Effective Use of Questions

                                    The Department of Agricultural Education  
                                                    The University of Arizona

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DEVELOPING AND USING QUESTIONS IN TEACHING

I. Purposes of questions:
    1. Aid to study                           6. Encourages response
    2. Aid to planning                      7. Encourages independence in thinking 
    3. Focuses attention                 8. Emphasis
    4. Fosters interest                     9. Test of knowledge and understanding 
    5. Stimulation and direction of 10. Stimulation to further inquiry    
        constructive thinking

II. Kinds of questions:
1. Preliminary or experimental questions used mainly in the preparation or assignment step of the unit.
2. Questions used in the discussion or application step of the instruction. 3. Examination questions, for testing the results of the instruction.

III. Requires on part of teachers:

1. Clear and rapid thinking (a slow, clear thinker may prepare written question or directions but may get poor results in recitation)
2. Skill in wording questions ( a person may be a good lecturer but a poor questioner)

IV. Requisites of a good question:

1. Relevant                                  8. Brings forth clear responses
2. Clear                                       9. Brings forth response readily 
3. Concise (not necessarily immediately) 
4. Challenges attention 
    a. By reference to the known 
    b. By being clear and definite
    c. By varying the difficulty with 
    d. By using interesting questions
5. Usually should require thinking and organization

 6. Good sequence age and ability
 7. Adapted to the class

V. Kinds of response to questions:

1. Facts (memory)                         7. Involves appreciation
2. Facts plus thinking                     8. Involves further questions 
3. Involves comparison desire for more knowledge 
4. Involves analysis relating to inquiry
5. Involves judgment                       9. Planning and execution of plans 
6. Organization

VI. Common errors in questioning:

1. Repeating student's answer
2. Jumping at his conclusion without permitting him to finish speaking
3. Adding to his answer to avoid formulating a question that will bring out the information from the class
4. Permitting him to answer to a different question from the one asked. 
5. Use of leading or suggestive questions
6. Use of direct and alternative questions too frequently

VII. Using questions in the discussion:

1. What is the value of questions which cannot be answered immediately?
2. Make a complete list of questions to be used on one of your teaching units. 
3. Classify these as direct, alternative, leading, fact, thought, etc. Select the best questions and give reasons for your selection.
4. What are the values of topical questions in the discussion?

ON QUESTIONS AND QUESTIONING

One measure of the success of the superior is the manner in which questions are used in the conduct of individual and group instruction. The teacher can improve questioning. A prerequisite is an understanding of the function of questions.

A. Educational Functions of Oral Questions Suring Class Discussion

1. Stimulate learning by questioning

-reveal the need to know
-explore the benefit or advantage of knowing
-provoke desire to know
 -promote the acceptance of knowledge offered
-evoke willingness to work to seek knowledge

2. Direct learning by questions to:

-guide the search for knowledge
-identify what needs to be known
-consider most likely sources of knowledge
-weigh relative worth of various knowledge available
-relate new knowledge to that previously known
-secure information possessed by specific facts
-seek recall of specific facts
-cause participation in discussion
-check accuracy of study in relation to knowledge needed
-provoke deduction by logical analysis
-focus attention, discipline, rebuff inattention, or censure tendency to delay effort

3. Evaluation of learning by questions to:

-gauge capacity or readiness to assimilate new knowledge
-test recognition of knowledge needed
-evaluate understanding of new conceptions
-reveal grasp of new knowledge in relation to previous study
-measure new knowledge gained
-test comprehension of relationships
-appraise the growth in perception of generalization, broad conclusions or general principles

APPROVED QUESTIONING TECHNIQUES

1. Ask question; then call on student 
2. Pause after asking questions.
3. Call on interested students first. 
4. Ask thought-provoking questions. 
5. Utilize "why" !
6. Challenge student responses.
7. Have students challenge other students' responses.
8. As lesson unfolds, call on "uninterested" students. 
9. Ask questions that build upon each other.
10. Ask and use questions that are relevant to the topic being discussed.

TECHNIQUES OF THE MASTER

ASKING QUESTIONS

Prior to the development of probing and higher order questioning techniques comes the skill of asking questions, period. Too often
beginning teachers lecture and tell students rather than asking questions which can elicit the answers from the students themselves. Training techniques have been developed by which teachers can see model videotapes of teachers demonstrating this skill, and by practicing in micro-teaching situation increases the number of questions which they ask of students. Having achieved this goal, the emphasis can be placed on higher order questioning techniques.

THE USE OF HIGHER ORDER QUESTIONS

Higher order questions are defined as questions which cannot be answered from memory or simple sensory description. They call for finding a rule or principles rather than defining one. The critical requirements for a "good" classroom question is that it prompts students to use ideas rather than just remember them. Although Some teachers intuitively ask questions of higher quality, far too many over-emphasize those that require only the simplest cognitive activity on the part of the students. Procedures have been designed to sensitize beginning teachers to the effects of questioning on their students and which provide practice in forming and using higher order questions.

