In November 2019, I began my formal study of the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) through the Right Question Institute and the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). I had long believed that student voice and inquiry were central to meaningful learning, but the QFT offered something I hadn’t yet found: a clear, intentional structure to support all learners—regardless of age or background—in generating and improving their own questions. It was a framework that not only aligned with my values but gave me a concrete way to practice them in the classroom. What began as a deep interest quickly became an ongoing thread through my professional development and a defining lens for how I think about pedagogy, equity, and democratic education.
The QFT is more than just a structure for generating questions—it’s a powerful lever for shifting the culture of learning from compliance to inquiry, from answer-seeking to meaning-making. And over the years, as I’ve returned to the QFT through different programs and settings, I’ve come to see that question formulation is not a strategy I use—it’s a stance I take as an educator.
In spring 2022, I continued this journey through the National Geographic program Teaching Students to ASK Their Own Geo-Inquiry Questions. That course further expanded my lens. It pushed me to think about how student questions shape not just classroom discussions but real-world investigations. Framing and refining geo-inquiry questions gave students agency not only over their learning, but over the issues they choose to explore in their communities and across the globe. In this context, questions became tools of both understanding and action.
Most recently, in April 2025, I returned to the Right Question Institute and HGSE for Questions at the Core: Extending the Question Formulation Technique to Sustain an Inquiry-based Culture in Schools. This course took me beyond individual lessons and toward the systemic implications of question-driven learning. It challenged me to consider how the QFT could function not just as a classroom practice but as a shared cultural norm—across grade levels, content areas, and professional learning spaces. What would it mean for teachers, too, to center their own inquiry? What would it look like to build a school where questioning is not only taught, but expected, modeled, and protected?
Across these experiences, my commitment has deepened to an idea that feels more urgent than ever: If we want to cultivate democratic learning communities, we must begin by ensuring that every learner—student and adult alike—has the skill, confidence, and opportunity to ask questions that matter. We cannot expect young people to participate meaningfully in the world if they’ve only been trained to answer. We must give them practice in framing problems, interrogating assumptions, and following their questions wherever they lead.
In many schools, the default model treats students as consumers of information, preparing them to perform, comply, and compete. But in a world that needs more critical thinkers, collaborators, and change-makers, we need something different. Question formulation is one pathway toward that difference. It shifts the posture of learning from passive to active, from isolated to communal, from transactional to transformational.
The Question Formulation Technique reminds us that democracy begins with a question—and that education, at its best, prepares us not just to answer, but to ask.