Abstract

University policies significantly affect university students’ academic lives. Concerningly, students do not engage with university policies even when they are directly provided (Jordan, 2001). This intrinsic case study bricolage employs Critical Pedagogy as its theoretical framework to explore how six students used Question Formulation Technique (QFT’) to engage and interact with their university’s Code of Rights and Responsibilities (the Code’) and each other in two peer groups of three students each in separate sessions. Data sources include participant-generated questions, an observation sheet, and individual post-session questionnaires. Both participant groups had difficulty self-organizing during QFT and engaging with the Code due to a lack of prior knowledge of its terms, structure, and origins. A modified Bloom’s Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) and a Question Types and Purposes Rubric analyzed the generated questions to determine the questions’ cognitive levels and objectives. Data triangulation revealed that QFT allowed participants to dialogue with each other about the Code, and that most participants recognized their knowledge gaps concerning the Code and expressed intention to use QFT in the future unless they already used a preferred questioning technique. This study recommends providing university students with policy literacy instructional interventions and using QFT as a needs assessment tool.