What is the Question

What Is the Question?

Lesley S. J. Farmer Abstract

Asking questions is a vital part of information seeking: it begs an answer, itallows for modification in response to findings, it aids in comprehension,it fosters self-regulation, and it invites conversation. The skill of posingquestions throughout the information-seeing process is often under-valued and under-taught. To ask quality, higher-level questions requiresexplicit instruction. Moreover, such instruction needs to take intoaccount age-appropriate developmental processes. This paper examinesthe questioning behavior of youth, confronts the issue of question locus ofcontrol, and offers guidance in helping youth develop effective questionstrategies for comprehending information and questioning authority.

Keywords: Information literacy; Questions; Critical thinking; Youth;Evaluation

Introduction

Dr Lesley Farmer, Professor atCalifornia State University LongBeach, coordinates the LibraryMedia Teacher program. Sheearned her MS in Library Scienceat the University of North CarolinaChapel Hill, and received herdoctorate in Adult Educationfrom Temple University. She hasworked as a teacher-librarian inK-12 school settings (independentsingle-sex and public co-ed) aswell as in public, special andacademic libraries. A frequentpresenter and writer for theprofession, her recent booksinclude Librarians, Literacy andthe Promotion of Gender Equity(McFarland, 2005) and DigitalInclusion, Teens, and Your Library(Libraries Unlimited, 2005)Her research interests includeinformation literacy, collaboration,and educational technology.E-mail: [email protected]

The important thing is not to stop questioning. (AlbertEinstein)

Little children ask questions spontaneously. Asking questions is avital part of information seeking: it begs an answer, it allows formodification in response to findings, it aids in comprehension, itfosters self-regulation, and it invites conversation (Edwards andBowman, 1996; Hord, 1995; Rosenshine, Meister and Chapman,1996) As youth seek information, the ability to use good questioningtechniques can make or break the task. However, to ask higher-levelquestions requires explicit instruction (Glaubman and Glaubman,1997) Surprisingly, the skill of posing questions throughout theinformation-seeking process is often under-valued and under-taught. This paper examines the questioning behavior of youth,and offers guidance in helping them develop effective questionstrategies.

Question as Communication Process

Questioning is basically a communications issue. A person isengaged with another person, be it face to face or reader to text.A question asks for information, either for clarification (Whatdoes Q.E.D. mean?) for understanding (How does the electoralcollege choose the President?), for evaluation (What is this author'sreputation?), or for confirmation (Is it true that Sacramento is thecapital of California?) Questioning begins as a conscious responseto some outside stimulus (e.g. a book passage, a noise, a glance)A question arises because some piece of information is lackingor because the stimulus conflicts with existing information (e.g. aman biting a dog); the mind is trying to re-establish equilibrium.Ciardiello (2003) uses discrepant events (e.g. a picture that appearsto be illogical) as a way to provoke conceptual conflict and encour-age question-finding.

§0lll0l Copyright © 2007 Author. IFLA Journal 33(1): 41-49.111ii 'SSN: 0340-0352. DO: 10.1177/0340035207076408

Lesley S. J. Farmer

The question that thus arises needs to matchthe informational need: "Why is the man bitingthe dog" is a better match than "Does the manhave canine teeth?" Existing mental schema,vocabulary, and prior experience help craft theform of the question.

If the person decides to pursue the question, andcannot figure it out internally, then the questioningprocess becomes "public." The individual has todetermine who or what to answer the question:what sou'rce is most likely to give me the answerI want or need? It may be a book, the Internet,or another person. Prior experience determinesthe source; if a young person has been successfulfinding answers to questions by consulting analmanac, then that reference tool may be thedefault choice. Likewise, the attitude that "theWikipedia has everything" will probably result inthe youngster continuing to consult that sourceregardless of the question. Fine-tuning the choiceof information to match the question comes withrepeated and differentiated efforts (i.e. trial anderror) as well as explicit instruction. Typically,children go to parents, family friends, and teachersfor answers first.

The information seeker has to phrase the questionaccurately to elicit the desired answer, be it verbalor visual. If a human is the question target, thenboth parties have to navigate the obstacles andcontexts between them: of space, time, distractions(noise, competing messages, weather, etc.),common (or unique) language and vocabulary, aswell as prior experiences and expectations. Evenif the question is well understood, the receivermight not know the answer to the question norknow how to find the answer - they may choosenot to get involved for a variety of reasons (e.g.closed-mindedness, lack of interest, bad timing,etc.) For children, the responses they receive maydepend more upon the answerer's relationshipwith the child than the nature of the questionitself (Shenton and Dixon, 2003) If the recipientof the question is static - say, a magazine articleor website - then the human has to do all thenegotiating work. While it may be said that adocument does not impede this process, beingunable to twist a questioner's words around, ahypertext or other interactive document mayimpact the individual's information seekingbehavior as decision points are created by thedeveloper who has to guess how the accessor willrespond to the prompt.

