Why it Matters

Questions are drivers of inquiry, catalysts for changing our perceptions, vehicles for developing understanding, promoters of action, and opportunities to clarify our thinking . . . and, a major way that teachers interact with their students (1).  There is evidence that shows that teacher questions consume between 10-20% of the time students spend in classrooms (2). However, research shows that more than 80% of all teacher questions only require students to recall facts (3). Such questions may help to test students’ memory and build knowledge, but they do little to deepen understanding or engagement. In contrast, constructive questions focus on developing understanding while facilitative questions— such as, What makes you say that?—aim to make students’ thinking visible (see Exhibit 1). Generative, authentic questions —those questions to which teachers do not already know the answer— are the least asked type of question despite evidence that they are positively associated with student engagement, critical thinking, and academic achievement (4). As classrooms become cultures of thinking, teachers tend to reduce the number of review and procedural questions asked while increasing the amount of facilitative questions (5).

If questions are important vehicles for learning, they shouldn’t totally be the purview of teachers. Questions are one of the most powerful ways students express their thinking, enhance problem-solving, monitor understanding, and improve as active and autonomous learners (6). Across most disciplines, providing structures and opportunities for student questions is cited as essential for student comprehension, self-assessment of content and intellectual engagement (7). In addition, student self-generation of questions related to the material they are studying has shown to be more beneficial to recall than restudying of the material (12). Research suggests that once adequate conditions are established, students’ questions improve both in frequency and in quality (6). Therefore, we need to provide students with both the structures and opportunities to ask and explore their questions. Unfortunately, student-asked questions, those focused on ideas and not the logistics of assignments, are too often few and far between (2).

Questions are also a major way in which we express and recognize curiosity.  Fostering student curiosity and questioning involves creating opportunities for authentic problem solving and robust inquiry and creating a classroom culture where questioning is valued. Unfortunately, many of these conditions are all too rare in schools today. Many teachers tend to value answers, at the expense of encouraging students to ask good questions.

However, it is not enough to merely encourage students to ask questions more frequently. Research shows that the quality of questions is crucial (6). Therefore, it is important for teachers to model critical thinking and curiosity in their questions, specifically employing deep- level, constructive questions.  Such questions ask students to explain and predict, apply learning across contexts,  evaluate information, and wonder about the world around them. When student questioning is enhanced and coupled with high quality teacher questioning, both teachers and students become highly inquisitive learners who value questions as opportunities for exploration, active learning, and self-growth.

What It Looks and Sounds Like

Of course, there is no one way that focusing o questions as drivers of learning and thinking will look and sound. There is ample room for individuals to add their own creativity and stamp on things. The list below is a sampling of ideas that might be useful to advance your practice.

• Plan units around generative questions, which can be the “legs” that drive learning.  These could be essential questions, questions of inquiry, or debatable questions. To learn more what makes a question “essential” and how to craft questions with these characteristics see Exhibit 2 (8).

• Model curiosity for your students and look for opportunities to ask authentic questions, that is, questions to which you don’t already know the answer. Such questions model your own engagement with the content and send a signal that you are a learner too. When a teacher is curious and interested, it often sparks deeper engagement by students (3,7).

• Use constructive questions to support students in building understanding.  On the other hand, try to limit review questions.  While these questions have a place in classrooms and can be useful in consolidating knowledge and information, they should not dominate the learning space.  Likewise limit procedural questions by using simple directives.  Instead of asking, “Does everyone have their pencil?” Direct, “Everyone, please get out your pencils.” (see Exhibit 1 for a Typology of Questions)

• Provide plenty of think time after asking constructive questions.  This sends a signal that one is not expected to know the answer but to engage with the question. Use strategies like Think-Pair-Share or table talks to allow everyone to share their thinking.

• Ask facilitative questions and use the reflective toss to focus on catching the meaning behind students’ responses and pushing them to elaborate on their thinking. Asking a follow-up question such as, ‘What makes you say that?’ can encourage students to explain their thinking.  Facilitative questions show that you are interested in students’ thinking more just correct answers.

• Encourage and support students asking questions of one another in class discussions rather than you dominating the discussion by being the only questioner. Some ways to do this include: Having students evaluate each other’s responses. Use basketball questioning vs. ping-pong questioning (9). Include opportunities for students to ask questions to their teachers, one another, and themselves (10).

• Teach students the difference between clarifying and probing questions.  Encourage students to ask one another probing questions that force the learner to reflect and explain when giving peer feedback or advice.  Name your own questions for students to provide a model.

• Create a culture of questioning where questioning is valued, visible, and actively promoted. Encourage and invite students to ask questions that exhibit their curiosity and wonder. Honor these questions by incorporating them into the learning as much as possible. Have a place where such questions reside:  a wonder wall, an inquiry notebook, or a google doc.

• Help students to ask better questions using techniques such as the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) or through the routine Question Sorts.

• Provide students with feedback on their questions or have them provide feedback to one another. Critical feedback can help students refine their questions and get better at asking higher-level questions (11).

• Demonstrate the ongoing and evolving nature of questions in learning through use of question journals, documentation, the 5 Why’s, or The Squid (another explantion of The Squid)

• Provide plenty of opportunities for students to pursue the questions that they are most interested in and curious about.

• Model self-questioning as a metacognitive technique for advancing one’s own learning.  Generate a list of questions students can ask themselves during each phase of a project or cycle of inquiry to help them evaluate, reflect on, and direct their learning. 

