Inquiring Minds Want To Learn: Posing Good Questions To Promote Student Inquiry

[00:00] SPEAKER_01:

Hey, Justin Bader here. Just a quick note about this interview. My audio did not turn out at all. So the audio that you hear of my voice in this interview with Eric Francis is AI generated. I am authorizing this, but I wanted to let you know what we were doing simply because the audio was not salvageable. I think I had the wrong microphone selected, but I really wanted to bring you this interview.

[00:21]

So here we go with Eric Francis and AI Justin.

[00:25] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:37] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome back to the program for the third time my good friend, Eric Francis. Eric is an international author and presenter with over 25 years of experience working in education as a classroom teacher, site administrator, education program specialist, and trainer who produces and provides professional development for teachers and school leaders. He is the author of three books, including Deconstructing Depth of Knowledge, and Now That's a Good Question, as well as his new book, Inquiring Minds Want to Learn, posing good questions to promote student inquiry.

[01:11]

Eric, welcome back to Principal Center Radio.

[01:14] SPEAKER_02:

Thanks, Justin. Thanks for having me back. It's always good to be on your show.

[01:17] SPEAKER_01:

I'm excited to talk about the new book, and I'd love to hear what prompted you to write it. Tell us a little bit about the connection between posing good questions and student inquiry, student learning, and their desire to learn.

[01:28] SPEAKER_02:

Great, well, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity with it. So, it's really interesting because this stemmed out of a lot of my professional development I was doing around my first book, Now That's a Good Question. And what's interesting about Now That's a Good Question is that it identifies the different types of questions we could ask the kids. And that was a really, that was a hard write for me. That was a really challenge for me to write that book because you really had to dive deep into, you know, the different types of questions we can pose and present out there.

[01:57]

But through my professional development, what I found myself was talking about more so how can we ask and have the kids address those questions that will promote inquiry. And one of the things I've seen about with inquiry out there, and what I call true inquiry, is that true inquiry or real inquiry, you're not telling kids, okay, I want you to do inquiry. And it's not really instructional at all. It is completely inquisitive. So, what I did with this book is that, this is an extension, is that I taught you what, in my first book, and I explained what are the good questions. And this one is how you basically can provide and plan inquiry-based teaching and learning experiences that will engage and encourage students to understand and use their learning through inquiry and by questioning.

[02:47]

It also really focuses on the idea of what does it mean to have an inquiring mind? So, we know that old colloquialism, inquiring minds want to know, that the National Inquirer took. And that's basically come to grow to see that this is what it means to be curious. But I really want to take it and say, not so much even, like, what does an inquiring mind want to learn, but also how an inquiring mind learns. And an inquiring mind learns by asking and addressing questions. And really, the big question behind this book is, how could we understand and use questions and questioning through inquiry Not only to assess student learning, but also to activate, advance, and augment student learning.

[03:30]

So, it's really about trying to shift how we traditionally view and use questioning in the classroom.

[03:36] SPEAKER_01:

Love it. Can't wait to get into more of that. I wanted to ask kind of a positioning or a framing question to orient us. I was thinking back to a workshop that I went to as a science teacher that was on different degrees of inquiry ranging from, like, completely wide open, here's a room full of supplies and some hammers and screwdrivers. Explore. You know, go at it.

[03:54]

Go to town. You're welcome to use or destroy anything in this room. Like, that was one extreme end. And then on the other extreme end, you know, we hear a lot lately about explicit instruction and on, you know, highly structured plans for how we take students through the content. You know, if we think about subjects like math, often those are highly structured and full of explicit instruction. How are you thinking about that question of kind of open-endedness versus explicit and kind of teacher-determined in the approaches that you talk about in this book?

[04:22] SPEAKER_02:

You know, it's really interesting to bring that up, because traditionally, we've looked at inquiry. There's four different types of inquiry. There's controlled, there's structured, and there's guided and open or free. That's what Joseph Schwab originally came up with in the 1960s. Marshall Herron really solidified it in 1971. And those are really the four common types of inquiry-based learning experiences our students can engage in and experience.

[04:48]

But in that time, and since the turn of, you know, the millennium, there's actually been three forms of inquiry that have emerged. One is called coupled inquiry, which is a combination of guided and open-free inquiry. So, you have controlled inquiry, which is completely teacher-led. Structured inquiry, which is teacher-directed. Guided inquiry, which is an open inquiry, is different extents of teacher-facilitated, student-centered. Coupled inquiry really depends upon how involved the teaching is.

