Questioning Questions: an ‘X’ and a box1
By Peter Worley of The Philosophy Foundation, UK www.philosophy-foundation.org
1: The Question ‘X’: rehabilitating the closed-question
When asked what kind of question is best for engendering enquiry among a group of
people, the usual response is ‘an open question’. When asked ‘why?’ most will say
something to the effect that it invites the speaker to say more on the topic. The closed
question is the most commonly used type of question, however, and teachers are told that
by asking more closed questions than open ones they can stifle good discussions and
enquiry opportunities, impacting on their students’ learning.2 But there is a good reason
why teachers ask many closed questions: they pinpoint responses to a specific area. So, if
you ask ‘What is the capital of France?’ the task for the student is specific whereas if you
ask ‘What can you tell me about the capital of France?’ it is not. Which question is better
is entirely dependent on the context. If you specifically want or need to know that the
student knows the name of the capital of France then the first is better, but if you are
testing the student’s general knowledge of the capital of France then the second might be
better. It so happens that the majority of questions a teacher asks require a specific
response to a specific area and so the closed question is best.
As part of my job I conduct philosophy sessions with classes of children and adults. After
having engaged teachers in a philosophical enquiry I always ask them what kind of
1
‘The Question X’ is adapted from an article that will appear in Creative Teaching and
Learning Magazine in June 2013. ‘The Concept Box’ is adapted from a chapter in the
forthcoming book Once Upon An If… Stories and Storytelling for Thinking for 7-16-yearolds by Peter Worley, Bloomsbury 2014.
2
In preparation for writing this paper I looked at some randomly selected internet
resources about questioning to see what they said about open and closed questions. The
general distinction I observed was (following Bloom’s taxonomy) between higher-order
thinking resulting from open questions and lower-order, information-based thinking from
closed questions. One of the challenges I am making with this paper is that closed
questions can form the basis of higher order thinking.
question did I, the majority of the time, ask: open or closed? Most people quickly say
‘open’. When asked ‘why?’ it turns out that they assume that the questions must have
been open because they had a successful and rich discussion and, as I mentioned above, it
is thought that only open questions can produce such results. They are often surprised
when I tell them that actually most of the questions I asked were closed (in some cases all
of them).
1. ‘So, is what you said dependent on J’s point that we don’t know whether it is true
or not?’
2. ‘Would you turn the page?’
3. ‘If you turned the page what would you expect to find?’
4. ‘If you turned the page and it [the book] was written to the end then would this
mean that you know whether it is true or not?’
These are all examples of questions I asked during a discussion with teachers I ran at a
conference in Antwerp yesterday (from the time of writing). They have been chosen
randomly and all except for 3 are closed questions. That is to say that they demand a oneword answer: 1 requires a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, again 2 a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, 3 may be answered with a
one-word answer such as ‘nothing’ or it may elicit more such as ‘I think the page would
write what you do as it happens but beyond that it would be blank,’ and, finally, 4 elicits
a ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
So, why didn’t the enquiry in which these questions were asked dry up or simply consist
of yeses and noes (or other one-word answers)? One reason comes from the group
members themselves: if they have a reason for what they said then they will often, quite
unprompted, add a ‘because’ after their one-word answer: ‘Would you turn the page?’
‘No, because life would hold no surprises anymore and…’
However, one cannot expect this alone to circumvent the problem of enquiries drying up,
especially with young children who are used to answering closed questions with one
word. Yet teachers who observe my sessions with children also witness rich and selfsustaining discussions, so what do I do to ensure that this occurs though I ask mainly
closed questions?
Before I answer this I would like to put it to you that, not only is it acceptable to use
closed questions when running enquiries with groups of people, it is to be preferred and –
perhaps more controversially - I think that open questions can be the enemy of a good
enquiry. Let me explain what I mean through an example:
The context for this particular discussion with some Year 4 children was a story about a
little girl whose birthday it is, she is 10 and 10 is her favourite number, so she has
decided that she wants to try to find a ‘real number 10 so she can keep it for herself
forever’. All she has to do is find one. The issue being introduced through this story is the
nature of numbers (or, in question form: ‘What is a number?’), the question that we are
discussing is ‘Where can she find a real number 10?’ One child begins the enquiry by
saying ‘All she has to do is find the first ever number 10 written down.’
I often give this example to teachers during training on questioning and then I stop here
and ask them, ‘What would your next question be?’ Very often teachers think that it has
to be an open question because it is an enquiry. Here is a typical example of the sort of
question suggested: ‘How would you go about doing that?’ This, of course, is an open
question. Before reading on I would like to ask you what you think about this question,
can you see any possible problems with this question, in terms of progressing the
enquiry?
