How to Raise the Next Scientist: Give Your Students the Answers

The secret to your students' success lies in their ability to formulate questions, not answers. This is how we do it in the "Inquisitive Biology" program.

Dr. Omer Choresh

"My mother turned me into a scientist without intending to. All the Jewish mothers in Brooklyn used to ask their sons, 'Did you learn something at school today?' But not my mother. She always asked me, 'Did you ask a good question today?' This difference is what turned me into a scientist," said Professor Isidor Isaac Rabi, a Jewish physicist and Nobel Prize winner in Physics in 1944.

Education systems have become addicted to artificial achievements, measured by standardized tests and traditional, rigid curricula that focus less on critical thinking skills, empathy, independence, and creativity. For example, the teachers who ask the questions, often also providing the answers, or requiring students to supply answers in a prescribed format.

We, as teachers, tend to convey the material in creative ways such as research, gamification, and solving exercises in various methods, but most of them converge into a closed, almost fossilized area of questions we provide and answers we demand from the students. This is a pedagogy that seeks to protect the students, even from themselves, from the world around them, and from others, ensuring that only the reins we hold can safely guide them to the goal, which is passing the test.

In this article, I will try to make you dare to let go of the reins and allow the students to explore. The examples I will give are from a unique program called "Inquisitive Biology". At the heart of the program is implementation 21st century skills like open inquiry, and most of the learning in the classroom is done by the students, with the teacher serving only as a guide and facilitator. Learning takes place through the analysis of scientific articles, collaborative learning, brainstorming, research workshops, and discussions.

Why Expose the Question? Reveal the Answer

What to do? Allow your students to formulate the question for a given answer. In this exercise, recommended before an exam, organize the learned material in the form of answers to questions and have the students formulate the questions. This approach encourages students to delve deeper into the answer and understand its components in order to formulate the question. The exercise is particularly suitable for higher-order thinking questions.

Example: Present the students with a table of data and an answer that requires them to understand the table's data or relate it more broadly to other concepts in order to formulate the question. In the case of struggling or insecure students, you can start with simple answers such as "The effect of light intensity on the rate of photosynthesis in the plant" and expect the student to formulate a simple question like "What could be the title of the table?" or "What does the table in front of you show?" From here it is possible to advance to answers that deal with the analysis of the data in the table or the context of the data in the table to biological processes.

Free Questioning

What to do? The students receive a short excerpt, containing certain facts. They need to think of any question that arises from the given information and suggest ways to find answers to the questions they raised. Additionally, students are required to reflect on their thought process, asking themselves questions such as "Do I need to find new knowledge to answer the question I asked?" or "Do I need to answer the question based on understanding the information?"

Example: In a discussion about human involvement in nature and the importance of preserving biodiversity, students received a short excerpt: "The Chinese researcher Youyou Tu won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015 for developing an effective drug against malaria. She found in Chinese literature from 2200 years ago information that the sweet wormwood plant (Artemisia annua) was used as a treatment for malaria. The researcher extracted the substance artemisinin from the plant and discovered that in the presence of iron, artemisinin damages the plasmodium." Students derived numerous and varied questions from this information, such as "What is the method of extracting the substance?" "What is the mechanism of action of the substance?" "How does temperature affect the activity of the substance?". For some of which they were required to answer themselves, and were asked to describe the process they undertook to reach the answer.

Don't be afraid to introduce students to Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Levels

What to do? Discuss the meaning of instructional words with your students and have them formulate questions from daily life at different levels of thinking.

Example: You can use any source of reliable information, but this time, the students required to determine the purpose of the question and why it was given here, and identify its cognitive level according to Bloom's taxonomy. Naturally, to answer these questions, students will need to understand the information, so why settle for providing answers to pre-determined questions? Afterward, students can present additional questions based on the existing question's data and the information in the article, and classify them according to their cognitive level as they see fit.

Merging Different Sources of Information and Comparative Questions

What to do? Have students research a certain topic, even as an extension to a question you asked.

Example: "Name two factors that influence blood pressure". Then, ask them to find an additional source of information that confirms, expands, or challenges the knowledge they demonstrated in their answer. Regarding the additional source of information, ask students to formulate questions that link it to the initial question you posed.

Let Them Hypothesis Data

What to do? The idea may sound awkward as why would we allow students to deal with non-existent findings? However, let's dare to overcome this obstacle, as these data are not used for publication in a scientific journal. Additionally, this is the thought process expected of anyone exposed to skeletal information - to hypothesize how the data might look or what lies behind the given facts. In other words, this is a legitimate and desirable thought process.

Example: "Formulate a question about the effect of environmental factors on the rate of photosynthesis" for a student who studied these factors in class. For example, on the topic of light intensity, the student could prepare a data table showing the rate of photosynthesis at different light intensities and ask a question about the table. Such a question could be at a low cognitive level, such as "Give a title to the table," or at a high cognitive level, such as "Explain the data," but the emphasis is on the fact that to ask a question, the student must create the data.

What do they gain?

By asking questions, searching for answers, and reflecting on their thought process, students can connect multiple topics from the curriculum and even expand them according to their interests. As teachers, it enables us better understand the students' thought processes, the depth of their thinking, expose misconceptions, learn about their level of curiosity, and thus know how to advance each student from their unique starting point.

We can conclude this article with a saying from the ancient sources: "The shy one does not learn, and the strict one does not teach".