[05:23]

Authentic inquiry is really just turning it over to the students. It's kind of like the old ideas of the open classroom. Hey, man, what do you want to learn today? You know, really taking it where they take ownership and they learn about how to engage in and experience inquiry. And there's a new one that came out. It was actually around late 2010s called synergistic inquiry that I talk about.

[05:47]

And that's where the teacher is an active participant in the inquiry with the students. So, it's not the teacher's leading it, it's not the teacher's in charge, the teacher's actually participating in it. And that kind of inquiry is really great when you have courses like student government, or maybe newspaper, or even something if you want to do more of a service learning thing in your classroom. The teacher is engaging in the inquiry with the students, and a lot of times the role of the teacher is, the teacher can Establish connections or make these connections that the kids can, like maybe someone in the community, you know, be the adult that connects with the kids. I really think when it comes to inquiry, it really kind of ties even back to what I say about depth of knowledge. The delivery and direction of your inquiry will depend upon two things, the demand of your standards and the strengths of your students.

[06:39]

We can't just say, okay, guys, we want you to do inquiry, and we want you to ask questions. We got to teach them how to do that, and through school, our kids forget how to learn through inquiry by questioning. They're great at it between the age of two and five, but once they get to school, the questions are primarily used for the purpose of assessment, and we also put this unreasonable expectation for students to say, well, we want you to ask good questions, but... They've been basically taught not to because their questions either have to be on the topic or they're going to look foolish or think that they're foolish.

[07:14]

And there's also an emphasis on answers when we ask questions. So, again, kind of circling back to it, it really depends upon, again, what is your standards demand? Because we are a standards-driven system. And what are the strengths of your students? Are they able to engage in inquiry? Are they interested?

[07:32]

Is there a way you can tap into their curiosity? So there's, again, like everything, there's not one way to do inquiry. So it really depends upon the experience you want to give your kids and also what the standards expect from your kids.

[07:45] SPEAKER_01:

That's a really good point. I feel like the instructional purpose, as he said, matters so much, right? If this is a student newspaper class where they need to choose what to write about versus if this is an AP math class where I'm trying to prepare students for a very specific body of content, you know, our purpose is going to vary, and the degree of openness and the type of inquiry is going to vary... Let's talk a little bit about, like, the student motivation side, because certainly anytime I hear someone advocating for more inquiry, more kind of student self-direction, there's always a rationale around, you know, like, kids learn better when they're kids, when they care about and are interested in what they're learning about, versus just, you know, the adults decided that this is what you needed to study.

[08:25]

Talk to us about the relationship between questions and inquiry and motivation.

[08:31] SPEAKER_02:

Well, big thing, let's talk, let's start with motivation. The big thing about inquiry is about student choice and student voice. I mean, I could ask you a question. So, you know, we were talking, if you don't mind, if we kind of pull back the curtain a little bit and talk about our conversation, you were telling me how your wife is a science teacher. So there's a next generation science standard that says analyze, interpret data on natural hazards to forecast future catastrophic events and inform development technologies to mitigate their effects. One of the simplest things I discuss in the book is how you create a good question from a standard to engage in what I call the pathway to expertise.

[09:06]

So, you can put one or three question stems in front of it. How do you... That's assessment. How can you... That's instruction.

[09:15]

That replaces your learning target. And how could you... is one that encourages inquiry. So with that standard, I would say, so how could you analyze, interpret data on natural hazards to forecast future catastrophic events and inform development technologies to mitigate their effects?

[09:32]

That becomes the instructional focus and the learning, the purpose for learning. So, I would then use questioning to assess and build your foundational knowledge. So, I'd say, what is a natural hazard? And Justin, you would tell me... Like flooding?

[09:47]

Okay, that's a great example. So, that's a DOK, too, because you're giving me an example. But what is a natural hazard?

[09:52] SPEAKER_01:

Like a definition? Yes. So, something that can occur in nature, it's not caused by people, but it could be dangerous to people.

[10:00] SPEAKER_02:

Okay, good, but you said flooding. So, here I'm going to ask you a DOK, what I call DOK3 question, because, you know, that's my other world. So, now you have to think strategically or use complex reasoning with evidence. Is flooding natural, man-made, or both?

[10:13] SPEAKER_01:

I guess it depends on where, like if I'm next to some sort of human development, like a parking lot or a dam, then probably both.

[10:20] SPEAKER_02:

Right. So do you want to do flooding for your project? To answer that question, is that the natural hazard you want to analyze, interpret data on? Sure. Good, pasta lasagna don't get any on you. Now I got you in your learning experience.