Even when the information is given - or extracted,the question communication cycle has notfinished. The questioner has to make meaning ofthe answer, usually by asking more questions. Inother words, in reflective information seeking,questioning becomes a recursive and iterativeprocess (Jolly and Radcliffe, 2000)

To this point, there has been a tacit assumptionthat the answer to a question is true. Part ofunderstanding the answer involves verifyingit, which can be a particularly challenging taskfor youngsters who have a small database ofknowledge to draw upon; in general, they dependon adults to tell them the truth.

Nor is this process necessarily a one-time event.While one may get clarification or see an error asa result of questioning, the correction might notchange the underlying belief system. On the otherhand, when one does see the new informationand then uses it to modify the original questionand underlying assumptions, then 'double-loop'learning has occurred. A third loop may beintroduced as well as the basis for subsequentlearning.

Because successful questioning requires clearcommunication and common understandingthroughout the process, it requires explicitplanning, instruction, and evaluation (Callison,2003)

What Is a Good Question?

No perfect question exists. A question's quality ishighly contextualized. "Why are you pale?" maybe a way for a student to distract the teacher ora realization that someone has said somethingshocking; it may also be a physician's initialquestion to help diagnose an illness. Timing alsoimpacts the quality of the question; asking whya person is pale is not appreciated just beforesaying "I do" at the altar, for instance (although itmight be the perfect time in order to avoid a badmarriage...) Each type of question has validity,depending on the objective, the content, and thecontext of the question (Busching, 1995)

Generally, undesirable questions are thosewhich:

have no discernable answer (e.g. What isreality?)


"* are beyond the intellectual grasp of youth (e.g.How do you create a nuclear space station?)

"• are very difficult to find with locally availableresources (e.g. How many Peruvians haveinfected toe nails?)

"* are overwhelming in the timeframe allotted (e.g.What is the chemical composition of every fastfood in America?)

Ideally, questions should engage the informationseeker intellectually and emotionally, cause themto think (Loertscher and Woolls, 2002).

Several question taxonomies exist. One set ofcategories would be considered nominal; that is,they do not posit that one is 'better' than another,just more appropriate in certain circumstances thananother. Elder and Paul (1997) posit three typesof questions: one-system (right/wrong answers),no-system (opinion, such as flavor preferences),and multi-system (calling for critical judgment)Dahlgren and Oberg (2003) posit five categoriesof questions: encyclopedic (e.g. What is the grossnational product of Egypt?), meaning-oriented(e.g. What does natural law mean?), relational(e.g. What are the effects of globalization?), value-oriented (e.g. What languages should be preservedand why?), and solution-oriented (e.g. What canwe do to reduce oil pollution?)

Other question taxonomies appear morehierarchical in nature. Sunda (2003) suggestshaving students generate and classify questionsaccording to Bloom's taxonomy, from knowledge(e.g. How many moons does Mars have?) toevaluation (e.g. Should marijuana be legalized?)De Jesus, Almeida and Watts (2004) suggest ahierarchy of questions based on Kohl's learningtheory model: acquisition (basic information),specialization (linked to one's own knowledgebase), and integration (elaboration). Glaubmanand Glaubman (1997) categorized questiontypes as factual, convergent comprehending, anddivergent integrative. Ciardiello's (2003) questiontypes are similar: memory, convergent, divergent,and evaluative.

Vogler (2004) synthesizes question patternresearch, categorizing sequences of questions intosix groups: circular (asking a series of questions thatfinish at the starting position), extending (askinga series of questions at the same cognitive level),extending and lifting (asking extending questionsand then asking higher-level questions), narrowto broad (asking specific low-level questions

and then higher-level general questions), broadto narrow (asking general, low-level questionsand then asking specific, higher-level questions),and backbone of questions (asking all types ofquestions based on their relationship to the centralissue).