[Take a moment to think before reading on.]
Let me give you a plausible pupil’s response, exaggerated to make a point: ‘I would make
a packed lunch, then I would tell my parents where I’m going - because you must never
go somewhere without telling an adult - then I would…’ You can see where this is going:
the focus of the discussion has been entirely lost and even if the pupil does return to the
point the discussion is in danger of being hijacked by other concerns such as whether you
should tell your parents where you’re going or even what to put in a sandwich! Anyone
who has tried to run an enquiry using only open questions will instantly recognize the
problem I’m describing: open questions are far too wide and therefore a discussion that
consists of them is in constant danger of losing focus. This is fine if there is no particular
objective for the discussion, but in most cases where an enquiry would be helpful, there is
an objective, so when there is an objective, open questions become ‘the enemy of a good
enquiry’.
This wideness can be shown with a simple diagram:
Fig. 1: The Open Question
Open question
The question that I in fact recommend on the training courses to follow the pupil’s point
about the first ever number 10 is as follows:
‘So let’s imagine that we search the whole world until we have found the first ever
number 10 written down like that [pointing to the one on the board: ‘10’], have we found
a real number 10?’*
* This question makes use of two other strategies ‘iffing’ and ‘anchoring’ that I do
not have the space to go into here. More on these can be found in my book The If
Machine: Philosophical Enquiry in The Classroom (Bloomsbury 2011) or a summary
can be found in this online paper: http://extranet.smuc.ac.uk/events-conferences/RIPLecture-Series-2012-13/RIP-public-lecture-series-11-12/Documents/RIP-LectureText-Peter-Worley.pdf
You will notice that this is a closed question and for this reason maintains the focus the
open question lost. This can be represented as follows:
Fig. 2: The Closed Question
Closed question
But the child is likely to answer with ‘yes’ or ‘no’. So now I can return to what to do to
combat this. For the purpose of the argument let’s say the child says ‘Yes’. My
recommendation is simple; so simple that it will seem not worth pointing out, but when
we at The Philosophy Foundation (see www.philosophy-foundation.org ) observe people
running enquiries it is one of the most common oversights.
(Drum roll!)
If you have not guessed already the strategy simply requires that you say… ‘Why?’ or
words to that effect such as ‘Can you tell me what reasons you have for that?’ etc. I call
this maneuver ‘opening up’ because it opens up a closed question and invites the speaker
to say much more than a one-word answer whilst maintaining the focus of the closed
question. This solves the problems that both types of question harbour, or should I say, it
gives you the best of both worlds: the focus of a closed question but the rich content of an
open question. So the shape of this questioning strategy is:
Fig. 3: The Question ‘X’
Closed question
Open it up!
I call this the question ‘x’. It also captures the idea that both types of question are crossed
to create a new and useful questioning approach.
There are a number of different ways that a question can be opened up: you can ask for
clarification (‘What do you mean by X?’), explanation (‘Can you explain what you
mean?’), elicitation (‘Can you say more about that?’) or justification (‘Why?’ or ‘What
reasons do you have for that?’) or you may ask for an example to illustrate their point.
With groups that I have been working with for some time and who are familiar with me
and my methods I simply circle my hands round each other (sometimes accompanied by
the minimal prompt ‘go on’ or ‘because…?’) to indicate to the speaker to say more
leaving it to them to decide what kind of response they give, the facilitator then only
needs to be more specific if necessary. All of these are examples of opening up a question
(actually, either open or closed). So, you no longer need to stop using closed questions,
you simply need to make sure (and this is the bit that is so easily forgotten) that you open
them up again!
One final point of clarification:
There is an important distinction between an enquiry needing to be had around an open
question and an enquiry needing to consist only of open questions. It is the latter claim
that I think is wrong but that, often, people conflate the two. So, if we return to the girl
looking for a number, the overall question being addressed in this enquiry is: ‘What is a
number?’ which is, of course, open. This kind of question (of the form ‘What is X?’) is
known as a Socratic question and is marked by the quality of being open, but my
recommendation is that the questions that the teacher/facilitator uses at any one time
during this broad enquiry will not always - and in fact not usually - be open but closed.
This distinction helps to show where and how the common misconception that one must
always use open questions for an enquiry comes from.
2: The Concept Box
First of all, a box in a poem:
The Square That Didn’t Fit In
‘I don’t want to be a square anymore!’
