you would think that
somebody leaves that kind of meeting
little on the dejected side you know how
can you be happy about your job
performance when you’ve left a talk
you’re at ones and twos you really need
to be at threes and fours however
through the paraphrasing and the
questioning he had been able to come up
with a few areas where he could see ways
to start making growth where he could go
from a 1 to a 3 or a 2 to 3 and he had
come up with plans for getting there so
he was excited about going out there and
trying that over the course of about six
months I worked with him and his
progress was amazing to put it one way
he still wasn’t going to be a model for
the top worker in the district but he
was no longer that guy that did really
good at greeting people and that was all
he did well he was actually managing all
the other stuff he was supposed to which
in a lot of ways surprised me that he
could make that quick a jump the
important thing I learned was that as
the cognitive coaching training talked
about the change doesn’t come from
outside the reason he made those
Changez wasn’t because I told him how to
do the job I could have and it would
have been easier but because he
identified ways to grow and get better
and it was from inside that he made the
change and so really the point to take
from it is that coaching is guiding
others through their thinking and not
solving their problems for them and the
questions are ones that students could
ask or anybody else
for example questions like what might be
your thoughts about fill in the blank
what are some of the possibilities as
you examine the data what are some of
the trends that you notice all of these
questions they’re not just simple here’s
the answer and it really is somebody
asks them and you start thinking about
them the way I ant might answer them
would be different than somebody else
might answer them and so they’re
personal in that sense and it relies on
that person’s their knowledge to help
get there so what is effective and
ineffective questioning look like and as
I’ve been working on this talk
ineffective I didn’t want to change it
but I think it’s worth noting that I’m
not sure there are necessarily
ineffective questions in general it
depends on what its ineffective at if
the point is we’re going to go deeper
and if I ask a question like what
instrument family is a trumpet in that’s
not an effective question for going deep
it’s a brass instrument and that’s kind
of the end of the talk so as I say
ineffective here it’s we want to go
deeper and we want to make sure
effective questions will take us there
so Richard Paul and Linda elder
explained in their critical thinking
handbook that thinking is not driven by
answers but by questions that that
should be the focus of education they
explained that questions define tasks
express problems and delineate issues
answers on the other hand often signal a
full stop and thought only when an
answer generates a further question does
that
thought continued its life is such and
so what we kind of have to do is decide
where is it that we want to go with our
thinking doctors has said in chambers in
their book mindful learning described
three levels and they bit our thinking
as well as our learning so surface
learning is doing as little as possible
and still passing achieving is
attempting to get the highest grade
possible without any real care or
concern about how does this apply to me
in the future and deep learning is
focusing on becoming as competent in
that skill as possible the types of
questions we ask indicate where we see
ourselves falling so a surface learner
might ask how much do I have to do to
get a passing grade is that going to be
on the test an achieving student might
ask how much do I have to do to get an A
or a seven where a student focusing on
deep learning might ask questions such
as this what could have led to this
what do you think would happen next if
in fill in the blank how might these
people be connected again we’re looking
at open-ended questions they’re not
simple there’s no straightforward answer
and they may actually lead to more
questions as we talked about that
definition that that’s a good thing we
want to ask more questions so I’ve
mentioned open-ended a couple times so
let’s look at what that is real quick
closed-ended one answer or so it’s
simple there’s not a lot to it
necessarily so for example at what
temperature centigrade does water boil
we could say a hundred degrees we could
be a stickler and talk about pressure
and altitudes and stuff but in general
this is a closed-ended question isn’t
going to take us as far as an open-ended
or an open-ended question might be what
could have led to the worldwide
childhood obesity epidemic that we are
currently experiencing to try and answer
that would begin a list of the whole
of questions like what countries are we
talking about how does the eating habits
in those countries affect this and it’s
digging and digging there’s a whole lot
more to it than just a simple answer and
if we’re thinking about taking somebody
deep in their thinking we want to ask
that type of question so as I’ve said
coaching is involving those questions
those open-ended questions but also
paraphrasing and before we even start
doing that we have to make sure that
we’re aware of our own biases so that we
can listen non-judgmentally if we’re
truly helping somebody think about their
thinking and salt become more self
reflective and self directed then it has
to come from the inside for them and if
we’re aware of our biases if we’re
listening non-judgmentally then we’re
not pushing on them how we think they
should deal with a situation or solve a
problem for example I said that with the
receptionist he was in charge of setting
up the boardroom well I spent a lot of
time in college setting up stuff rooms
in a Student Union and had some
experience in that so he would come up
with ideas as I was coaching him and in
the back of my mind I’m saying yeah
that’s really not the best way to do
that or it’s really inefficient
however it’s pushing that thought out of
your mind and letting them go later on
it might be another coaching
conversation to have them reflect on how
efficient they are but for now he was
coming up with ideas that would work for
him as I said when you come out of a
conference where you’ve just been told
your job performance is really bad but
you’re excited because you’ve got a plan
for getting better that’s the positive
side of that so the first thing we do is
listen non-judgmentally then looking at
paraphrasing which merriam-webster
defines is a restatement of a text
passage or work giving the meaning in
another form or basically taking
something and putting it in your own
words that’s what you do a coach spends
most of their time doing that
and basically the reason is is that if
you’re trying to help somebody think and
they tell you something and you say it
back to them in a different way it gives
them the opportunity to hear that from a
different perspective or hear their
thought from a different perspective and
then you give them the opportunity to
say well yeah I hadn’t thought about it
that way and I agree with what you’re
saying as a paraphrase it also gives
them the ability to say wait that that
really wasn’t what I was saying and so
they have to say what they were saying
or thinking again which helps them
clarify their thinking better and they
become clearer on their thinking in that
process which ties us to the next thing
with questioning is clarifying questions
so our paraphrase may help them with
clarifying but then we also specifically
asked questions that help clarify to ask
them to be more specific and less vague
because how can we think about what’s
working and what’s not if we’re thinking
about things in a broad general term the
other ones I mentioned were mediated
questions which engage and transform the
thinking of the coachee it’s the
questions where as opposed to saying
specific things you’re asking questions
more like what might the answer be so
that you’re leaving it as broad as you
can so that I’m not guiding them down a
pathway I’m simply asking a question
that they can go where they need to go
for their own thinking now however as I
talk about the clarifying in the media
t’v if you have no training in that
really the focus is to try and ask
open-ended questions so this is what it
looks like for a coach or really anybody
else it’s trying to help somebody in
their thinking we ask questions
open-ended questions we paraphrase it
could be paraphrase paraphrase
paraphrase paraphrase we throw in a
question paraphrase a question it just
depends on the person you’re working
with it could be as simple as a few
paraphrases
they hit that aha moment that because
you’ve set it back to them it’s
completely changed how they see their
own thinking and they’ve gotten to a new
point which is the what we’re looking
for
that’s the big picture about helping
another person go to a higher level or a
deeper level in their thinking thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
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