Why are questions important? Questions play an important role in the processes of teaching and learning because children’s achievement, and their level of engagement, depend on the types of questions teachers formulate and use in a classroom . Recent models of teaching and learning view learning as a social activity in which children construct knowledge with the teacher and other children. In this context, learning is seen as a situated social practice where children are developing identities as a member of a particular community and it is seen as a socially negotiated and arbitrated process. This view of teachers and children acknowledge questions as a core function for both learning and teaching. As Hunkin notes, ‘We are shifting from viewing questions as devices by which one evaluates specifics of learning to conceptualizing questions as a means of actively processing, thinking about, and using information productively’.
An education research consultant in some where, sat in on a kindergarten class where the teacher said the day’s lesson was the colour green. After pointing out green on the colour wheel she asked the children to find green items among their classmate’s clothing. The children quickly found green stripes on a shirt, green socks, a green hair ribbon, and green stitching on a little girl’s jumper. Then, for the next ten minutes the teacher held up green object after green object (e.g., a stuffed frog, a fern, and ivy growing in a
plastic container) that she pulled from boxes near her chair. For each item, the teacher asked, ‘What colour is this?’ and the children chimed in unison, ‘Green!’ But in no time, the kids were sprawled across the floor, bored with the activity and indifferent to the teacher’s desperate attempts to hold their attention.
‘Green! Green! Green!’ a little boy shouted in exasperation. ‘Lime, Lime, Lime!’ another one yelled and the whole class disintegrated into howls of laughter and relief (Black, 2001).
This scenario demonstrates one of the teaching strategies that is common in classrooms. The knowledge and skills used in asking different types of questions in a classroom is one important, but critical, aspect of the teaching and learning process. The classroom above demonstrated that the children became bored because of the type of questions that the teacher had asked even though the teacher was desperate to get and keep the children’s attention. While the national and international literature has mainly focused on the importance of questioning as a teaching technique and as a strategy in promoting interactive classrooms, teachers are not necessarily taught the essential knowledge and skills to conduct effective questioning episodes which facilitate higher-order thinking.
Teachers’ questions are imperative to children’s learning because they mediate the interactive processes in the learning environment in a number of important ways. Firstly, the questions that teachers formulate and ask children are considered to be cues and clues which focus their attention on what needs to be learned. Secondly, teachers’ questioning patterns affect which students learn and how much . Thirdly, the tendency of teachers to wait (or not) for students’ responses has been found to vary from high achievers to low achievers. Teachers tend to call upon high achievers more frequently because these children usually sit in the teachers’ line of vision area (action zone) in a classroom.
International evidence suggests that children engage differentially in interactions in classrooms and this is partly due to their proximity to the teacher. Sadker and Sadker’s study of 100 different classrooms found that a few salient students received more than three times the number of teacher interactions than their classmates. In other words, their research suggested that where a student sits in a classroom determines how much interactions the student will have with the teacher. Those students that received the most verbal interactions were seated in the front rows and the centre seats of the other rows.
Contemporary researchers support different seating patterns to facilitate more effective questioning by teachers. For example, Kerry (2002) proposes an ‘arc of vision’ in which children are positioned in rows of six where the teacher is at the front of the group. Dantonio and Beisenherz (2003) suggest a U-shaped design as being useful for sound teacher-student questioning. Researchers such as Cazden (2001) have found that teachers who extend the wait times to three to five seconds between the initial question and the student response gain a number of benefits, such as: (1) students give longer responses, (2) students give more evidence for their ideas and conclusion, (3) students speculate and hypothesize more, (4) students ask more questions and talk more to other children, and (5) more children participated in responding. These changes in pacing facilitate more social interactions and higher-level thinking in children.
Questions that are inconsistent, ambiguous and imprecise can confuse children and they are less likely to be able to engage and be involved in the discussions. Questions that are formulated and conceptualised at low levels of Bloom’s taxonomy are also likely to limit the level of challenge children experience in the learning environment. The implicit message given to the children through such low-level questions is that this level of learning is more important while they are unlikely to motivate them to engage in higher-level learning.
These low-level questions initially formulated by the teachers required only one correct answer and these answers were already determined by the teachers. An important implication of asking these types of question are that co-construction of learning is limited. The learning process is determined by the teacher. Such questions also have implications for scaffolding children’s learning. Experiencing questions at repetitively low levels limits children’s opportunities to further develop their ideas and to be supported to reach higher cognitive levels. Teachers need to be aware of these errors in conceptualising and formulating questions because if questions are unclear, ambiguous and imprecise, students’ understandings can be hindered and there is a possibility that little learning and thinking occurs.
However, a substantial improvement in post-training data was shown. Teachers’ questions, and the way the questioning episodes were structured, improved as a result of acquiring new skills and knowledge through the research and training process.
In sum, teachers’ questions and their specific approaches towards and during questioning are imperative for the development of children’s learning and thinking.
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