Questioning techniques are a heavily used, and thus widely researched

Questioning techniques are a heavily used, and thus widely researched, teaching strategy. Teachers typically spend anywhere from 35-50% of their instructional time asking questions. But are these questions effective in raising student achievement?

Questioning techniques are a heavily used and thus widely researched

Questioning techniques are a heavily used, and thus widely researched, teaching strategy. Teachers typically spend anywhere from 35-50% of their instructional time asking questions. But are these questions effective in raising student achievement?

How can teachers ask better questions of their students?

How can current educational research inform practice?

Teachers ask questions for a variety of purposes, including:

Firstly, To actively involve students in the lesson

Secondly, To increase motivation or interest

Thirdly, To evaluate students’ preparation

Fourthly, To check on completion of work

Further, To develop critical thinking skills

Additionally, To review previous lessons

Also, To nurture insights

Moreover, To assess achievement or mastery of goals and objectives

Finally, To stimulate independent learning

A teacher may vary his or her purpose in asking questions during a single lesson, or a single question may have more than one purpose.

In general, research shows that instruction involving questioning is more effective than instruction without questioning. Questioning is one of the nine research-base d strategies present in Classroom Instruction That Works (Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock, 2001).

One important finding is that questions that focus student attention on important elements of a lesson result in better comprehension than those that focus on unusual or interesting elements. Questions should also be structure so that most elicit correct responses.

Looking at the questions the teachers pose to students in the videos below, what were some of the purposes for these questions? Use the research in this section to help reach your conclusions. What percentage of the questions encourages higher-order thinking? What percentage allows for expressions of affect? How will you use questioning in your Unit Plan?

https://learn.teachingchannel.com/video/structuring-questioning-in-classroom
http://www.phy.ilstu.edu/pte/311content/questioning/techniques.html
https://learn.teachingchannel.com/video/strategies-for-student-centered-discussion
https://educationnorthwest.org/sites/default/files/classroom-questioning.pdf
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/asking-better-questions-deeper-learning-ben-johnson