While much pedagogical emphasis has beenplaced recently on in-depth 'essential questions'factual questions have their place. Sometimesyouth really do need to know how much oneJapanese yen is worth in US dollars. Referencelibrarians encounter these types of 'ready refer-ence' questions all the time. Likewise, proceduralquestions are also important: how to cite asource correctly, how to insert clip art into adocument, how to take Cornell notes, as well ashow to whistle or titrate a solution or buy a car.Traditional reference questions, which reflecttraditional research papers, consist of those ques-tions that might have a complex answer or whichrequire several steps to answer the question: "Howdid the Civil War's outcome affect the status ofNegroes in the South?" or "What is the reasonfor seasons?" Deeper-level research questions,as exemplified by Wiggins and McTighe's (1998)essential questions, require searching a varietyof sources and analyzing possibly conflictinginformation: "How would the United States oftoday differ if the South had won the Civil War?"or "Do new technologies always lead to progress?"(Bopp and Smith, 2000).

Even the most sophisticated information seekingprocess requires some simple factual question suchas how to spell a name correctly -- or proceduralquestions such as how to request an interlibraryloan. On the other hand, if an academic courseconsists merely of right/wrong factoid questionsand answers, then young people will likely learnlittle of consequence. Sadly, teachers tend to asklower-level cognitive questions in class, eventhough students tend to engage at the level of thequestions asked and will rise to the occasion ifhigher-level critical questions are posed (Edwardsand Bowman, 1996).

Developmental Issues in Questioning

Beyond the obvious issue of prior experience,librarians sometimes overlook the developmentalissues that compound the difficulties studentsencounter when posing questions. Youngstersdeal with concrete reality and so may make

Lesley S. J. Farmer

false generalizations about abstract conceptssuch as volume conservation. Sometimes theycannot distinguish between main concepts anddistracting details, and have difficulty categorizinginformation. Moreover, young children havea difficult time when faced with conflictinginformation such as maps with different keysor terms with different meanings (Moore, 1995;Leong and Jerred, 2001).

As children mature cognitively, the types ofquestions they generate - and the way they usethose questions - change. Norris and Foxcroft(1996) noted that with cognitive growth, youth:

"* ask more abstract questions"* develop more questions based on abstract

categories"* build on prior questions more systematically"* use more inferential reasoning in their

questions"* self-regulate their questions more.

They suggest that librarians should targetadolescents in learning sophisticated questioningstrategies because teenagers are most likely tohave developed their formal logic and havemore experiences to draw upon. Nevertheless,Glaubman and Glaubman (1997) found thateven kindergarteners could understand anduse metacognitive methods to generate high-level questions; explicit training in questioningalso improved reading comprehension andretention.

Youth also vary in the amount of informationthey need to ask a question. Some individualsare high risk-takers, asking questions as soon asthey encounter information. Others need to knowenough facts or background information beforethey can posit a question comfortably. Especiallyamong this latter group, the amount of priorexperience impacts their questioning behaviorsignificantly. One might think that as children getolder they would ask more questions because theygain knowledge, but the problems or assignmentsthey face get increasingly complex as well, so theoverall effect is that some continue to ask morequestions than others (de Jesus, Almeida andWatts, 2004).

Sadly, the socialization process of educationcan negatively impact students' questioningbehavior. Low-achieving kindergarten males askmore questions than their female counterparts or

high-achieving kindergarteners. However, overthe years, lower-achieving students tend to askfewer questions than higher-achieving students,becoming more passive learners; they do not wantto look stupid. Likewise, adolescent girls tend toask fewer questions than boys because they do notwant to appear aggressive (Good et al., 1997). Inboth cases, students change their behaviors basedon peer response.

To compensate for this social 'norming,' librariansshould also set a positive learning atmospherethat encourages intellectual risk taking: "Noquestion is too stupid." This phrase is supposedto ease the questioner's anxiety and indicate thatthe listener is open-minded. The type of questionasked can also serve as a diagnostic tool todetermine how clearly one has communicated orhow well the questioner understands a concept.Nevertheless, body language or voice tonality maybetray the listener's inner feelings of frustration,defensiveness, or condescension toward thequestioner. Therefore, librarians should alsofacilitate confidential ways to question: throughwriting or private conversations at the referencedesk; online reference help offers an excellentway to ask questions in a non-threatening andnon-competitive way.

Who Owns the Question?