Reflecting on Your Teaching

These questions are meant to push your thinking beyond where you are currently. Perhaps they might even make you a bit uncomfortable. As you will recall, living with and going deeply into questions and puzzles of teaching are part of what it means to be in the inquiry space. Pick a question or questions that will help you better understand the effects of your actions, critically reflect on them, provoke additional questions, and/or help you think about future actions and possibilities. If you find yourself merely explaining what you currently are doing, chances are you might be reporting more than reflecting. Consider selecting another prompt that might take you deeper into examining your practice.

• Where am I making use of generative, essential questions to guide my units of instruction? How do I keep these questions alive throughout our unit as beacons or guides for our learning? 

•  What are examples of my most effective essential questions?  What do I notice about what makes a good guiding, essential question in my subject area and with my students?  What makes these engaging for students?

•   How am I using student questions in my teaching?  What are other possibilities for doing so?

•  Where and how am I modeling my own curiosity?

•  Where do student questions live in my classroom? If someone walked into my classroom how would they be able to tell from the displays and documentation that I care about curiosity, inquiry, and questioning?

• What is my pattern of questioning?  Is it ping-pong style with me hitting every question back or are we playing basketball with lots of people involved? Where and how can I further encourage students to respond to each other’s responses? Where and how can I do more to promote students asking questions to one another? 

• Do I give sufficient thinking time when I ask constructive questions so that students have a chance to develop their thinking?  Do all students have an opportunity to share their response in some way?

• Reflecting on a particular lesson you have just taught or after an observation of a colleague’s classroom:

  • What question did I/they ask that I thought was particularly provocative or useful?

  • What questions did I/they ask that sparked discussion and engagement?

  • What student questions about the content emerged in this lesson?  Where were there opportunities for student questions to emerge? Where and how might I/they have made more room for students’ questions?

  • Where and when did I/they ask follow-up facilitative questions?  Is there a particular facilitative question that seemed to be effective?

  • Did I/they ask any authentic questions (ones to which I didn’t already know the answer)? Where might I/they have done so?

Using Quick Data to Inform Your Efforts

It is often difficult to assess our questioning real time when we are in the midst of teaching. There are several reasons for this. For one, as teachers we simply ask a lot of questions. Our research found that teachers typically ask between 50-100 questions in a class period. Therefore, it just isn’t possible to remember all of them. What we do tend to remember are those powerful or effective questions, because they resonate and register more. Consequently, we over estimate the overall quality of our questioning. The First 10 Questions is a process for collecting quick data on a school’s collective question asking to identify the kinds of questions students’ are experiencing.

The protocol for collecting The First 10 Questions is simple. A documenter, which could be a school leader, coach, or teacher or some combination there of, goes into a classroom and simply records the first 10 questions they hear. They leave the room and go to the next classroom, recording the first 10 questions heard. This process continues for the rest of the class period. It is generally possible to visit 8 to 12 classrooms in a single class period. Note: This process could be carried out to collect questions across the school, within a particular department, or a single grade level. Questions are then compiled and copied to be shared. Often questions are mixed up so that individual classrooms are not readily identifiable. The point is not to assess teachers but to get a sense of the school community’s collective questioning. The questions are then shared with teachers as a snapshot of questioning to determine what can be gleaned about the kinds of questions our students are encountering.

Connection to the 8 Cultural Forces

Interactions.  One of the major ways teachers interact with students is through questioning, dialog, and discussion. The types of questions we ask, signal to students our goals and objectives.  Are we trying to review knowledge, construct understanding, or facilitate thinking? What balance between these objectives are we striking?  In our interactions, are we trying to judge correctness (“good job,” “you’ve got it,” “well done,” “that’s correct”) or are we trying to catch students’ meaning and understand their thinking?  Our discussions need to show we respect and value students’ thinking and that we don’t always feel we have to be at the center of the discussion.

Modeling.  Just as we need to be the models of thinking we want our students to develop, so to must we be models of curiosity and questioning.  When we ask authentic questions, model curiosity, display a desire for deeper inquiry, and engage in self-questioning, our students will learn to do the same.

Opportunities.  To nurture students’ disposition to be curious, we have to create opportunities for our students to question and inquire.  Use students’ questions to shape units of instruction.  Create opportunities for students to pursue their own questions and lines of inquiry. Teach students how to ask good questions of guest speakers and each other.  Create opportunities for students to give each other feedback that makes use of both clarifying questions and probing questions.

Time.  Provide time for students to pursue their own questions through unstructured time, genius hour, twenty percent time, passion days, or personal projects.  Give thinking time after you have asked constructive questions.  Allow you and your students time to dwell in the questions rather than feeling every question must be wrapped up and answered within the class period.

Language. To encourage rich discussion and inquiry we must employ the language of listening.  Use conditional language (under “language of knowing”) in your questioning: “What might be happening here?” to signal you aren’t looking for a correct answer but are exploring possibilities.  Question starts and stems can be useful initially in helping students to generate, broader, more open, and deeper questions.

Routines.  Don’t expect students to know how to give good feedback using clarifying and probing questions.  Use and practice routines like the Ladder of Feedback or SAIL to facilitate this.  Use structures like the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) to help students learn how to ask better questions.

Environment.  Document and display questions.  Essential questions that guide a unit of study should be prominent for quick reference.  Make sure that such questions are not just wallpaper, however.  Refer to them often.  Likewise, document and display students’ questions to send a message that curiosity is a valued part of your classroom.

Expectations.  Expect your students to be curious and teach for curiosity.  Consider the questions students ask as important indicators of their understanding. 

Mindset #8: Questions drive thinking and learning