Years ago, I was dining out with my father-in-law and some of his friends, who were over from Ireland for a Six Nations rugby match with Scotland. One of the group was a restaurant owner, who told us that he was going to share a secret about how to tell if the eatery you were in was any good or not.
Wait till the end of the meal and see what staff ask, he said. If they asked, “Did you enjoy your meal?”, it was a bad sign; you were being forced into a binary choice and the restaurant staff knew that, unless your food was truly terrible, you were unlikely to express any dissatisfaction.
If, however, they asked, “How was your meal?”, that was a whole different ball game: the question was less confrontational and invited an honest answer, allowing room for nuance in your response.
At the end of our meal - at an Italian restaurant, where we’d picked through an array of mediocre pizza and pasta - our waiter came over and asked, “Did you enjoy your meal?” We all smiled and nodded knowingly at one another.
Subtle differences in how questions are posed can make as big a difference in classrooms as they do in your local trattoria. There was a lot of interest from edutwitter in a recent tweet from a US medical student, who observed: “One of the most important things I’ve learned during third year is how empowering it is to ask patients ‘What questions do you have?’ instead of ‘Do you have any questions?’”
That approach works on a similar principle to the restaurant questions: you can see how the former, more open question would make an anxious student more likely to share their thoughts in a packed class.
There’s a subtle issue of respect at play here. One way of asking for feedback - whether in the restaurant or the classroom - implicitly tells your audience that their views are valued, that the questioner is confident enough to take constructive criticism and adapt their approaches as a result. Questions that try to force a “yes” or “no” answer feel coercive rather than collaborative, a passive-aggressive power play rather than a genuine attempt to elicit a response.
How students are asked questions may be subtly revealing about the culture in a place of learning. You hear a lot about “student voice” these days, but we have previously reported concerns from children’s rights advocates that forums such as pupil councils can be tokenistic. Perhaps an analysis of student-teacher dynamics - including how questions are asked in the classroom - would tell us more than the mere existence of a pupil council about whether students’ voices are really being heard.
Gordon Stobart - who in August published a report for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development on assessment in Scotland - told MSPs last week that the education system must show it is genuinely listening to students when it comes to exams reform, because “they’re the ones who are shaped by [exams] ”.
Singer Adele, reunited with an inspirational teacher in the clip that went viral last Sunday, also underlined the importance of listening to students: she boiled down Miss McDonald’s qualities to the compassion she transmitted, recalling that “we knew that she really cared about us”.
Education systems flourish when they truly listen to students’ views and needs: see, for example, how local authorities that have embraced Foundation Apprenticeships have helped students who might have felt alienated by school if forced down a narrower curricular approach.
In short, education thrives where there is empathy between pupils and teachers - and a litmus test for whether that empathy exists in the classroom could come down to how you ask a simple question.
Henry Hepburn is news editor for Tes Scotland
This article originally appeared in the 26 November 2021 issue under the headline “Giving students a voice means asking them the right questions”