One of the main difficulties in asking questionsemerges when the information-seeking task doesnot originate with the youngster. Oftentimes, theteacher or some other adult imposes the task(Gross, 1999). So rather than focusing on anintellectually stimulating question, the students'initial questions focus on clarification of theimposer's demand: "What do you want us to do?""What do you mean by X?" They have to makesense of the other person's question. Studentsrealize that if they 'translate' the task incorrectly,their grades will suffer. Most students really doseek the teacher's approval, but, in the process,their own intellectual curiosity may take secondplace. Usually, teachers do not reward studentswho ignore the assignment's question in favorof pursuing a self-initiated question. Thus, thebasis for questions may reside in student-teacherrelationships rather than on subject matterconceptualization.

In the same vein, the next questions students poseoften speak to the grading ramifications of the task:


"When is the project due?" "How long should itbe?" "Should the paper be double-spaced?" Whilesome teachers dismiss these questions, they reflecttwo intellectual tasks: managing time and framingthe task itself. Experienced students realize thatwriting a twenty-page report entails a different setof questions and tasks than creating a five-screenPowerPoint presentation. These same studentsalso realize that when a teacher says, "Write aslong as it takes," some students will write volumesin the hope that longer is better; students whoask about length are, in fact, trying to define theparameters to insure equity and reinforce groupnorms.

When the task is initiated by youngsters themselves,they feel more ownership and more control, andtheir questions are more apt to be personallymeaningful. They know their own vocabulary andprior experience, so they can draw upon those toframe questions that can drive their informationseeking more easily. On the other hand, self-initiated tasks may be difficult to actualize, suchas finding the ideal date or how to make a milliondollars without working. I-searches, a popularway to merge research processes and personalinterests, can be very frustrating if students donot know what relevant sources of informationare available. The librarian can ameliorate thissituation by helping students modify their researchtopic to coincide with accessible information,thus enabling students to 'own' the topic and thequestions.

Comprehending the Information

Questioning information is an intuitive action thatneeds to be made explicit in order to prioritizeimportant aspects of the document at hand inlight of the pre-identified task. At the point ofinteracting with the information, the first questionis usually: what does this mean? Librarians helpstudents answer this query by showing them howto skim a document to get an overall sense ofthe content, looking at headings and images andreading the introduction and conclusion. Feldt(2001) found that once primary students learnedhow a text was organized (e.g. cause and effect,compare-contrast, problem-solution), they couldmore easily develop appropriate questions - andanswer them - about the information.

Asking more specific questions as one encountersnew facts or contexts needs to be a consciousaction, recorded in some fashion, be it Cornell

notes or iPod dictation. As with overall analysis,librarians model the process of questioninginformation by thinking out loud or showingcommentary from sample readings. Likewise, theycan examine youngsters' personal questioningpractices and suggest ways to improve them.

Because individuals bring different interestsand experiences to the learning process, micro-managing question techniques is probably notan effective approach. Instead, young peopleshould be encouraged to document their questionnaturally - and then highlight the most importantor relevant questions that they think worthy ofpursuing. Several lessons are embedded in thisprocess: that it is not enough to ask the question -one needs to answer the question if it is important- that some questions can be ignored, thatprioritizing questions can lead to discovering themost relevant aspects of the information, and thatsome questions need to be answered immediatelybut others can wait or be answered automaticallyby reading further. Librarians can then look atthose questions deemed by the information seekerto be the most significant ones, and give feedbackat that level (e.g. seeing if the student recognizesthe difference between main ideas and sidebardetails, checking students' understanding andprior knowledge, etc.)

Another activity to reflect on questioning practicesconsists of having young people categorize theirquestions as follows: personal (e.g. "When is itwrong to help?"), factual (e.g. "When was heborn?"), procedural (e.g. "How was that graphmade?"), psychological (e.g. "Why would amother drown her own child?"), convergent(e.g. "Why do hurricanes move in a clockwisedirection?"), divergent (e.g. "What would havehappened if Marco Polo hadn't returned toItaly?"), evaluative (e.g. "Why do some countriespermit capital punishment and others don't?"),or author-centric (e.g. "Why did the authoruse that quotation?") This process helps youngpeople (and adults) become more aware oftheir own question patterns. It also shows howindividualized each person's perceptions can be;by encouraging youngsters to generate their ownquestions, many more issues can surface and beexamined (Busching, 1995).

Questioning Authority

In general, children trust adults so they have apredilection for trusting published information

Lesley S. J. Farmer

(Fitzgerald, 1999). If the answer contradictsthe information seeker's existing knowledgebase, s/he has to decide whether to reject thenew information, reject the old information, orsomehow accommodate the two. One of themain bases for rejecting conflicting informationis falsehood. Thus, one subset of questions needsto deal with evaluating the information sourceitself. If not prompted to look for inconsistenciesor falsehoods, young children will not be awareof them (Markham, 1979).

