Teachers know that curiosity fuels learning.
We intentionally design lessons that spark students’ questions. We celebrate inquiry, encourage exploration, and recognize that students often learn more deeply when they wrestle with uncertainty rather than simply receive answers. A classroom where students wonder, question, and investigate is a classroom alive with learning.
Yet somewhere between the classroom and adults learning and planning together, something often changes.
During coaching conversations, PLC meetings, professional learning, data reviews, and school improvement planning, the questions often become fewer. Conversations move quickly toward conclusions. Teams feel successful when they reach agreement, even if they haven’t fully explored the possibilities. Rather than lingering in uncertainty, we often rush to eliminate it.
Perhaps that’s understandable. Uncertainty can feel uncomfortable.
But what if that discomfort is exactly where learning begins?
If curiosity fuels student learning, why wouldn’t it fuel adult learning?
Many of the structures we create for adult learning unintentionally reward reaching conclusions more than exploring possibilities, certainly more than curiosity. Instructional coaches, teacher leaders, PLC facilitators, and school administrators all ask questions to promote reflection and dialogue. Yet perhaps the greater challenge is not asking better questions ourselves. It is creating conditions where teachers begin asking one another the questions that deepen everyone’s thinking.
As I was considering this tension, I read a business article describing how organizations unintentionally train future leaders to stop asking questions. Becky Cantieri writing in HR Drive, describes the need to create opportunities for discussion before answers are expected because learning often happens in the conversation, not after it.
“……when we reward fast answers over exploration, we lose more than curiosity. We lose one of the primary ways people learn, collaborate and innovate together”
I often describe coaching as creating an environment where people become comfortable with productive discomfort. The discomfort comes from recognizing that our first explanation may not be our best explanation, that another perspective may change our thinking, or that we don’t yet understand what students are experiencing. We can relieve that discomfort by quickly agreeing on an answer, or we can stay with it long enough for curiosity to generate better questions.
Asking thoughtful questions is an important facilitator and leadership skill. Creating a culture where colleagues routinely ask thoughtful questions of themselves and one another is a hallmark of a leaderful organization.
When exploring with teachers, “How do students learn the questioning process needed to promote their own critical thinking?” I suggest this strategy that I’ve called “the question before the question.” It reminds students that before answering an important question, they often need to ask themselves more questions.
Imagine a teacher preparing students for a debate on the question, “Should 18-year-olds have the right to vote?” Rather than beginning with opinions, the teacher begins with inquiry.
“Before tomorrow’s discussion, I’d like each of you to come prepared with ten questions that you think we should be asking ourselves and one another. As you create your questions, consider three categories: What do we think we know? What are we sure we know? What do we know we don’t know?”
The next day, students work in small groups, sharing their questions and identifying those they believe will be most important for guiding the discussion. The questions are collected and posted for everyone to see. At this point, no one is trying to answer them or determine which are best. The purpose is to broaden the group’s thinking before narrowing it. As the discussion unfolds, students naturally return to the posted questions, using them to challenge assumptions, explore evidence, and consider new questions and perspectives.
Notice what happened. The teacher didn’t create the questions that drove the discussion. The students did. The teacher designed the conditions for inquiry without owning the inquiry itself.
What if we designed PLC conversations the same way?
Imagine a PLC preparing to examine common assessment results. Instead of arriving ready to explain the data or recommend interventions, team members receive this invitation before the meeting:
“Please review the assessment results and come prepared with three to five questions that you believe our team needs to explore before we decide what these results are telling us. Consider: What do we think we know? What are we sure we know? What do we know we still need to find out?”
The meeting begins by collecting everyone’s questions, not everyone’s answers. Similar questions are grouped together into themes, but no attempt is made to answer them. Instead, the posted questions become a thinking framework for the team’s exploration of the data. Throughout the discussion, the posted questions remain visible, prompting participants to revisit assumptions, explore evidence, and sometimes answer one question while discovering two new ones.
Why are questions collected before they are discussed?
Because the first question often changes the second.
The first answer often eliminates the third.
Collecting the questions first preserves the team’s curiosity before it gets narrowed by the conversation.
The shift is subtle but significant. Rather than relying on the facilitator to ask the questions that deepen thinking, the team begins taking collective responsibility for inquiry. Curiosity becomes distributed across the group, making it more likely that understanding—not simply agreement—drives the team’s decisions.
Coaches, facilitators, and school leaders still play an essential role. They model curiosity, protect productive uncertainty, and design experiences that help colleagues become increasingly responsible for the inquiry.
When inquiry becomes everyone’s responsibility, curiosity becomes part of the culture rather than the skill of the facilitator. That’s when a PLC moves beyond being a meeting and becomes a true learning community.
