Using the 5 Whys Approach to Deepen Student Thinking

As a high school teacher, you may have had the same experience as me: After asking a higher-order question of the class—for instance, “Why does Jay Gatsby really want Daisy Buchanan so badly in The Great Gatsby?”—I’m met with blank stares. Even after I reassure students that “there are no wrong answers,” the silent stares persist.

In the current school year, there seems to be a consensus that this scene is more the status quo than the occasional scene in a unit or school year. And while there is plenty of theorizing about how this came to be, I’ve found a solution, borrowed from the business world, that works for me and my students: persistently asking “Why?”

The 5 Whys Method

Developed by Sakichi Toyoda at Toyota in the 1930s, the five whys is a simple process devised to get to the root cause of a problem, focusing on processes rather than people and their personalities. In its simplest form, the five whys asks that we take any presenting problem—someone was injured on the manufacturing floor, the company did not meet its fourth-quarter revenue goals—and ask “Why?” five times in order to get to the root cause of the problem and avoid remediating a symptom rather than a root cause.

After learning about this method, I thought it could work as an instructional tool with my students. I decided to try it out in a few different classroom situations and see what happened.

CREATING A NEW STRUCTURE FOR THINK-PAIR-SHARES

As teachers, we know how difficult it can be for students to share in large group settings, especially about big open-ended questions with moral, ethical, and philosophical dimensions. While the classic strategy of the think-pair-share is still a fantastic tool for helping students develop their thinking and gain the confidence to share that thinking with others, combining it with the five whys can make classroom conversations feel more accessible for students.

In my classroom, it has looked like this: I start class with a warm-up question like “Do you believe in the American Dream?” Where a normal think-pair-share might leave some students unsure how to start, or two students very quickly agreeing and then sitting in silence, incorporating the five whys gives students a more specific structure to work from. Instead of asking students to just discuss in pairs, I assign a Student A and a Student B and then ask Student A to share their initial thoughts on the question and have Student B simply ask “Why?” five times in response. It can sound like this:

Student A: I don’t believe the American Dream is a real thing.

Student B: Why?

Student A: Most people tend to end up about the same as their parents in terms of money, work, school, and so on.

Student B: Why?

Student A: Your parents are a major influence on you growing up, so you tend to be a lot like them.

Student B: Why?

Student A: Your parents or guardians are some of the few adults you know really well and are your models for how to be an adult.

Student B: Why?

Student A: I think your parents or guardians are such a big influence because a lot of the other adults in your life, like teachers, are there to teach you about academic things, but your parents hopefully are talking to you about your feelings, your dreams for the future, how to get the resources you need, etc.

Student B: Why?

Then, the students switch roles. Through this dialogue, students grow more confident in their ideas and how to defend their position. When students share out their answers with the larger group, they can share not only their initial thoughts, but their reasoning too, which can also help their classmates consider alternative positions on a question more fully.

DESIGNING HYPOTHESES FROM THE BOTTOM UP

Aside from supporting students in defending their ideas, the five whys can be used to help students make sense of the information they’ve gathered from a unit to create a hypothesis. I like to use the five whys in this way before students respond to texts or synthesize their knowledge in writing.

In this application of the five whys, students start from the bottom up.

Imagine a high school English classroom where students who have just finished The Great Gatsby are attempting to respond to the perennial Gatsby essay topic: “Is Gatsby great?” Rather than asking students to start with a hypothesis and solidify it into a claim by examining their own logic, the bottom-up five whys asks students to begin with a piece of evidence that feels significant to them, with the hope that they will discover a compelling claim as they build up from the evidence. For example, Student A and Student B are brainstorming about the question of Gatsby’s greatness:

Student A: I know that Gatsby made a lot of money really fast working for some shady people.

Student B: Why?

Student A: He believes if he can get rich, then his old girlfriend Daisy will come back to him.

Student B: Why?

Student A: He lost her once because she married a guy who was really wealthy while Gatsby was off fighting in the war.

Student B: Why?

Student A: I guess Daisy probably was under pressure from her family to marry someone rich like her family was.

Student B: Why?

Student A: I suppose Daisy and her family both realized that her life growing up and Gatsby’s were pretty different and that they might not really be the right fit for each other.

Student B: Why?

Student A: Daisy was born rich, so she probably doesn’t understand a lot of what Gatsby has gone through trying to make something of himself.

Student A now has a lot more to work with in building a claim about Gatsby’s greatness. From these initial conversations at the beginning of an assignment, students can identify what evidence is important and begin to make connections that will help them form stronger responses.

While teachers are always working to help students develop stronger and more complex critical thinking skills, the five whys is a simple method that shows students how insight is available to anyone willing to patiently and thoroughly examine their own thoughts.