Our College Learning Culture is what we do. It’s the way that students and staff approach learning. It describes our attitudes and skills that need to be developed for success in life.

Over the semester, we as staff have been working on thinking deeply about questions and how we promote inquisitive learning. Just this week we concluded the process by reflecting on the role teachers play in helping students learn. It’s been so helpful as the following email extract from one of our staff shows.

I was reflecting this afternoon during the meeting on how in my first year of teaching I felt I should put students off from asking questions because I was not ready with a response to left-of-field answers or answers that were so wrong. I could not comprehend their response.

So, I did what any good teacher would do and asked someone with a lot of experience what they do. She said,  I would say, (Quote) ‘’That is an interesting response, how did you get that answer?” and went on to explain that in her experience students will often misinterpret your question or the context in which it is asked. It made me realise that when it comes to engaging students we can sometimes assume or presume that students understand what we are saying.

The lesson is there for us all. How are we using questions to help students clarify and describe, interpret and analyse, and in particular, actually evaluate and assess what the answers mean? Learning is not always about the right answers or even the right questions, but it is about empowering learners with tools that allow them to “dig” into information, data, opinions or ideas and think through what they find. Hopefully, it will then lead to the logical question – what might we do from here?