The Good Questions

Our theme for the year is The Good Questions. We know that inquiry begins with questions: open-ended questions, leading questions, rhetorical questions, yes/no questions, hypothetical questions, probing questions. We inquire as students, as researchers, as scholars, and as people living in a complicated and complex world. We inquire sincerely, out of curiosity, or deceitfully, weaponizing inquiry to raise doubts and suspicions about specific people or groups of people. We can avoid asking questions, shame people for asking questions, or tacitly discourage them from asking more. As educators, we remind students that there are no "dumb" questions and try to teach them to ask good ones, for the sake of an educated public (Salkever, 2007). 

As information professionals, we know that questions are shaped by context. They emerge at the reference desk or virtually. They are asked in places where institutions and roles dictate not only which questions are asked or if they are asked but also how they may be received (Radford et al., 2013). We call the questions we ask generative AI “prompts”, and then we call it prompt engineering. We ask “peculiar questions” (Blitt, 2019). We ask questions differently in different cultures and languages (Polinsky, 2013).

Children naturally ask good questions. “What would an infinitely long rope look like if it was colored with a gradient of any two colors,” asked a child to their bewildered parent. Children's questions are motivated by curiosity, and their questioning helps them develop mental models of the world, build knowledge, and explore information. Their questions thus play a fundamental role in developing an intrinsic desire to learn (Jirout et al., 2024), which may be blunted as they age and pursue grades, credentials, or promotions. The challenge for us, as educators at any level and of any level, is to preserve and nurture the curiosity that fuels imagination, reflection, and dialogue.

As scholars, we frame “research as inquiry." We tacitly acknowledge that a question underlies that condition when we “recognize when information is needed.” We can be reminded that “the best, most effective scientists are those who ask good questions,” said Freeman Hrabowski (Gewin, 2024). Sylvia Wynter (Wynter, 2001; Wynter, 2003; Wynter & McKittrick, 2015) reminds us that inquiry integrates science and creativity in a hybrid "scientifically creative" mode. Joseph Weizenbaum (1976) observed that the creative act in science is equivalent to the creative act in art. Robert K. Merton (1968) emphasized “problem-finding," Paulo Freire (1970/2000) wrote of "problem-posing," and James Scott (2004) described the "problem-space" that shapes what we can imagine as possible. These voices remind us that questions do more than retrieve knowledge; they generate it, too.

This year’s theme is The Good Questions. We ask: what makes a question good, in all the senses of what good entails? How do questions play an important part of education, learning, teaching, information seeking, sensemaking, knowledge generation, and of being responsible, informed members of society? In lieu of a tagline to this year's theme, we invite you to tag the theme in your own way. As examples, throughout the year and at next year's conference, we welcome discussions on:

• Epistemology: what makes a question answerable or searchable?
• Ethics: How can questions be distorted, silenced, or weaponized? How can they foster connection? How can they challenge systems of injustice?
• Learning: How does curiosity shape the development of knowledge or understanding?
• Instruction: How can we teach problem-finding or problem-posing?
• Culture: How do people and languages conceive of inquiry differently?
• Praxis: How do questions play out at reference desks, in classrooms, and in AI sttystems?

Good questions demand pause. They require us to be curious, imaginative, and playful. They bind us to the pursuit of knowledge and possibility. As an infinitely long rope that links us across time and space, we invite you, as an association, to take hold of that rope and ask The Good Questions.

C. Sean Burns, ALISE President 2025-2026

With:
The ALISE 2025-2026 Conference Planning Committee
- Dr. John Burgess, University of Alabama
- Dr. Charles Sutton, Indiana University
- Dr. Africa S. Hands, University at Buffalo

References

Blitt, B. (2019). Peculiar questions and practical answers: A little book of whimsy and wisdom from the files of the New York Public Library (First edition). St. Martin’s Griffin.

Freire, P. (1970/2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th anniversary ed.). Continuum.

Gewin, V. (2024). I had my white colleagues walk in a Black student’s shoes for a day. Nature, 629(8014), 1196–1197. doi:10.1038/d41586-024-01525-3

Jirout, J. J., Evans, N. S., & Son, L. K. (2024). Curiosity in children across ages and contexts. Nature Reviews Psychology, 3(9), 622–635. doi:10.1038/s44159-024-00346-5

Merton, Robert K. (1968). The Matthew Effect in Science. In N. W. Storer (Ed.), The Sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations (pp. 439–459). University of Chicago Press.

Polinsky, M. (2013, December 23). Linguistic Theory of Question - Serious Science. https://serious-science.org/linguistic-theory-of-question-34

Radford, M. L., Connaway, L. S., Mikitish, S., Alpert, M., Shah, C., & Cooke, N. (2013). Conceptualizing collaboration & community in virtual reference and social Q&a. Information Research, 18(3). https://informationr.net/ir/18-3/colis/paperS06.html

Salkever, S. (2007). Teaching the Questions: Aristotle’s Philosophical Pedagogy in the “Nicomachean Ethics” and the “Politics.” The Review of Politics, 69(2), 192–214.

Scott, D. (2004). Conscripts of modernity: The tragedy of colonial enlightenment. Duke University Press.

Wynter, S. (2001). Towards the sociogenic principle: Fanon, identity, the puzzle of conscious experience, and what it is like to be “Black.” In A. Gomez-Moriana & M. Duran-Cogan (Eds.), National Identities and Socio-Political Changes in Latin America (1st Edition, pp. 46–82). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315052717-8

Wynter, S. (2003). Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation--An Argument. CR: The New Centennial Review, 3(3), 257–337. doi:10.1353/ncr.2004.0015

Wynter, S., & McKittrick, K. (2015). Unparalleled catastrophe for our species?: Or, to give humanness a different future: Conversations. In K. McKittrick (Ed.), Sylvia Wynter On being human as praxis (pp. 9–89). Duke University Press. doi:10.1215/9780822375852