This is a basic Tree of Questions. The question in the center is an individual’s starting question. In rounds others add questions, that may even lead to many fields of inquiry and possible research for the asker. No matter how simple the starting question, well facilitated, it should lead to fundamental questions, even when the starting question isn’t.

The Tree of Questions

Jumpstart eduction bottom up with powerful questions.

This is a new tool for education. The Tree of Questions is basically a way to get students interested in learning for themselves. There are two main aspects to the approach. There’s the tool of the Question Tree and there’s the facilitation process that comes with it. This is not about creating nice trees full of questions to see how every question can lead to many others. The purpose is to ignite learning (together) bottom up.

The Tree of Questions is a tool based on what personally got me learning, on systems thinking, design thinking, integral psychology, Open Space Technology, project experiences, when divergence mattered, and even seeing how nature grows. It’s part of the ‘Flourish&Fly’ educational concept.

What are the benefits of Question Trees for students?

1. It motivates. Their own interests and curiosity guide them.
2. It widens their perspective and helps them see how all topics are interconnected.
3. They’ll notice that questions lead to questions and new areas of interest. Learning never stops. Also they train the art of the question.
4. It helps them to see what they need to know to get where they want.
5. It helps them set a trajectory getting there.
6. It gets them interacting with fellow learners all sharpening, inspiring each others minds and hearts.

In a time when many people, especially online, engage in simple statements without any real investigation and lack of multiple perspectives, a tool like this can help open eyes, train critical thinking and planned research.

In this article we explain the tool, show some examples, offer facilitation tips. Feel free to play with or iterate the method to make it work for you.

How to work with the Tree?

This is a simple Question Tree. Questions from others ignite a wider looking to possibilities, consequences and, most of all, a necessity for further learning and investigation.

The simplest form is this. A student takes an A3 paper and writes a personal learning question in the middle of the paper. Then all students walk around with Post Its in hand. They read each others, or a certain amount of other peoples, questions. Then they add questions on their Post Its to the central question, or (important!) to questions others added. It is allowed to move Post Its in order to add questions in between or cluster them more logically. Then students return to their own question and add questions to what they find there.

Keep the following principles in mind: 1. Only use positive questions. 2. Only seek to help, advance, wonder, not to judge. (Read no bullying & putting people down). 3. Think divergent, add questions that look in a new way at one of more of the questions. (Go deeper. Go wider. Question assumed perspectives within questions.) 4. And write readable.

The process works towards clustering the hottest questions or topics. This process can be repeated up to 5 times (unless you want the tree to become the investigation itself, then at a certain point let people also add answers, links, suggestions on how to find answers). Then the students go around with a colored marker and add a V with every question they too have, or want to learn about. This is the convergence. It becomes clear what most people care about the most. The whole class then discusses overlaps, and chooses who sits with who, to have a first dialogue about their shared interest.

Note: In the School of Wonder we see the Question Trees as the starting point for personal and shared learning. Whether learners want to investigate .. or read about .. or start dreaming up new inventions or even start building, or run into the kitchen to ask a cook if they can help, or lock themselves up to write a book, is all fine. This is the thing, once you get that all your actions can be related to learning, you can expand on your curiosity everywhere and in many different ways.

A tree is also always an unfinished product. It ignites. Take this project tree. Enough more to discover, like what workplace, tools that might be needed, etc. the point is that it opens eyes to how big the work might be, but also that persistence can tackle all of them.

A variation would be to all start with the same question in a central place. This is ideal for projects. But mind you, in a class, it might work better to have everyone start with their own question, and then notice perhaps a few may have started projects others want to join. This is the thing. A tree of questions is, for me, not a plan to follow. It’s the start of igniting where curiosity wants to go and see what is all influencing a certain aspect. Thus after you have a call full of question trees, students should feel free to cluster around the most popular questions and topics and research, develop, explore their learning from there.

Note to teachers. Don’t worry if you don’t know about topics requested. Your task is to facilitate them, not to teach. All information they seek can be found online. You should help them with some critical thinking. What sources are reliable? How can you tell? Etc. Rather than teaching critical thinking in advance, teach it whenever it comes up. This way students are always in the clear, why new information is beneficial to them. (That is actually why so many children drop out, if not for real then mentally. The taught subjects too often make no direct sense to their reality.)

The hard black suggestions for direction of questioning, may naturally lead to more bigger topics…or not. Sometimes one aspect becomes more dominant. Once again, it’s not to be complete, or ask all the essential questions. It’s to trigger learning, to both stimulate divergent thinking to look at subjects from more than one side and to feel which line ignites further investigation, alone or with others.

More Tips for Facilitators

Give pointers or example questions. Both for higher levels, and for beginners facilitators can give some pointers to zones or directions of questions. With beginners it can help participants to start thinking and asking diverging questions. The art of knowing what questions to ask can be trained, though just following the natural flow should work well in most cases.

These suggestions can be very simple, depending on the question(s). Past & Future. Me, the situation, options to act on. The tree metaphor can help too. Under ground the past and unknowns and above ground the known. Underground the facts and above ground the plan. All the way to an almost full scale business canvas.

As the purpose is to get learning into a natural flow, regulate the process according to interest and energy.

After the clustering of groups around the hottest questions, get the groups learning together. This can be explained to them as discussing the questions, which are the hottest, which should be included now in hindsight, etc. If the tree is project oriented, than it helps to suggest they divide tasks and research area’s. This aspect may also be important so young students will do some studying alone.

If over several days, groups may be fluid, people leaving and joining other groups. Or some groups can be more dialogue based, others more action, experimental driven. If at all possible let them start building, walk into a forest with a plant recognition app, start making a movie, rewrite the curriculum of their school. ;)

It helps to ask all groups, even if the dialogue part is very small to a: make a short (creative) presentation towards all others. b: that there is some sharing of further steps people will take individually or as a group. But be careful with that. Often the fire of learning dies when it’s for school. Too many children have lost the zest for discovery, as soon as they link it to school. To avoid this you may also share you’ll make space for anything students discover the coming days.

Goodluck.

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