[10:31]

You see how simple it is? Is that you start with the question, and that's the thing, is that we have to change how we do that with questioning. So, I ask questions not to instruct, and I ask questions not to assess. I actually ask questions to invite questions. And I also ask questions to activate in advance. I don't expect you to have the answer.

[10:56]

If you do, wonderful. But if you don't, what I'm asking you to do is reflect before responding. So if I said to you, this is a classic question I ask this all the time when I talk about questioning. So how did Edgar Allan Poe create an entire genre of literary fiction? I have no idea. It's okay if you don't know.

[11:15]

What if I told you that he was the first to ever write a detective mystery story featuring a sleuth or a detective who used a deductive logic and reasoning to solve a crime? Who does that sound like?

[11:28] SPEAKER_01:

That sounds like Arthur Conan Doyle. What character is this?

[11:30] SPEAKER_02:

Sherlock Holmes. Right, so you have knowledge of that, great. What if I told you that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle actually based Sherlock Holmes on a character Edgar Allan Poe created about 40, 50 years earlier, named C. Auguste Dupont, and in a book, in a short story called The Murders in the Rue Morgue. See how I got you motivated? I piqued your interest and curiosity?

[11:53]

The other thing is that questioning will protect us. Because here's the thing. We are now living in a time where anything we say or do can and will be misrepresented, misinterpreted to our school boards or our administration. You said this in your class, and it can be interpreted more so as opinion and perspective than facts and evidence. But if I ask you a question that protects you because you can't control what comes out of the mouth of babes...

[12:25]

And that's a very, very big, important thing is that we have to use questioning. So I used to do that with questions in my class all the time, because I never wanted my kids to know my perspectives and my thoughts, because to me, that's controlling thinking. That's not stimulating thinking. And when I, you know, taught all the subjects, I taught all my content area to make extra money through my prep time. When I taught history, when I taught World War II, I would always get that kid who came in, he found it on the internet, hey, Mr. Francis, did you know that Adolf Hitler was Time's Man of the Year?

[12:55]

Yeah. Well, why'd he get that? Okay, so now they're asking that. And then, what do you think, Mr. Francis? Do you think he deserved that?

[13:02]

And I'm like, I'm not gonna go there. But I'm gonna ask you a question. Why did he get Time's Man of the Year? And does he still deserve to have that title or should have been taken away and why? So, now, I did this more of an open-ended question where they can go and think critically and creatively about that. So, because we live in a time right now where everything we say and do can and will be misrepresented, misinterpreted.

[13:27]

But the questions will protect us and we can't control what comes out of the mouth of babes. And a lot of times, the kids have stuff that comes out, and we can't just sit there and go, well, we don't talk about Fight Club in this classroom. And everything we say and do will be misinterpreted, misrepresented, but with the questioning, at least we can get it out with the kids and protect that.

[13:51] SPEAKER_01:

So, Eric, I wanted to go back to something that we touched on a little bit earlier. And that is generating student questions. And when I was a science teacher, you know, it was pretty common practice to do a KWL at the beginning of a unit and say, you know, what do you already know about this subject? What do you want to learn more about? And invariably, students would have lots of interesting questions. And then I would kind of be crushed as a teacher as I realized we're not going to be able to answer most of these questions because the scope is often far broader than a unit.

[14:19]

So, you know, like, I have all these great questions from students, but I also have a pretty specific set of things that we're going to teach. And even if I was completely open-minded as to what we taught, there's no way we could get to all of them. So, help us kind of reel that in. If we want to seek out students' questions, maybe we've done a KWL. I don't even know if people are still doing KWLs, But I did a lot of them back in my day. And, you know, we don't want to ask and then do nothing, you know?

[14:46]

Like, I don't want to solicit students' questions and then not be able to do anything with them. So it helps us to think expansively about some different ways we can use those questions, especially if a large chunk of them are feeling like they're outside the scope of our unit.

[15:00] SPEAKER_02:

Well, that's interesting, because a lot of things I even talk about in my first book, and I'm going to talk about this, is what I call the personal question, and that's what the student wants to learn, and that's what they want to figure out, and that's their question. Um, that is a way we can get the kids engaged, where we can say, well, what's the question you have, and have them become the teacher, have them share their answer, have them share what they discover with it. That is a lot of times towards the end of the unit. Sometimes the kids' questions are so powerful. I mean, I used to say it to my students, go, hey, can we make that a class question? Yeah, sure, and give them credit for it.

