Questions are an essential aspect of decision-making by families and early educators in a range of contexts, and are particularly important during the informal assessment and collaborative planning that characterize home visits. Yet recommendations for questions tend to focus on form alone, such as encouragement to ask open- rather than closed-ended questions. These recommendations have limited practical application because they frame language as decontextualized and power-free, which can contribute to marginalizing families. Instead, when early educators conceptualize questions as part of discourse—rooted in context and imbued with power—they can better understand nuances of questions and ultimately enact shared decision-making with families. This conceptual paper illustrates the potential of discourse theory as a framework to explore questions and their consequences for decision-making power. Linguistic features of questions are presented along with discursive tools adapted from Gee (2014) that researchers and early educators can use to examine how questions contribute to sharing power or maintaining professional control of decisions. Transcripts from previously conducted, ethically approved investigations using discourse analysis exemplify how the tools can be used to examine how questions function in real conversations between families of infants and toddlers and home visitors. The selected transcripts represent four different home visiting programs in the United States and depict how questions played in role in decision-making about how to support children’s development.

问题是家庭和早期教育工作者在各种情况下做出决策的一个重要方面，在非正式评估和协作规划中尤为重要，这是家访的特点。然而，对问题的建议往往只关注形式，例如鼓励提出开放式问题而不是封闭式问题。这些建议的实际应用有限，因为它们将语言框定为去语境化和无权力，这可能导致家庭边缘化。相反，当早期教育者将问题概念化为话语的一部分时——植根于背景并充满力量——他们可以更好地理解问题的细微差别，并最终与家庭共同做出决策。这篇概念性论文说明了话语理论作为探索问题及其对决策权的影响的框架的潜力。问题的语言特征与改编自 Gee （2014） 的话语工具一起呈现，研究人员和早期教育工作者可以使用这些工具来研究问题如何有助于分享权力或保持对决策的专业控制。以前使用话语分析进行的、经过道德认可的调查的成绩单说明了如何使用这些工具来检查问题在婴幼儿家庭和家庭访客之间的真实对话中如何运作。选定的成绩单代表了美国的四个不同的家访项目，并描述了问题如何在有关如何支持儿童发展的决策中发挥作用。