This questioning process has been widelyaddressed since the introduction of the Internet.In the big wide world, information seekers havealways needed to cast a critical eye on sourcesof information. However, information seekersused to be able to depend on the professionallibrarian to select sources that were credible.Now the library cannot control the authorityof all the information that is accessible fromthe library. Asking questions about the author'sreputation, viewpoint, assumptions, objective,and communication quality is now necessary todetermine the source's legitimacy. Informationseekers also need to question the content's validity,currency, and citations or links (Shively and VanFossen, 1999; Browne and Keeley, 2003).

The evaluative criteria for questioning themselvesreveal the quality of the information seeker'sknowledge base and cognitive maturity. Youngpeople, for instance, tend to give high marksfor websites that are attractive, novel, and per-sonally appealing (Hirsch, 1999). For that reason,librarians should provide tested criteria for youngpeople to use as they form evaluative questions.As they become more experienced in evaluatinginformation, young information seekers canmodify those criteria to suit their particular needsand expertise.

Teaching How to Question

As long as the teacher or librarian frames thequestions, student will not learn how to ask andanswer questions independently. Modeling goodquestion strategies and demonstrating appropriatequestions for different objectives only begin theprocess; young people need to be actively engagedin the questioning process. When librarians askquestions to help young people seek information,they need to think about the central objective andcontent, certainly, but they also need to consider

the students' learning gap, the context for learning,and the underlying assumptions about teachingand learning (van Zee and Minstrell, 1997).

Socratic circles and Paideia seminars exemplifydialogic discussion where students pose criticalquestions and share understanding; the teacheracts as a guide to facilitate an effective learningenvironment and scaffold meaning. Socraticquestioning methods are especially structuredto pose questions for clarification and to testassumptions and consequences (Copeland,2005). Part of the process consists of peerand teacher review of questioning techniquesthrough checklists, paragraphing, restatement,or elaboration (Billings and Fitzgerald, 2002).Of course, for this interactive questioning tobe successful, teachers as well as students needtraining since this type of classroom managementis not a typical part of basic pre-service training.The process also presupposes that students haveread the materials to be discussed so they canask relevant questions. In that respect, thesedialogues have a 'closed universe' nature to them,seeking information within a text, rather thanan open-ended search for potentially relevantinformation.

The concept of questioning strategies, per se,however, can be an open-ended experience. Aswith dialectic conversation, librarians can helpstudents use prior experience and knowledgeto develop questions that uncover rules andrelationships. Both the process of questioningand the knowledge of when to use a particularprocess need to be taught (King, 1991). Librarianscan provide contextual information and givetimely, specific feedback that help youth redirectand recraft questions to better fit the intellectualinvestigation of gathering, evaluating, and usinginformation (Grabowski, Koszalka and McCarthy,1998).

Rosenshine, Meister and Chapman (1996)conducted a meta-analysis of different methodsof teaching questioning strategies. They foundfive types of prompts: signal (key) words, genericquestion stems, main idea of a passage, questiontypes (similar to types of reference questions),and story grammar categories (i.e. setting, plot,character, theme). They found that signal wordsand generic question stems were the most effectivemethods to stimulate relevant questions andfacilitate learning.


King (1991) found that students who were givenquestion 'stems' (e.g. "How are __ and __

alike?" and "What would happen if __ ?") toguide their questioning strategies performed betterthan students who were given no prompts or weregiven pre-set, closed questions. By having genericquestion starters, students generated higher orderquestions and engaged more deeply in problemsolving. Self- and peer-questioning also helpedstudents to reflect metacognitively on their owninformation seeking strategies, even as early asfifth grade. King also found that when studentspair up to ask and answer their questions, theygive more elaborate answers and keep on taskbetter.

