After reviewing literature concerning encouraging students’ questioning in the classroom, I have found few recent studies. The newest studies on encouraging student questions in the classroom are from the 1990s and early 2000s. There are plenty of studies on the inquiry and PBL models in the classroom, but these do not focus specifically on encouraging questions when not conducting inquiry and PBL units. My focus is on this latter aspect of student generated questions.
Early studies such as Alison King’s study in 1994, and Christine Chin’s study in 2002 and found similar reasons for encouraging questions in the classroom. Specifically, Chin found, “the act of asking questions and the consequent search for answers is key to active learning. The formulation of a good question is also a creative act, and at the heart of what doing science is all about. Hence, students should be encouraged to ask questions as this facilitates learning.” (King, 1994) (Chin & Brown, 2002) Regarding encouraging more quality questions in the classroom, one study in particular, caught my attention. My study focusses on the effect of positive behavior rewards on the quantity of quality questions that students ask. The positive behavior reward is subtle and socially based. In Can Children Catch Curiosity From a Social Robot Susan Engel, et al. show that by manipulating a robot as a peer to give subtle social cues, children’s curiosity levels do increase. (Gordon, Breazeal, & Engel, 2015) The authors state their research suggests, “that manipulating subtle social interaction utterances and expressions can impact children’s curiosity.” The similarities between this study and my proposed study, whether a positive behavior reward may influence curiosity, are intriguing. Another study, Mark-On: Encouraging Student Questions in Class, studied the effect of minimizing “the psychological stress and cultural norms that inhibit active participation” in class by using an app, Mark-On, to encourage more student questions. This study, although it had similar goals, used technology to minimize the psychological stress of asking questions, while not directly addressing the classroom cultural norms. The study did show, however, that students did have questions that needed to be asked to increase students learning, and, interestingly, by asking questions, students felt more confident to ask further classroom questions. (Jung, Kim, & So, 2016) This result encourages my study into changing the classroom cultural norms by encouraging more quality questions. Another study, Preschoolers' Search for Explanatory Information Within Adult-Child Conversation, looked at why children ask questions. Contrary to the belief among many annoyed adults when confronted with an abundance of questions from a preschooler, The authors found that asking questions is a search for answers, not annoyance! (Frazier, Gelman, & Wellman, 2009) In the middle school, many teachers with their huge content and skill based standards that they need teach, neglect the questions. This may be why Warren Berger found that the numbers of questions that children ask decrease exponentially the longer that the student is in school. (Berger, 2014) Yet, Tony Wagner of Harvard and the Learning Policy Institute states that we in education need to encourage more questions more often (Wagner, 2016). Both of the above studies are focussed on Children ages three to six. I could find no studies of middle school children. To further study questioning and learning, I needed to review college studies. On such study, Improving Learning Through Interventions of Student-Generated Questions and Concept Maps, showed how student learning improved when students were asked to generate at least three questions per week (Berry & Chew, 2008). My review of the literature shows a need to study how to increase the quantity of quality questions that middle school students ask.
6 Comments
Becky
11/27/2016 03:45:50 pm
I really enjoyed reading your blog. I was especially intrigued by "Contrary to the belief among many annoyed adults when confronted with an abundance of questions from a preschooler, The authors found that asking questions is a search for answers, not annoyance! (Frazier, Gelman, & Wellman, 2009) " I have a six year old that asks tons of questions. Although sometimes annoying, that is how she is learning about the world. We need to encourage questions. I feel like school slowly crushes kids curiosity. They stop asking questions because they feel that teachers are only interested in "the answer". I find that teachers often squash questions in the name of time...they have a lot to cover, and students slowly learn that teachers are not interested in their questions. I like your focus of encouraging students to question. Sometimes, adults feel that questions are questioning their authority or expertise. In today's landscape of fraudulent media sources, biased journalism and unethical leadership questioning is a skill that will be vital to education and democracy. Questioning is way for students to have some autonomy over their learning. Thanks for the read!
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Todd
11/27/2016 05:37:38 pm
Becky,
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11/27/2016 05:12:10 pm
Hi Todd,
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Todd
11/27/2016 05:48:21 pm
Karly,
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Zack
11/28/2016 09:17:05 pm
I like how you referenced the Alison King study, it really points to the scientific method being the model for seeking knowledge. This definitely depends on the depth of questioning, and if the students are provided scaffolding on what questions are helpful. Especially with the resources available to all students through technology, almost any question that has been asked can be found online. This comes back to the importance of context, what are the parts of each system, and how to learn about it methodically. We need to open students imaginations and really train them on how to seek out information and answers effectively, PBL does this quite a bit, glad there are models that seem to address curiosity so explicitly.
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12/17/2016 05:46:19 pm
I know this is late coming but I too had a hard time finding some resources that had conducted a study of actual flipped learning. Thinking about your topic how does Bloom's taxonomy play into all of this? Meaning at my school they talk all about Bloom's higher order and then they provide lessons and trainings with what type of questions we are suppose ask our kids and my principal asks us to have them (the students) make up questions. So, im sure there has to be some research done on students using blooms taxonomy for form better quality questions. idk just my thoughts....
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About MeAfter teaching for 20 years, I've decided to pursue a master's degree! Archives
July 2017
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