Do we have a duty to provoke students to think?

I recently had the pleasure of meeting two people who,although coming from different places, made me reflect on the power of provocative questions in encouraging students to think. The first of these was Lynn Erickson whose workshop on Concept-based Curriculum and Instruction for the Thinking Classroom I attended in Hong Kong. The second person was Ewan McIntosh who came to Nanjing International School to provide consultancy about our new Design Centre. Ewan and Lynn both discussed the roles of provocations in activating student thinking. In this they have much in common with Edward de Bono who in his book Think! comments "provocation provides a means by which you can unsettle your mind in order to increase the chance of having a new idea."
This provocative idea that we as educators can need to carefully craft our questioning of students to prioritise provocative questioning struck a strong chord with me. 
With this in mind I thought through the levels of questioning that I've used in the past with a unit that is taught in many schools, 'Exploration has contributed to change'.
Thinking about this unit I came up with the following provocative questions to drive the unit:

• When does an exploration become an invasion?

• Do explorations always result in change?

• Should humanity continue to explore?

• Is there only one right way to interpret an event?

• Can anyone be an explorer?

The power of these questions to engage students seems to me to be far greater than those of the previous questions I had asked students:

• What changes have explorations brought about?
• How do explorations affect different cultures?
• Why are the effects of explorations perceived in different ways?

In order to answer the provocative questions, students are forced to synthesise knowledge and apply it in a complex argument. In addition the disagreement that the provocative questions will raise in the class should bring in an element of emotional involvement and buy- in that was previously patchy.


I am looking forward to continuing to explore the possibilities of provocative questions as truly effective driving elements in engaging students with thinking and questioning.

Below is a video of Marina Gijzen an inspirational PYP teacher at Nanjing International School talking about her response to provocative questions.