Chapter 12 page 264
B3. Higher-Order Questions
Teacher questions drive much of what goes on in classrooms. Not surprisingly, researchers have been
interested in the effects of teachers’ questions on what students learn.
Two important findings about teacher questions are these:
- When teachers ask questions, they should give several seconds (3 to 5 seconds) of wait time.
- When teachers ask higher-order questions rather than lower-order questions. One way to think
about this is that teachers should ask questions that are higher on Bloom’s taxonomy, student achievement
is higher than when teachers ask questions that are lower on Bloom’s taxonomy. In particular, teachers
should avoid asking too many knowledge-level questions, which simply require students to read answers
directly out of texts.
Most of this research involves questions within traditional recitations. Much less is known about
discussions involving more open participation and more student talk. There is some evidence, however,
that it is productive for teachers to have students back up their answers with evidence, and to have them
encourage students to give reasons and evidence to support their positions on issues.
Another way to think about teacher questions is to use the following taxonomy:
Low Level Questions
Low level questions include three main types of questions:
- Tangential questions. Tangential questions are questions that are only tangentially related to the
topic. For example, when discussing a story about a raccoon family that has been treated
anthropomorphically like a human family, a teacher might ask students questions about raccoons. Because
the raccoons in the story are not behaving as raccoons at all, these questions distract from the actual story
(Anderson et al., 19xx). - Vocabulary questions. Occasional questions about vocabulary are not harmful, but vocabulary
questions often make up a very high proportion of questions in discussions. This can also detract from
understanding the central ideas, and it can also convey to students the mistaken idea that understanding a
text just means memorizing the vocabulary words (xx). - Knowledge-level questions. Knowledge-level questions are questions whose answers do not require
much thinking. One kind of knowledge-level question can be answered by reading a word or phrase right
out of the book. For instance, if the text says, “Sarah left the party because she felt ill,” the question Why
did Sarah leave the party? is a knowledge-level question.
Another variety of knowledge-level question is the question that students who answer definitely know the
answer to. For instance, if you ask, when was the Declaration of Independence signed, and a student
answers “1776,” this is a knowledge-level question for that student. There was no thinking or inferencing
involved; the student simply retrieved an answer from memory.