[15:34]

The hard part of it, it's so funny when we talk about KWL, I'm kind of doing something really interesting in terms of an inquiry, and a lot of it's a literary standpoint. I'm actually even doing this with adults, where I talk about in the book, with foundational inquiry, you should be able to show some kind of stimulus, where it can be an image, it can be a statement, it can be a standard. And I ask the students, what does this mean to you? What stands out for you? And if you're not sure about something, how could you phrase that as a question? And that gets them into two different things.

[16:08]

So there's the traditional method, that great method that came out of Harvard, the question formulation technique, the QFT. That is something that has become a more of a structured way to get questioning. I used to do that before I even discovered the QFT. It's always like when you do these things sometimes, Justin, you're like, Oh, somebody already invented that. I guess I'm being innovative, but not inventive. So, I do a thing called rapid fire questioning, where it's a multi-sensory experience, where if you see something, hear something, or something pops in your head, boom, you just start asking questions.

[16:43]

That's what it means to have an inquiring mind. In the book, I actually show an example, because I always wanted to record this, because my mind, I'm always asking questions. And I could just see something or think of something, and boop, I have a question. So I actually recorded and wrote down the questions I had when the pandemic first broke out, and I just wrote them all down, and I put that actually in a slide in the book, in a graphic in the book. But the best way to get to all the kids' questions is have them pick the question they want to answer, or they want... We're not even going to say answer.

[17:15]

They want to address. Okay? And then have them share with the class what they've learned. The student becomes the teacher. So that is a very big thing. And you can do that as a part of deep inquiry.

[17:30]

The harder challenge, Justin, is that questioning is not easy. And coming up with questions is not easy. It requires a lot of deep, critical, and creative thinking. So what I also talk about in the book is, how can we use AI to help come up with the questions? And there's a lot of programs out there right now, and I get scared when I see, well, we have DOK questions in our AI program. And I'm like, okay, well, who's designating the DOK level?

[18:01]

And secondly, some of those are not even questions. I mean, when you give somebody an objective or give them a direction, that's not a question. That's not inquiry. You're telling them. So what I do is there's a thing I talk about in a book where I say, here's a sentence frame. How could you, what kind of questions could students inquire and investigate through a deep inquiry into, and you either enter in your standard or the subject or the text or topic or technique you're teaching.

[18:28]

And it'll come up with the questions. But you need to use the AI not as a credible source, but more so a critical stimulus to say, oh, I could come up with a good question, better question than that. Or I could, that's a good question, let me see how I can deliver it. Don't use it as just like, oh, it says it's a DOK3 question, I'm going to go now and take that. No, you still need to use your instructional talent for that. So again, circling back with it, have the students come up with their own questions.

[18:59]

Let them choose which one they want to address so they can teach the, what they find to the class, and use AI. Use ChatGPT to ask, to come up with questions. If the kids are going to get the answers from ChatGPT, why don't we come up with the questions that we can have them go and inquire, investigate? To quote the great wrestler, Roddy Piper, just when you think you have the answers, I change the question. That's what we need to do with AI when it comes to questioning.

[19:24] SPEAKER_01:

But you still have to use your instructional talent. I mean, that's the thing. AI is a tool.

[19:44] SPEAKER_02:

Okay? Um, I could give you a guitar. Like, you know, and I've said this, I think, now, even to you, and probably a number of shows if we look back. I could give you Eddie Van Halen's guitar. I can put an iPad on it to make it do the brown sound like Eddie Van Halen's guitar. That doesn't mean you're gonna play like Eddie Van Halen.

[20:01]

You'll sound like him. You still need to use your instructional talent. You can't just say... It's really funny, because the dynamics I'm seeing is that the teachers don't want the kids to use AI to do their work.

[20:13]

But we're okay with going to, like, magic school or school AI, all these different things, to get the assignments we need or do our lesson plans. So we can't say, you can't, but I can. You still need to use your instructional talent. It's a tool. It is something that we can, that can help us, but use it not as a source. Use it as a stimulus for your, to develop your instructional talents, especially when it comes to inquiry and questioning.

[20:39] SPEAKER_01:

Well, let's shift gears and talk a little bit, if we could, about assessment, because certainly when we think about asking questions, one of the primary ways that we use questions on a day-to-day basis is to see what students know, to see where maybe there are some misconceptions, to see where we need to do some additional teaching or additional explanation or additional practice. Talk to us about asking really good questions to check for understanding.