Said the square that didn’t fit in
‘I feel too round and circular
And I roll - at least when dreaming.
‘I was born with a sense of equality
But don’t want to be treated the same
Because I have a different quality,’
Said the square that didn’t fit in
‘I may look like a square to you
But I’m a circle on the inside
Were lines to cross my heart
They would measure the same distance wide,’
Said the square that didn’t fit in.
One day a shape-eating monster
Arrived with a square-shaped mouth
Each day it would eat a square
And then fly back off to the south
But our square that didn’t fit in
Had no reasons left to live
So he took himself to the monster
His life to the monster he’d give
The monster took one look at the square
And said, ‘Square, you look delicious!’
He’d never seen such a tasty looking square
‘And you,’ said the square, ‘look malicious.
‘But I’m not a square,’ explained the square,
‘I’m really a circle, you see.’
‘What!’ said the monster, ‘You mean: you’re not a square?
‘Oh, my mistake, I am sorry!’
Then the monster flew off, embarrassed,
Looking for squares to devour
Thinking that circles are squares
It reached Circle-Land in less than an hour.
But the circles, of course, didn’t fit
Into its square-shaped mouth
So the monster, by now starving hungry,
Flew off back down to the south.
From that day on the squares agreed
They’d regard the square a ‘circle’
‘Oh thank you, my friends! For that
I will be eternally grateful,’
Said the square that didn’t fit in.
(Taken from Peter Worley’s forthcoming book Once Upon An If… Stories and
Storytelling for Thinking for 7-16-year-olds, Bloomsbury 2014)
***
There is a great deal of debate over whether the questions used for philosophical enquiry
should be, in some way, chosen by the facilitator or whether they should be elected by the
group. In a further challenge to the hegemony of the question in enquiries I would like a
share a method that removes both types of question and instead allows for what I call an
emergent enquiry, sometimes with no need for a question at all.
The concept box is a useful general technique for helping students develop their own
discussions around central concepts (fairness, love, punishment etc.) without the need for
task questions at all. It broadens out and then focuses in, as described in the following
diagram:
Fig.4: The Concept Box
s
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Fo
n
co
s
pt
ce
e
th
Ga
s
pt
ce
n
o
rc
Central concepts
ts
s
pt
ce
on
rc
he
at
e.g. story, poem, picture
F
o
cu
sc
o
nc
ep
G
Begin with stimulus
(for enquiry/discussion)
Isolating concepts in various ways is standard practice in philosophy with children
approaches. The first part (the broadening-out part) of this procedure is called concept
fishing (a term coined by Grace Robinson who shared this part of the process with me
and from which I developed the full procedure of ‘the concept box’)3. The second part
(the focusing-in part), I call concept funnelling and it encourages the children to identify
central concepts.
I find this a particularly useful way of approaching poetry and stories but it can be just as
fruitful with all kinds of other stimuli. (All examples taken from doing The Concept Box
exercise on the above poem The Square That Didn’t Fit In with some Year 5s, age 10 in a
state school in London, UK).
The Concept Box
1. Begin by reading the story or poem.
(Comprehension stage)
2. After some talk-time in pairs, allow them to say whatever they like about the
story or poem. Encourage them to ask questions or to put to the group any
words or phrases (or anything, for that matter) they don’t understand. This is a
general comprehension aspect to the process so don’t worry too much about
them getting off-track. Always ask the group to answer the questions; avoid
doing so yourself. (Examples: ‘Why did the monster go to Circle Land?’, ‘Why
didn’t circles fit in his mouth?’, ‘I think the square didn’t fit in because he
wanted to be a circle on the inside even though he looked like a square on the
outside.’, ‘What does malicious mean?’)
(Concept fishing)
3. Next, set them the task of trying to say what the story or poem is about to their
talking-partner but then they must try to reduce this to just one word (you could
allow hyphenated words). Stipulate that you want as many of these ‘key words’
as possible but that there must be no repetition (‘If someone says your word
either put your hand down or think of another one.’) Again, don’t worry if they
miss the point or choose inappropriate words, as steps 4 and 5 will help to refocus the discussion. (Examples: ‘confused’, ‘mysterious’, ‘strange’, ‘shapes’,
‘crazy’, ‘weird’, ‘alive’, ‘lonely’, ‘unsure’, ‘misunderstanding’, ‘hungry’,
‘death’, ‘squircle’ etc.)
