|
|
Volume 8 |
|
Strategies Fostering Thinking |
One objective of science teaching is the development of higher order thinking processes in students. To achieve this objective, teachers need to facilitate communication with and among students. One of the methods for encouraging students to communicate is to ask them questions. Teacher questions can serve a variety of purposes:
Any teacher can create his/her own list of additional functions questions can serve.
Science teachers are concerned about helping students to become critical thinkers, problem solvers, and scientifically literate citizens. If we want students to function as independent thinkers, we need to provide opportunities in our science classes that allow for greater student involvement and initiative and less teacher domination of the learning process. This means a shift in teacher role from that of information-giver to that of a facilitator and guide of the learning process.
Central to this shift in teacher role are the types of questions that teachers ask. Questions that require students to recall data or facts have a different impact on pupils than questions which encourage pupils to process and interpret data in a variety of ways.
The differential effects of various types of teacher questions seem obvious, but what goes on in classrooms? In one review of observational studies of teacher questioning, spanning 1893-1963, it was reported that the central focus of all teacher questioning activity appeared to be the textbook. Teachers appeared to consider their job to be to see that students have studied the text. Similar findings have been reported from observational studies of teachers' questioning styles in science classrooms. Science teachers appear to function primarily at the "recall" level in the questions they ask, whether the science lessons are being taught to elementary students or secondary school pupils.
Why doesn't questioning behavior match educational objectives? One hypothesis is that teachers are not aware of their customary questioning patterns. One way to test this hypothesis is to use a question analysis system. One commonly-used system is that of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives, ranging from knowledge to evaluation. Other systems categorize questions as higher-order or lower-order. Lower-order questions are those of cognitive-memory thinking and higher-order questions involve convergent thinking, divergent thinking, or evaluative thinking.
Blosser developed a category system for questions used in science lessons. In this system, questions are initially classified as:
Questions which are classified as being either Open or Closed can be further classified relative to the type of thinking stimulated: cognitive-memory or convergent for Closed Questions and divergent or evaluation thinking for Open questions. This system has been used successfully with both pre-service and in-service science teachers to help them analyze their questioning behavior.
Investigations have been conducted to see if pre-service teachers could improve their questioning behavior through question analysis. From these studies, it has been concluded that the use of models (audio, video) is helpful, that skill in the use of science processes appears to be related to the complexity of questions asked, that the use of a question category system can be learned, and that the number of divergent and evaluative questions asked in lessons can be increased.