[21:01] SPEAKER_02:

Well, that's going to be a part, actually, interesting. It's going to be about your instruction, your instructional delivery. What I like to say is that tests don't ask good questions. Those... What's on there are items.

[21:11]

Now, they may be phrased as an interrogative statement. That doesn't mean they're a good question. And that's actually the problem with questions, the uncomfortableness of questioning, is that we're expected to give an answer when we're asking a question. In fact, I like to say it's okay to say, I don't know. Because that opens up a doorway to conversations. It's not dismissive.

[21:33]

There's some people who say, kill IDK, or, you know, don't allow the kids to say, I don't know. But that basically establishes communication. Because if I said that to you about Edgar Allen Poe, and you said, I don't know, I can say, well, I don't expect you to. Okay, or I'm using that to assess your learning, because you could probably go into, if you had some background knowledge on it, you could become the teacher with it. So when it comes to assessment, and when I talk about assessment, I talk about assessment, I like to distinguish between there's an assessment and there's a test. And a test tells me, did you get what I taught you?

[22:10]

And a lot of time, it addresses and assesses the standard completely. An assessment says, where are you in your learning so I can inform to go to the next step? So, one of the things I talk about in the book is the best question we can ask for assessment is every time you give an answer, ask, what do you mean? So, if they say to you, if you say, what is two plus two, which is not really a question, but you say, what is two plus two? That's my item. You would say, four.

[22:37]

And I would say, what do you mean? That's the important learning. We need to have kids learn how to communicate or explain how they attain their answers. The other thing is, stop emphasizing answers and stop focusing on the answers. In fact, what I often encourage, and I encourage this in my DOK work, is give the kids the answer and ask them, why is it correct or incorrect? So if I asked you, could two plus two equal five, most likely you would tell me no.

[23:04]

And I'd say, why, what do you mean? And they say, well, two plus two equals four. Well, what do you mean? Well, because when I have two and I have two and I combine it, I make four. So what would I need to do to make five? Well, I have to add one more.

[23:15]

You understand the concept of addition. That's the transferable knowledge. But if I said to you now, so what if you used addition, decimals, and rounding? Now, I'm activating and advancing your learning. I gave you the answer. Two plus two could equal five.

[23:30]

Okay? I gave you the answer with the Edgar Allan Poe thing. I said, Edgar Allan Poe created an entire genre of literary fiction. You have to find out, well, what was that genre? See? Or even with the science standard, you know the answer is this.

[23:45]

You're going to analyze and interpret data on natural hazards to do these two things. Well, now you got to think about Okay, do I really understand what a natural hazard is? So you said flooding, and I used questioning to basically ask you to clarify, to consider. Is that natural, man-made, or both? And you're like, well, I guess it could be man-made. I go, okay, well, do you want to do that for your project?

[24:07]

Yeah, so now you got two parts of your project. This is how you can prevent flooding, uh, and design things to prevent flooding when it's man-made, and this is how you do it when it's natural, and this is how you do it when it's both. What am I teaching you? Absolutely nothing. I'm just asking you questions. This is not going to happen overnight because most likely, by the time you get your students, they're going to be taught how to respond to questions.

[24:37]

Now you're telling them, I'm going to use questions with you to activate and advance your learning. Answers come free. We can find them all on our phone, but... We need to be able to explain, justify, or extend, or verify.

[24:51]

That's the purpose of our questioning. And that's what you're assessing. You're not assessing where they can answer correctly. You're assessing, can they explain how they got their answers? Can they justify or verify why their answers are correct or incorrect? Now they have the answers, what else can they do with it?

[25:06]

Or how else can they use it to expand, extend their knowledge?

[25:10] SPEAKER_01:

So the book is Inquiring Minds Want to Learn, Posing Good Questions to Promote Student Inquiry. And Eric, I wanted to ask as kind of a final question if I could, if you could wave your magic wand or have your way in the work that you do with schools, what do you most want to see happen as a result of this book? And connected to that, if people want to get in touch with you and talk about working together, where's the best place for them to go?

[25:34] SPEAKER_02:

Best place I'm gonna go is my website, Maverick, M-A-V-E-R-I-K, no C in Maverick. If you put a C in it, you're going to, uh, India. Somebody got, you know, the, uh, URL address. So, M-A-V-E-R-I-K, education.com, or they can contact me through Solution Tree. That's also where they can get the book, solutiontree.com.

[25:54]

You know what's really funny, Justin? I'm on this mission right now, um... I read Adam Grant's Think Again. You gotta read it.

