Empowering Questions for Teacher Conference

Instructional leaders can greatly increase the effectiveness of the conferences they conduct with teachers. Administrators, supervisors, department chairs, mentors, and peer coaches can increase effectiveness by mastering the skill of asking empowering questions.

Empowering questions can help coaches identify a teacher’s agenda — what is important to the teacher. Empowering questions reveal a teacher’s value system and help the coach understand what makes the teacher tick. Coaches develop credibility when their feedback continually relates to what an individual teacher values.

In addition, empowering questions can — and should — motivate and challenge a teacher to stretch toward excellence and realize that his or her greatest performance is yet to come. Teachers grow when they are involved in thinking about their performance. Instructional leaders should guide teachers to be active, thinking participants in Pre- and Post observation Conferences.

Empowering questions can be evaluative, creative, and personalized.


Evaluative questions encourage the teacher to respond based on his or her values, rather than on intellect. The mission, vision, or drive of the teacher is found by piecing together his or her response to varied questions over the course of several conferences. Empowering questions such as “How do you think the lesson went today, and why?” will give you information on which criteria the teacher values.

Additional questions need to be asked to see if the performance is satisfactory by the teacher’s standards. Can he or she recognize excellence? Does the teacher know the techniques and strategies that achieve excellence? Is he or she aware of the options? Evaluative questions are often followed by “Why?” to gain even more information for the coach.

Creative empowering questions have two purposes:

• To remove the teacher from the present, “up-close” issue. A teacher may not be able to think clearly when preoccupied with the emotions connected with being evaluated. Skilled use of creative ques-tioning allows the teacher to see the evaluative process component in coaching from the “outside.” Looking at the situation from a creative viewpoint can offer a new perspective. This is a key strategy.
• To generate new ideas, combinations, and ways of doing things.

An example of a creative question is, “How else could you teach this objective?”

Accept any answer to a creative question, then ask it again. (You may find it necessary to probe the same creative question several times in order to reach a truly creative answer.) After about the fourth response, pause time will increase and creative thinking will begin.


Personalized questions show the teacher that you are listening to him or her. These questions are based upon responses that the teacher has previously made. They convince the teacher that you are truly interested and want to know more.

An example of a personalized question might begin, “You said before that . . .”


Here are some empowering coaching questions for you to experiment with. They are few in number, because the best questions will be your own.

Preobservation Conference empowering questions:

• “If you were to hire your replacement, what three traits would be most important for that individual to possess?”
• Select one trait from the response to the above question (creativity, for example). Ask, “Where will your (creativity) show in this lesson?”
• “If you could have a magic wand to wave over the classroom before this lesson began, what would you have the wand do?”
• “Where is the risk in this lesson?”Then, “Why is that a risk?”

Postobservation Conference empowering questions:

• “Where in this lesson where you most satisfied?” “Why?” Then, “Where were you least satisfied?” “Why?”
• “When were your students most engaged?”“Why do you think they were engaged at this point?” Then, “When were they least engaged?”“Why?”
• “What do you hope students said to each other in the hall after the lesson?”
• “What other activities could you have chosen to demonstrate this skill to your students?”(Get several responses.) “Would you choose the same activity again?” “Why or why not?”

The questions you use should change continually. If teachers prepare answers before coming to a conference with you, much of the spontaneity of their responses will be replaced by the attempt to have the “right” answer. Your conferences with teachers should be consistent and unpredictable: Consistent because acceptance of responses is assured (a safe environment); unpredictable in that your questions are new, fresh, and thought-provoking. A conference between a coach using empowering questions and a growing teacher might sound something like this:

C: “Jim, would you begin by giving me a thumbnail sketch of this lesson?”

T: “Okay. It’s for an Honors Psychology class, and is a lesson on ego defense mechanisms that people use when looking at what is healthy and what is unhealthy.”

C: “Jim, what is the greatest challenge you find in teaching an honors class?”

T: “I think the biggest challenge is that students will be coming up with questions I can’t anticipate. They think deeply and they question deeply.”

C: “So, there is a lot of instruction to be done that you cannot plan for.”

T: “You mean in terms of anticipating responses from the students?”

C: “In other words, you’re going to get responses that you can’t anticipate, so you’ll have to make lots of decisions on the spot.”

T: “Right . . . yes.”

C: “Which skills of yours are most important in dealing with that spontaneity?”

T: “I think it would have to be my awareness of students’ nonverbal communication, in order to anticipate the kinds of questions that will come up . . . reading the students who are going to ask specific questions. And, at the same time, being reflexive enough to be articulate. That way I don’t lose my credibility. I am introducing this material in a way so that they can trust the information I am giving them. When they ask me questions about the material and I’m not certain of the answers, it cre-ates an interesting situation.”

C: “Are there particular points in tomorrow’s lesson where you would predict that this intense student questioning might occur?”

T: “I think it will be in terms of applying the material to their own lives. If we deal with the material in the abstract, that’s one thing. But what they are going to do is per-sonalize it. When they do that, it can get dangerous.”

C: “So, personalizing the lesson is high risk. Yet, that is when the most powerful learning is likely to take place.”

T: “Exactly. That is the ultimate intent. Allowing them to see how they use ego defense mechanisms and how they might overuse some of them.”

C: “Jim, I’m looking forward to sitting in on this lesson tomorrow. I am wondering if you think you would find value in having me pay particular attention to what it is that you do to spark the spontaneity in students — to get them into that real-life application stage — and then track the skills that you use for dealing with that kind of instruction.”

T: “That would be wonderful. I sometimes have the feel-ing that I’m not exactly certain why that happens in the classroom. If you can help me nail down what it is that I do, that would help me learn to use those skills more often.”

C: “Well, I’m looking forward to it. We’ll be able to sit down and talk after the lesson. It will be interesting to see if my interpretation of cause and effect matches yours.”


Empowering questions will actively involve teachers in conferences that produce motivation and growth. You will enjoy the stimulating dialogues you have with your colleagues. Rapport and respect will be communicated. Be ready to think. The chances are that your modeling of empowering questions will send some powerful questions back to you!