Asking the right questions?
Comments(1) After first reading this chapter, I found its description of language exploration activities and its discussion of overused questions to be a contradiction. However, after taking some time to think and consider the essential role inquiry has come to play in our own studies this past month, I think that I may have misinterpreted the author’s comments. Questions may in fact be overused in schools. I believe that it is a specific type of questioning practice that has been exhausted.
While lesson planning, teachers may over anticipate the direction of lessons and come to class with a predetermined list of questions that work to guide the class discussions in a specific direction. This, in my opinion, is the type of questioning that prevents students to explore subjects based on their own curiosities. In comparison, inquiry style questioning requires some preparation on behalf of the teacher but to instead create an environment that fosters and encourages students to ask questions. These questions are also to be student engineered and not asked because the teacher has directed thought processes to inevitably develop them. The questions are a result of critical thinking and of a dynamic learning environment.
Minimizing the quantity of questions asked by a teacher to place effort on creating questions that inspire critical thinking in students are the most effective. When a teacher is able to be “out-questioned” by the students, then questioning can be effective.
I also agree that this specific type of questioning is overused in classrooms. From my school visits and lectures, I realized that I need to ask the right type of questions to teach students effectively and refrain from generic one-dimensional questions such as “what is the next step to get the right answer?,” many examples of which I saw during my school observations. It seems like they place more value on getting a solution quickly and accurately rather than thinking about the relationships among the concepts. I don’t think students can learn much from one-dimensional questions like “What is the answer to…” Instead, I think teachers should lead students to think at higher levels with “how/why” questions such as “why do you think…” While I do think that students should be given chances to inquire and explore on their own initiative, I do not think that a class driven by student-led questions would be very effective given the limited amount of time we have to go through all the material. Questions should be used, but in a thought-provoking manner.