I am most interested in how student engagement can increase by teaching about and defining quality questions in the typical classroom. I know and use some inquiry based lessons in my class, but what about the times when my students are not in an inquiry project? What then?
My research question is, "What are the effects of positive behavior treatment on the quantity of quality student generated questions in the middle school classroom?" I have found very little recent research into this topic. Most research is focused on involving the students in inquiry projects and generating questions through these. There is one researcher from the 1990s and early 2000s who does, however focus here. Her research takes place in a country highlighted in the Darling-Hammond book, Singapore. This researcher is Christine Chin. Although Christine Chin's research is focused on the sciences, I find her insights to be applicable in my social studies classroom as well. She has shown how systematic teaching of quality questioning strategies engages students in a deeper level so that their performance is increased. I look forward to reading more of her work while hoping to find similar work with more recent research.
4 Comments
zachary pasillas
11/1/2016 07:27:32 pm
Your research question reminds me of a an article I found in the March 2015 research by Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education: Social Emotional Learning in high school. Hamedani and Darling-hammond state, “The psychological side of learning is already powerfully interdependent with the academic—what matters is whether schools leverage these connections to educate the “whole child” and provide students with the psychological resources that they need to succeed in school.” (Hamedani, Darling-hammond, 2015). For me this speaks to the importance on Social Emotional Learning, very similar to your area of interest. I also agree, and have found in my own classroom that positive reinforcement goes a long way. If you can set the environment where it's safe to take risks, you can likely get more input on inquiry question creation. I hope this works for your middle school social studies class, I look forward to reading about your updates.
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Kelley Miller
11/2/2016 09:00:27 am
I've been looking a bit into inquiry as well, and I've also found that at least half of the articles I find are centered around science classrooms. Obviously science is a good fit for inquiry, but as an ELA teacher (also of middle school students), the research isn't always applicable to my class. The type of inquiry you use in the humanities, while it shares a great deal with science inquiry, isn't exactly the same. There is definitely a need for more documentation on inquiry in the humanities, so I'm glad you're looking into it.
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Joseph Hall
11/16/2016 08:04:05 pm
I think inquiry is overlooked, not because educators aren't aware of the benefits of it, but because people aren't aware of how effective it is in comparison to writing, reading and answering the questions. The irony is that inquiry can be written, read, discussed, and more importantly contemplated. The essence of interest in a subject is showing signs of curiosity and there's no better way to express curiosity than by asking questions. Class discussion, class inquiry, and class opinions are at the heart of what motivates students to communicate and collaborate.
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12/17/2016 08:23:30 pm
Joe brings up a good point. So you get a lot of questions from your kids? I get questions but a lot of my questions come from them not paying attention to what they are suppose to and they then look dumb asking the same questions over and over. I saw a video on teachertube that I found interesting. The teacher said she was going to give the instructions once and then she had hand signals for the kids and she spoke to the kids and told them she was going to explain one time and they were going to get enough information and they needed to trust themselves with making the correct responses. I know this is not exactly what you are doing your research on but I do find it fascinating. Inquiry do you think that most students inquiries come from lack of confidence? or Maybe i should restate that. Do you think that students do not ask quality questions because they are afraid of not looking dumb?
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About MeAfter teaching for 20 years, I've decided to pursue a master's degree! Archives
July 2017
CategoriesThis is me working on my classwork... usually at night after the heater is off.... sitting long times makes me cold!
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