Effective Questioning

While in school I interviewed a few teachers for research purposes. I asked three teachers why they ask questions during their lessons. Teacher A responded stating “the most common reason is checking for understanding and to make sure that the students are following what I am explaining” but the other important reason that was stated was “to get them confused about what they think they know and to push them to come up with better answers to previous questions” Teacher B responded “to make them think, to find out what they know, to find out what they know which is incorrect and needs to be corrected” and Teacher C responded “to engage students in the topic on which we are working and to get them excited and get them to ask more and more about it” Teacher A first talked about lower order questioning and how it is necessary for effective teaching which leads to effective learning by the students. Then teacher A explained separately the importance of asking questions which would test the student’s cognitive ability. These are recognised as Higher Order questioning. Teacher B talked about how questioning is important in discovering learning opportunities as students can sometimes misunderstand something and questioning is an effective way of finding this out so the teacher can correct them. Teacher C explained that questioning can be used as a motivation strategy that questions can often be intriguing and often can lead students to wanting to know more information.

Nearly all questions asked in the classroom are from the teacher. How questions are asked will have a significant effect on the class in terms of participation. For a teacher, in order to encourage all students in class to engage with the questions you ask, there are steps to follow.

Firstly, the question must be suitable for the class. The question can either be revision of a previous lesson or can be within the ‘zone of proximal development’ (Vygotsky, 1978). Students will often lose interest if they aren’t being tested or won’t have the ability to follow if questions are out of range. “When consistently under-challenged, children become stuck in their comfort zone and will make little or no progress, whatever assessment measures we choose to employ” (Landsown, 2019, p. 17).

Students must be given adequate time to think about the question being asked. Questions which are within the understanding and remembering titles of Blooms taxonomy of verbs will generally take less time to answer than questions that begin under the title of Create, Evaluate, Analyse and Apply. “Educators have long known that wait-time is an important, even critical, aspect of effective questioning during the lesson cycle” (DAVENPORT, 2003, p. 246). (Johnson) found that “teachers could improve their questioning skills by allowing sufficient wait-time after asking questions”. (Rowe) found that “wait-time was the optimal method to stimulate inquiry and made the difference between active and passive learning in the classroom”. (Rowe, 1987) also found that “when teachers give students just a few seconds more to think about and formulate their answers to questions, there are pronounced improvements in the quality of the responses”

Bibliography

DAVENPORT, N. A. M., 2003. Questions, Answers and Wait-time: implications for assessment of young children. International Journal of Early Years Education, p. 246.

Johnson, N., 1990. Questioning etiquette. Gifted Child Today, pp. 10-11.

Landsown, M., 2019. In The Zone helping children rise to the challenge of learning. London: University of buckingham Press.

Rowe, M. B., 1987. Questioning Techniques and effective learning. Washington DC: National Education Association.

Vygotsky, L. S., 1978. Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. London: Harved University Press.