Questioning - is the beginning for understanding the thinking stuff of a brain.

Overview

Questioning is the basis for all learning. Questions that students ask or teachers ask students allow students and teachers both to assessment what they know and how to progress toward better and deeper understanding as effective questions lead not only to answers, but to more questions.

Student Questioning

Student involvement is essential for learning and thinking. Students must be curious enough to be motivated to interact, know how to ask questions, collect information, organize the information and sustain involvement until they understand what is happening or a teacher is able to understand what questions, information, and or activity might facilitate their understanding. If the student and/or the student/student and/or the student/teacher interaction can focus and maintain student interest at the students’ cognitive level, then students will create new and possibly deeper understanding. This process can and should be intrinsically motivating; creating a life long desire for learning.

Levels of Student Questions

Student's questions can be categorized similar to questions teachers ask. Different ways are discussed below. However, most important to consider about the questions children ask is the level of understanding they might gain from answers to their questions. Incidental surface knowledge or deeper critical understanding.

Children take answers to their questions and connect them to their present understanding at levels which can be represented as pieces of factual information, as labels for objects or concepts, as properties and characteristics that describe objects or concepts, as information that can act as procedural explanations of how things interact, relate, create a cause effect relationship, and as explanations that lead to models, theories, laws and deeper understanding.

Questioning for Learning

It is the addition of information connected to previous ideas, the reorganization of known ideas, and construction of new ideas that is learning. Questioning allows children and adults to distinguish and structure their understanding of the world according to the questions they deem significant. Variables that affect this learning are identified in learning theories. Some variables include:

Curiosity

Motivation

Imagination and creative thinking

Time

Developmental level or maturation

Plan strategies

Skill in learning - logic, critical thinking, analysis,

Habits of mind - metacognition,

Subject knowledge

Ability to judge acceptable answers

Teacher Specific Information for Questioning

The first thing to learn is how to create questions, next seek answers to the questions, and finally how the questions relates to the answers and the meaning expected. This can only be done in an interesting risk free environment with encouragement to practice and perfect questioning at increasingly higher levels. Young children arrive in school as novice active learners. Schools must help them to become expert active learners.

Inquiry starts with play. As students mature play can become more productive if a student’s personal interest or curiosity is sustained so that questioning continues and becomes more skillful. This is difficult for students who wait for the authority (teacher/text) to furnish problems, questions, and solutions. Not being challenged to make meaning, rather to remember the meaning of others. The good thinker realizes that while some information originated from qualified people, much information and meaning is self-generated. Good thinkers function independently, welcoming the challenge of functioning on their own. They embrace problems or the unknown, and are confident they have the skill and ability to collect, organize, and understand information to achieve whatever goal they desire.

One way we demonstrate to students that we value them is to ask them to think, share the processes that they use, and talk about the process. This sends a clear message that their ideas are valuable and if students are to learn with understanding, they must own and value what they do. A professional educator's job is to facilitate reasoning and understanding based on that reasoning, not to be the owner of the information and try to convince or coerce students to value what the teacher says and does.

Questions are at the level of thinking of its creator and it is the level of thinking that determines the level of the question and its answer. If a question is factual the asker wants to recall a specific fact or find a resource with the desired information. If a question is a desire to understand something, the asker must seek and process the information at a higher level depending on the the availability of information, the kind of question, and the level of understanding desired. If the kind of question relates to the level of thought, then it should be possible for teachers to facilitate student growth by monitoring and encouraging different levels of questions and guiding students to be aware of how the kinds of questions they ask relate to the kinds of solutions they can expect. Teachers may do this by having students reflect on their actions for answering particular types of questions. This helps students see a relationship between the type of question asked and the conclusions they draw.

Questioning Assumptions

There is a lack of knowledge.

There is curiosity, a desire to know, a desire to please, a desire to compete, or a desire to help can all motivate a student to ask a question.

There is an answer.

There is a desire for an answer.

There is the ability to answer.

A question must be asked to seek an answer or no answer will be achieved.

A belief there is information and resources to answer the question.

A question can invoke a response which may be one, all, or a combination of a mental image, linguistic or non linguistic information, emotional response, or physical sensation.

Characteristics of a Question

Each question has two basic characteristics. The question is understandable and there is information and knowledge necessary to answer the question.

Example - Question: When did humans land on the moon?

This has the characteristics -1. It is understandable. 2. The question is answerable. Additionally - 3. Humans landed on the moon. 4. Humans had and needed technology to land on the moon. And 5. The answer is public knowledge.

Questions can be classified.

Sample classifications - Convergent (closed) and Divergent (open), Effects the question has on the person being asked, Bloom's Taxonomy, According to the first word or question word, According to the purpose

Characteristics of Asking Questions

Ideas for when questions are asked - Before, During, After and How to direct questions and other responses

Pros and Cons for - Repeating students' answers

What is Wait time, when to use it, and its effects on student's responses.

Suggestions for - Creating a risk-free environment

It's not only important for the teacher to ask questions. It is important that students learn how to ask questions to learn how to learn. You can teach the techniques that you know about questioning to your students so they can learn the power of good questions. If students are the key performers they will see how the questions you ask improve learning and learn how to question.

Students who only see teachers question to evaluate them are robbed of experiences of learning how to form their own questions to use to discover and hence will not experience the pleasure of the quest for answers and the satori (joy) of discovery.

To achieve this teachers must accept the responsibilities associated with the following guidelines.

Teacher Guidelines for Questioning

Plan questions to ask.

Provide time for questioning.

Create a risk free atmosphere.

Encouraged students to ask questions.

Provided time to answer questions.

Discuss questions and how different kinds of questions require different processes to answer and will give different types of answers.

Allow students to discuss questions with each other.

Discuss how different content can require different kinds of questions.

Model good questioning strategies.

Facilitate and support students to learn how to ask better questions.

Facilitate and support students to learn how to processes information.

Facilitate and support students to understand the importance of good questions.

Be aware of students’ emotional/affective responses to different questions.

Be aware of students’ cognitive responses to different questions.

Be aware of students’ development of questioning strategies.

Be aware of students’ understanding of their affective response to questions.