One appropriate use of straightforward, factualquestions is in helping young people use readyreference sources: tool-centric informationseeking. It is important to note that the objectiveis procedural knowledge: how to determinethe critical features of a reference source andhow to extract information from it. To give thiscontrolled inquiry some legitimacy, librariansshould contextualize the process in terms ofpotential academically-grounded questions to beanswered. For instance, if one has questions abouttopography or political boundaries, then atlaseswould be a good source to consult. To understandinformation represented in maps, one needs toknow how to apply legends. To help students learnhow to read maps, librarians and teachers shouldstart by developing well-structured activities tocreate clear, unambiguous questions that can befound in the atlases to be used by students. Othertips in question generation include:

"* determining the right/acceptable answer"* using simple, precise vocabulary"* avoiding 'feeling' and 'value' words"* avoiding yes/no questions"* avoiding compound and embedded questions"* matching the question to the student's level"* pilot-testing the question (Braddon, 1997)

This process mirrors the approach used inmathematics or engineering as students learnhow to calculate algebraic equations or do longdivision for the first time; the teacher createsproblems that result in whole numbers as a wayfor students to make reasoned guesses aboutthe solution. The emphasis is on the process.Once students become more comfortable withthe mathematical formula - or the protocols forinterpreting maps - then they can pose their own

questions. More complex questions can also beposed in order to help students take the next stepand analyze several sources or draw conclusionsfrom mapped representations for information;that is, they can concentrate on the content morethan the format (e.g. "How did the geographyof Mesopotamia impact its designation as thecradle of civilization?") (Rosenshein, Meister andChapman, 1996; Jolly and Radcliffe, 2000).

On the other hand, open-ended questionsand divergent-thinking questions facilitatecreative thinking, encourage alternative meaningand solutions, and foster different viewpoints(Ciardiello, 2003). Problem-based learning,inquiry-based learning, and constructivistmethods all call upon divergent questions (to posealternative solutions) and convergent questions(to ultimately find a solution or arrive at aconsensus). Even so, these open-ended learningactivities also need to be structured to optimizesuccessful learning. (Dahlgren and Oberg, 2003)They suggest several principles:

"* connect to students' prior knowledge andexperience

"* provide complexity but not an overload offactors

"* present relevant concepts"* be intellectually provocative and emotionally

evocative"* facilitate different perspectives"* encourage self-directed learning"* enhance student interest in the subject

matter.

They also found that the design of the activity,particularly scenarios, impacts the kinds ofquestions posed. Key words presented at the starttend to focus student attention, sometimes causingthem to overlook alternative approaches. Thus,having students brainstorm numerous potentialterms and connotations helps students generatemore questions and modify unproductive questionsmore readily. Even questioning definitions canopen students' eyes to the complexities andassumptions made about heretofore simplisticterms (e.g. ecology, freedom, culture). Havingall students read the same thought-provokingarticle as a starting point in a learning activity,and individually generating questions, helps theclass see different points of view early on in theinformation-seeking process. Nevertheless, avariety of question types should emerge for deeplearning.

Lesley S. J. Farmer

Conclusions

Questions emerge throughout the informationseeking process. Taking a metacognitive look atinformation seeking using the Big Six researchprocess (Eisenberg and Berkowitz, 1990) as amodel, generic process questions might include:

Task Definition

a) Frame the query or assignment. What am Isupposed to do? What problem am I tryingto solve?

b) Identify the information needed. What doI need to know? What kind of informationshould I gather?

Information Seeking Strategies

a) Identify possible sources. Where am I likelyto find the answer?

b) Select the sources. Which source is bestfor answering the question or solving theproblem?

Location and Access

a)b)

Locate the source. Where can I find it?Locate the information within the source.What information is within the source? Howdo I find it?

Use of Information

a) Comprehend the information: read, listen,view. How do I 'get at' the information?

b) Extract the useful information? What part ofthe source is useful? How do I document myfindings?

Synthesis

a) Organize the information. What is the logicalway to put the findings together?

b) Present the information. What is the mosteffective way to share the findings?

Evaluation

a) Complete the task. Did I answer thequestion? Did I solve the problem? Did I dothe assignment fully?

b) Assess the process and the product. Howcould I improve?

While it is useful to share these questions withinformation-seekers, it is important to conveythat these steps may be revisited and repositioneddepending on the context, task, strategy, and needsof each individual. Moreover, evaluative questionsarise at every point, not just at the end.

The central issue is clear communication betweenthe information seeker and the potential sourceof information. This meshing of minds requires acommon understanding in order to transmit theneeded information. Questions help frame theinformation need and provide a means to assessthe information received. With their knowledgeof information sources and processes, librarianscan be instrumental in helping youth ask questionsthat will give them the answers they want andneed.

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NotePaper presented at the World Library and InformationCongress: 72nd IFLA General Conference and Council,20-24 August 2006, Seoul, Korea in session 142 SchoolLibraries and Resource Centers (part 1).

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TITLE: What Is the Question?SOURCE: IFLA J 33 no1 2007

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