[26:05]

Every educator needs to read this book. It's really funny, because everybody right now is reading Hidden Potential. And I read this book on accident. I'll tell you the funny story. Sean Galliard, who's another podcaster, education thought leader, he was reading Hidden Potential. I saw that, and I thought he was reading Think Again.

[26:21]

So I read the wrong book, but I'm so glad. Because the whole message behind Think Again is that we should rethink why we do how we do what we do. And that's what it means to really change and grow in our thinking. And the message behind it, and the message I took away with it, so I'm kind of expanding on extending it, which is kind of what I do. I mean, I don't invent, I kind of try to innovate, which is make it more extended, like, kind of with DOK, kind of what I'm doing with questioning. I'm going to be honest with you.

[26:54]

The reason why I came with the concept good questions in this framework is because I really wanted to extend what is an essential question, because there was no clear definition. Um, it was varied based upon who wrote. I really, really hope what this book does, and all my work, and even my professional development, because when I'm coming and going like this, I'm saying, I am asking you to rethink. What that means is...

[27:17]

There's new data and information and the circumstances and conditions have changed. I'm going to present that to you. I'm asking you to rethink in light of the new data and information and in consideration of the new, the changing circumstances and conditions. You need to choose whether to reconsider. And I can't force you or make you do that. This is your choice.

[27:42]

And I think that's really going to help. And it's really helping what I'm seeing when I talk to teachers and when I provide professional development. Because, you know, you and I both do this and we both come in and it's like, okay, here's Eric Francis. He's going to tell you you have to change everything you do. Or I'm right and everybody's wrong. And that turns off everybody.

[28:00]

So that's why I read this book. And that's even a lot of things with depth of knowledge, is that because there's a lot of inaccuracies. And Adam Grant talks about when we're challenged, our thinking's challenged, or when we know something, we become one or three modes. We become the preacher, where we evangelize, I'm right, I'm right, and this is the way, this is the way. And if people are pushing back, we scream louder, like a preacher. Or we become the prosecutor where our mission becomes to prove you wrong.

[28:30]

And I will admit, when it comes to DOK for the last number of years, I've been the preacher and prosecutor. Hey, this is... The DOK wasn't accurate. This is the way.

[28:38]

Oh, you don't believe me? Here's the evidence, okay? But then there's also the politician where... You're doing things, not with the integrity, but to be light.

[28:49]

Say, okay, look, I know you don't like this, but how do I make this where you can like it, and you like me, and everything is happy? No. You have to approach it like the scientist. That the thought process is this, and I really think we need to talk about this with our teachers, and this is probably a longer thing that you expected me to say. Everybody is right. And everybody is right based upon what they've been told, taught and told, or based upon what they think and believe.

[29:19]

Everybody's right. However, the circumstances and conditions have changed, and there's new data and information. I'm asking you to rethink. You need to reconsider, based upon what's out there, whether you're still right. And that is a different way to communicate it than coming in and saying, like the Mandalorian, this is the way, or here's this new thing. So when you're rethinking and you're saying, okay, yeah, things have changed.

[29:52]

But now I need to find out what is really that change and what's the new data and information. Like, Norman Webb finally came out and said, I didn't create the DOK wheel. He wrote it on Edutopia. I'm giving it to people. I said, we're not going to talk about this thing anymore. It's inaccurate.

[30:09]

The creator said it's inaccurate. Yeah, but... And it's hard because it's kind of like you're convincing people the world is not flat anymore. It's round based upon the new data and information.

[30:21]

I can't change your thinking. I can only ask you to rethink. You have to choose to reconsider. And if you don't want to, that's on you. And that is really something that I'm doing as a PD person. The force to change, as we like to call it, that's got to be a leadership thing where you got to look at it and say, hey, this is the direction we're going.

[30:44]

You need to decide whether you want to go in this direction. or not, and if you don't, that's totally cool, but this is where we're going, and here's what you can do. You can choose to join us in this direction, or you can choose not to, but what you can't do is you can't disrupt it, and you can't fight against it, because then that doesn't work. So, I think that's what I'm hoping, really, in a big nutshell. For the future, let's move forward with everything we do in education. Let's ask to rethink, look at the new data and information, and then choose to consider, and then decide whether we're still right, or maybe once upon a time we were right, but we nearly need to reconsider whether we're still right.

[31:29]

And if you do that, you'll be learning on a DOK3 every single time.

[31:32] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Eric, as always, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me again on Principal Center Radio. Thank you for having me, and look forward to talking to you when I write the next book.

[31:42] Announcer:

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