AI can churn out answers; educators must teach the craft of the question.
GUEST COLUMN | by Arlène Botokro
KONSTANTIN MIRONOV
When I was little, I asked endless questions—the kind that wore adults out and never settled for a simple “because that’s just the way it is.” Over time, I learned to choose my moments better, but the reflex stuck. Today, as I work with educators worldwide, I find myself still asking questions, but now it’s to understand how they bring questioning to life in their classrooms.
‘Today, as I work with educators worldwide, I find myself still asking questions, but now it’s to understand how they bring questioning to life in their classrooms.’
This curiosity has led me to a fundamental conviction: teaching isn’t just about delivering content—it’s about making people want to ask questions. And sometimes, to answer them. The art lies in finding the right balance.
Why teaching starts with questioning
Asking good questions isn’t intuitive. In many training contexts, those who teach are typically experts in their fields: researchers, seasoned practitioners, industry professionals. Their expertise is unquestionable, but pedagogy doesn’t improvise on its own. Without proper guidance or training, it’s challenging to find the right levers to transform knowledge into active learning.
And yet, a well-crafted question, asked at the right moment and in the right way, can change everything. It can spark attention, trigger meaningful discussion, and connect abstract concepts to real understanding. It can also help gauge where a group stands: what they’ve understood, what remains unclear, or what needs to be revisited.
Neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene offers crucial insight here: the brain learns when it is surprised. A good question creates a productive gap between what students think they know and what they discover—a cognitive imbalance that captures attention and activates learning mechanisms. As the committee that awarded him the 2025 Lewis Thomas Prize noted: “No surprise, no learning.”
We see this principle become more critical as we begin to navigate an progressively AI-saturated educational landscape.
The Challenge of AI – speed versus substance
Over the past few years, one concern keeps surfacing in educational circles: “Students are increasingly relying on AI, sometimes even using it to cheat more effectively—but are they really learning anymore?”
AI is indeed making its way into everyday use, but rarely within a clear, structured educational framework. Students can now generate essays, solve problems, and produce presentations with unprecedented speed. But speed doesn’t always mean relevance or pedagogical value.
‘Students can now generate essays, solve problems, and produce presentations with unprecedented speed. But speed doesn’t always mean relevance or pedagogical value.’
This reality highlights an urgent need: we must prioritize teaching critical thinking, discernment, and—most importantly—the art of asking good questions. AI can rephrase, summarize, and generate content, and these capabilities hold genuine value. But someone still needs to question the output, whether to collaborate with AI creatively or to evaluate what it produces critically.
Thriving with AI – finding the right balance
They key to AI isn’t about resisting it, but to harnessing it thoughtfully. An AI-produced activity can serve as a starting point, but it needs to be refined, contextualized, and humanized; in short, questioned. Educators need AI tools designed for specific, concrete use cases that enhance rather than replace human judgment.
Consider these applications: AI can help group and synthesize open-ended responses from students, preserving the richness of discussion while making it more manageable. It can generate brainstorming prompts that stimulate participation and encourage critical analysis. It can create multiple-choice options that highlight key concepts, or automatically label components in complex images, saving preparation time for more meaningful pedagogical work.
These tools shouldn’t replace educational expertise—they should support and amplify it. They should simplify routine tasks, lighten administrative loads, and save time without short-circuiting the essential work of reflection and critical thinking.
The Enduring Power of Questions
A well-asked question has transformative power. While AI can provide instant answers to almost any query, it cannot replace the human ability to ask the right questions at the right moments.
‘A well-asked question has transformative power. While AI can provide instant answers to almost any query, it cannot replace the human ability to ask the right questions at the right moments.’
Questions do more than elicit information—they model intellectual curiosity, demonstrate how to approach problems, and teach students to interrogate their own assumptions.
Moreover, questions create lasting impact in ways that answers cannot. An answer can be forgotten, filed away, or become obsolete. But a well-crafted question continues opening new pathways for exploration and understanding long after the initial asking.
Moving Forward
As we integrate AI into educational environments, our focus must remain on developing human capacities that complement rather than compete with artificial intelligence. This means cultivating curiosity, teaching students to evaluate information critically, and modeling how to ask questions that lead to deeper understanding.
The future of education isn’t about choosing between human insight and AI capabilities—it’s about orchestrating them thoughtfully. And at the heart of that orchestration lies an ancient but ever-relevant skill: knowing how to ask the right questions.
Ultimately, while technology can provide us with infinite answers, only humans can teach us what questions are worth asking.
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Arlène Botokro is Head of Learning Innovation at Wooclap, a digital platform designed to increase classroom engagement and assess student understanding through interactive questionnaires, multimedia, whiteboards, and other collaborative activities. Connect with Arlène by email or LinkedIn.
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Original Article Published at Edtech Digest
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