(Concept funnelling)
4. Once this has been done ask them to look at all the words that have been
gathered and to choose the one word they think best captures what the whole
3
Though Grace Robinson coined the expression ‘concept fishing’ she has pointed out to
me that the procedure itself is in common practice in P4C circles and is difficult to
attribute to a particular person. If anyone thinks that it can be attributed to someone then
they should let me know.
poem or story is about - the word that ‘really gets to the heart’ of the story or
poem. I often ask for someone to give an example to the class of a word they
think won’t be on the final list (in this case someone said ‘hungry’ and then,
when asked why, he said, ‘because that only happens in one bit.’) and then ask
someone to give an example of the kind of word they do think will be on the
final list (in this case someone said, ‘misunderstanding’ and when asked why:
‘because the square is misunderstood by the other squares, the monster
misunderstands the square when he said he’s a circle…’). Ask them to be ready
with a reason for why they chose the word they did. Limit this exercise to a set
number of concept-words, such as five, so that they are encouraged to choose
the more central ones. (You could make this longer if you feel that they have
not quite got there yet, but only have as many words as necessary). Once this is
done rub off, delete or separate the other words. (Example central concepts:
‘shapes’, ‘unsure’, ‘confused’, ‘misunderstanding’, ‘squircle’).
(Exploring central concepts)
5. Next, have them debate these inclusions and/or say why they think (justify /
explain) the story or poem is about them or not. (Examples: ‘Is confused and
unsure the same?’ / ‘Can you be unsure without being confused?’ / ‘It’s about
misunderstanding’)
6. Now, use these concept-words to focus the discussion by asking the children to
– as well as justify and explain - compare, connect, clarify, challenge, analyse
and/or revise them in the context of the story or poem. This makes the
discussion both abstract/general (‘What is it to be unsure?’) and
concrete/particular (‘What in the story makes it about misunderstanding?’).
Used carefully and with considered questioning from the facilitator during the
steps 1 to 6 you should be able to generate an enquiry without the need for a
task question or for a process of question formulation and selection.
7. (Optional emergent question) However, if a suitable question for enquiry
emerges from this process then that should not be ignored; this could be the
question that the enquiry is then based around. In the example of The Square
That Didn't Fit In one emergent question was ‘Was the square a squircle?’ This
included the nested questions4: What is a squircle? Can a square also be a
4
In PhiE, in addition to emergent questions, there are the following important question
types:
1. Task questions: these are the questions prepared in advance that are asked
explicitly to the class in order to engage them with - or to make accessible - a
philosophical controversy that is contained in a stimulus. (Eg. ‘Is it the same
ship?’)
2. Nested questions: these are the implicit questions that are connected (logically or
otherwise) to the task question. (E.g. ‘What does same mean?’)
3. Set questions: a question set to the class to think about between sessions, usually
based on an emergent issue from the discussion. (E.g. ‘Will you be the same
person when you come back next week?’)
circle? (Not only was the question emergent but so was the word ‘squircle’,
invented by a 9-year-old girl as part of the concept fishing part of the process).
Emergent questions in PhiE5 (taken from The Philosophy Foundation’s Stage 1
Handbook)
Many questions surface during the course of an enquiry, some of which are of
philosophical interest, either because they are themselves philosophical or because they
are related to the philosophical issues present in the enquiry.
1. Sometimes, emergent questions are asked directly by the children, such as: ‘What is
happiness?’ These emerging questions can be turned into task questions, or they
can be written down and recorded for a later session. They can also be used as set
questions for written homework.
2. Emergent questions sometimes find their way into the discussion in a form other
than a question. A child may say, for instance: ‘The word “nothing” is not nothing
itself.’ There is an implied emergent question here, one formulation of which
could be: ‘Is the word “nothing” nothing itself?’ The purpose of reformulating
this into a question is so that the concern raised by a particular child can be
presented to the group as a legitimate area for enquiry.
The emergent question is a very important part of the PhiE method of doing philosophy
with children because it is one of the key ways in which a facilitator achieves both the
maintenance of philosophical territory in the sessions and the preservation of the
autonomy of the children. A good facilitator is able to identify emergent questions as they
occur and will be able to use these to help maintain the philosophical direction of the
session using the children’s own contributions and concerns as the source; keeping it
philosophical but giving the children ownership of their enquiry.
5
PhiE (Philosophical Enquiry) is the dialectical method of doing philosophy that can be
found described in The If Machine: Philosophical Enquiry in The Classroom by Peter
Worley (Bloomsbury 2011). PhiE – it should be pointed out - is not the procedure but the
method of questioning – such as the question X technique - that is used to generate
philosophical dialogues with groups of people.