Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions

The authors of Make Just One Change argue that formulating one’s own questions is “the single most essential skill for learning”—and one that should be taught to all students.

They also argue that it should be taught in the simplest way possible. Drawing on twenty years of experience, the authors present the Question Formulation Technique, a concise and powerful protocol that enables learners to produce their own questions, improve their questions, and strategize how to use them.

Make Just One Change features the voices and experiences of teachers in classrooms across the country to illustrate the use of the Question Formulation Technique across grade levels and subject areas and with different kinds of learners.

Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana are co-directors of The Right Question Institute, a nonprofit organization that disseminates a strategy that makes it possible for all people, no matter their educational or literacy level, to learn to advocate for themselves and participate in decisions that affect them on all levels of a democratic society.

Dan Rothstein spent many years learning from the people with whom he has worked and has applied those lessons to designing strategies to promote more effective self-advocacy and citizen participation efforts. Prior to his work with The Right Question Institute, he developed and implemented education programs in Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Israel as a community educator, organizer, and urban planner. He served as Director of Neighborhood Planning for the City of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and was a Fulbright Scholar and a National Academy of Education Spencer Fellow. He graduated from Harvard College and earned a doctorate in education and social policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he served as an editor of the Harvard Educational Review.

Luz Santana has modeled in her own life—raising her family on welfare, working on the factory floor, going back to school, and then sharing her new skills with others—much of what The Right Question Institute aims to accomplish through its work. Prior to her work with The Right Question Institute, Santana worked as a housing services counselor and parent advocate. She has extensive experience designing and implementing applications of the Right Question Strategy in low-income communities around the country, and is recognized nationally for the participatory trainings and workshops she has designed and facilitated. Santana was a Community Fellow at MIT. She holds a BA and master’s degree from the Springfield College School of Human Services.