the methods we use to generate the questions we ask, there is room for change, perhaps even growth. If we find ways to increase student engagement, students will learn more and perhaps perform at higher levels. According to Robyn Jackson and Allison Zmuda (2014), students can be compliant without being engaged. Engagement requires that students be involved in complex thinking.
Many students find straightforward, lower-level questions boring; richer questions are intellectually stimulating, and students find them engaging. Lower-level questions might include specific dates, names, and places. These questions might have value in certain contexts but should go beyond the factual. Richer questions can include those that compare and contrast events or explain why a date is important historically and how the events impacted future events. To support higher-order thinking skills, teachers need to pose questions to students they have not been asked before. Even complex questions can be a recall experience if a student answered previously. When we create an atmosphere in which students experience acceptable challenge, they achieve success. Increasing engagement, interest, and motivation in the classroom—regardless of their current levels—are certainly appealing ventures. Students become motivated to learn because learning matters to them. What we ask and the way we pose questions do impact our students. The way we challenge our students through the questions we ask can create personal meaning and associations with previously learned content—all of which leads to a new level of understanding (Cushman, 2014).
Consider other reasons to change things up in the classroom by increasing the variety of questions you present. In her Phi Delta Kappan article “Neuroscience Reveals that Boredom Hurts,” Judy Willis (2014) asserts that the student brain wants stimulation and the lack thereof results in boredom, which hinders productivity. Repetitious tasks and simplistic questioning lead to apathy and decreased levels of performance. Student interest is piqued—and a net positive result achieved—when stimulating discussion is inspired by interesting and engaging questions.
Those questions don’t just benefit students; they benefit teachers as well. But getting to strong questioning strategies takes perseverance. Expect a transitional time. Applying a process to questions will make for purposeful questions. The following sections explain these topics.
Benefitting Both Students and Teachers
Students are not the only ones who benefit from varied and higher levels of questions. Teachers can focus student thinking on those learning targets that matter most. Responses provide insights into students’ levels of understanding, which then become tools for increasing student awareness (Clough, 2007).
The processes, activities, and lessons we use to help students discover, evaluate, and apply content give teachers the opportunity to increase students’ ability to analyze and use information. We can design questions to help students think, process, and internalize information. Investigating responses to interesting and engaging questions strengthens knowledge and skills (Walsh & Sattes, 2005).
Charlotte Danielson (2007) recognizes questioning and discussion techniques as important components of effective teaching. Danielson, a well-established reference for teacher evaluation, asks that questioning techniques specifically enhance student learning. A function of classroom query is to provide the class with multiple opportunities to respond to open-ended questions. Encouraging divergent thinking helps students to make connections and deepen their understanding of a topic.
Danielson (2007) further supports increasing the ability of students to ask questions. In her vision, students dialogue around meaningful questions while the teacher facilitates the discussion, but students carry the weight of the content and conversation. Students answer questions so teachers can check their understanding, and questions allow them to deepen their understanding. Quality questioning strategies result in an intellectually active classroom that gives students the opportunity to engage at heightened levels of sophistication, intensified awareness, and increased comprehension.
Requiring Transition and Perseverance
As we strive to increase the complexity associated with what we ask our students, the change in practice may be a challenge for our students. Their experience might be one of questions that require them to recall information or repeatedly perform a procedure. Questions that require memorization or one-word answers might be their norm. “What does a plant need to grow?” “What is the answer to the mathematics problem?” “What world leaders played a key role in World War I?” While transitioning from a more familiar approach to one that requires additional challenge, students are likely to need support to go beyond their comfort zone. A byproduct of the transition could be an increase in initial failures. If educators and students view failure as a step closer to success, the change will be more palatable. I often tell students that they are on the road to right. They may not experience the highest level of success initially, but they are on the way. Teachers need to create a balance of challenge and support in order for students to be willing to engage (Quate & McDermott, 2014).
In her book Mindset, Carol Dweck (2006) identifies perseverance as another benefit of a system of questioning that promotes deep thought, which supports the long-term success of our students. According to Dweck (2006), we as a society formerly believed those who had to spend more time learning were struggling learners. She reveals that even the highly gifted work hard in order to achieve. Students who typically learn quickly without struggle need to spend time and effort to find appropriate responses to questions that challenge them. Accomplishment is closely tied to effort regardless of individual or perceived ability. This reminds me of the famous Thomas Edison quote regarding his development of the light bulb. He said, “I have not failed ten thousand times … I have succeeded in proving that those ten thousand ways will not work” (Edison as quoted in Furr, 2011). If we encourage our students to think and try—and when they fail, to think and try some more—we will take them to a place of deeper understanding, greater success, and a heightened level of perseverance. It is through their willingness to persevere that they’ll realize success. We can challenge our students to think just beyond their comfort level and provide support as they experience roadblocks so they can move toward perseverance through a gradual release approach. Teachers can help grow perseverance by working with students on challenging activities then weaning that support as students begin persevering on their own. Scaffold activities to provide the stepping stones necessary to lead to higher levels of challenge. Provide the resources or locations of resources needed for students to be successful. Ask questions that will lead students to successful outcomes rather than provide answers for them. See the teacher do it in the following example.
Teacher: Students, throughout the year we will be involved in various tasks that require us to give increased amounts of effort. Sometimes things come easy for us. Think of a time when you had to try something more than once to be successful at it. Who has an idea to share?
Student: I had trouble learning to ride a bike. It took lots of time and practice before I could ride and not fall.
Teacher: I would imagine that many of us had a similar experience. We didn’t give up, though. Even though it was difficult for us, we kept trying. We were motivated to be on the bike, and to be able to ride successfully. Why do you think you continued to try and you didn’t give up?
Student: Because I wanted to get places faster, and I wanted to ride with my friends.
Teacher: This type of effort is called perseverance. Perseverance means that even when something is difficult for us, we keep trying. In order to become good at using the knowledge and skills we gain in school, we need to persevere in the classroom just like we do when learning a new skill at home, like riding a bike. We learn things in school so that we can become successful at applying our abilities to tasks that are like those found in the real world.
For example, this week in mathematics we learned to find the area and perimeter of various
