ThinkQuiry Poster Series: Asking Metacognitive Questions
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Derek Cabrera, PhD
Derek Cabrera (PhD, Cornell) is an internationally known systems scientist and serves on the faculty of Cornell University where he teaches systems thinking, systems leadership, and systems mapping and is Program Director for the Graduate Certification Program in Systems Thinking, Modeling, and Leadership (STML). He is a senior scientist at Cabrera Research Lab. He’s authored 8 books including, Systems Thinking Made Simple and Flock Not Clock.
More posts by Derek Cabrera, PhD
Derek Cabrera, PhD

These four beautiful DSRP posters, or all 4 together, can be found here. Enjoy!
"We wanted to get people asking different kinds of questions. Questions that lead to new insights and answers but also more questions. Structural questions that can be mixed and matched to form even more complex questions that get at the essence of the wicked problems and complex systems around us."
These posters were designed to captivate and engage. To get the viewer to ask questions and to find not only multiple answers but many more questions, rather than to seek a single answer. These posters are based on the idea of "ThinkQuiry"--asking a different kind of question than the tradition 5W (Who, What, Where, When, Why). Instead we are asking "structural questions". We call them structural questions because they are questions that are based on cognitive structures that the mind uses to convert meaningless information into meaningful mental models. These metacognitive structures are called DSRP which stands for Distinctions, Systems, Relationships, and Perspectives.[1] DSRP are universal patterns of thought--a cognitive code.
You can practice ThinkQuiry Questions below by clicking on this icon: Then type in any content (one or two words or phrases). You'll see some questions auto-fill with the terms you enter. Click on any question to see it visually mapped. Zoom in to see the structure of the questions.
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Cabrera. 2015 Systems Thinking Made Simple: New Hope for Solving Wicked Problems. Odyssean. ↩︎