THE USE OF PROBING QUESTIONS

Probing requires that teachers ask questions that require pupils to go beyond superficial "first-answer" questions. This can be done in five ways: I) asking pupils for more information and/or more meaning; 2) requiring the pupil to rationally justify his/her response; 3) refocusing the pupil's or class's attention on a related issue; 4) promoting the pupil or giving pupil hints; and 5) bringing other students into the discussion by getting them to respond to the first student's answer.

TEACHER SILENCE AND NON-VERBAL CUES

Many teachers are frightened by silence or pauses in classroom discussion. They usually hasten to fill silence gaps by talking. What many teachers do not realize is that teacher silence is a powerful tool in the classroom. Teacher pausing can be used after: 
I) introductory statements to pressure the students into thinking about the teacher's statement;
2) questions to the students to give them time to think about a proper answer; 
3) questions from the students to direct the question to another student with a look or gesture; and 
4) student response to elicit a continuing response.

Do’s and Don’ts of Questioning

Students' response habits are determined much by the teacher's questioning techniques. This checklist will help the teacher to identify weaknesses in performance.

Check

I.  Do evaluate the teaching continuously as the lesson unfolds. Ask questions to test comprehension, understanding, grasp of idea or relationship.
2. Do provoke and direct thinking by a series of questions asked in a logical sequence, each building on the preceding premises. 
3. Do phrase questions precisely and carefully so students understand what you want answered. 
4. Do ask challenging questions. Avoid the trite or ridiculously simple probe lest the answer be likewise.
5. Do get more "mileage" from questions. Ask several students before acknowledging the right or correct answer.
6. Don't ask questions students could not be expected to answer.  The teacher must inevitably supply the answer. Students build the lazy habit of quietly awaiting the teacher to answer questions they could answer. Students may come to question the teacher's, good sense if he or she persists in asking questions they should not know. 
7. Don't name student to respond before asking question. You telegraph the idea that all others can relax--exception, when you have over-participation of students, addressing a question aids in some control of the confusion, or you may desire a specific person's answer.
8. Don't always reject first wrong answer. Continue testing it onothers who identify it as wrong, rather than the teacher doing so. 
9. Don't supply answers to Questions students should be able to answer--unless teacher's desire is to demonstrate his or her knowledge.
10. Do ask questions to work the students, not the teacher.
11. Don't identify correct answers by facial expression if you wish to keep students in doubt. 
12. Don't ask questions leading to simple "yes" or "no". They provoke limited thought and little discussion. If asked, follow by "Why?". 
13. Don't over-question on one point. Cease when sufficient answers have stimulated thought, directed thought, or tested thought. To continue exhausts student's patience. and interest. 
14. Do raise questions, when lecturing, that premise the teacher's answer. Phrase questions as though student raised, "Now, you may ask ?'!, followed by the teacher's answer.

Philosophy of Question

"Questioning is sometimes called a probe with which the teacher examines the pupil's mind as a surgeon examines a wound; and sometimes a plummet with which the teacher sounds the depths of the mind as a sailor measures the sea with his lead. It is indeed, both a probe and a plummet, but it is far more -it is a magician's wand with which new knowledge is summoned into life. Skillful questions cause the pupil to define his facts; to clarify his ideas; to put facts and ideas together in new relations; to compare; to judge; and to draw inferences -mental operations which develop our higher knowledge. Socrates, borrowing the name from his mother's trade, called his method maieutic, and the instrument with which he assisted his pupils to give birth to the children of their minds was questioning. We must therefore, pay more than passing attention to this art." --Hinsdale

"As with the world, so with the child, his education begins as soon as he begins to ask questions. The object of the event that excites no questions will provoke no thought. An explanation may be so given as to raise new questions as soon as the mind is sufficiently awake. The falling apple had the question of gravitation in it for the mind of Newton; and the boiling tea kettle propounded to Watt the problem of a steam engine. --The explanation that settles everything and ends all questions usually ends all thinking also. --The alert and scientific mind is one that never ceases to ask questions and seek answers. The scientific spirit is the spirit of tireless inquiry and research." --Gregory

"A half dozen thoroughly good questions often make a recitation a most stimulating exercise in thinking, which the absence of this preparation on the part of the teacher not infrequently results in the ordinary, listless class period, which may actually be harmful from the standpoint of the child's intellectual growth --There is n<? one thing that a teacher can do which will bring a greater reward in increased teacher power than systematically to prepare questions for one or more recitations each day." --Strayer

"One important part of instruction in any course should accordingly be to get students to raise questions about the subject under discussion It would be one excellent practice to require the class to formulate questions about each lesson."-- Judd

Questions or problems regarding this web site should be directed to billye@ag.arizona.edu. Copyright © 2000 Department of Agricultural Education. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, 23 August 2005

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Arizona