Using Questioning to Guide Student Thinking

Van Zee, E., & Minstrell, J. (1997). Using Questioning to Guide Student Thinking. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 6(2), 227-269. doi: 10.1207/s15327809jls0602_3

Background

Teachers make decisions at a rapid pace while conducting discussions. Questions arise such as what teachers should say to trigger thinking that teachers want their students to be doing.

Aims

The study sought to examine how an experienced Physics teacher (Minstrell) used the ‘reflective toss’ question type during a discussion that involved complex changes in students’ thinking in teacher-student IRE exchanges (Initiation by teacher in the form of a question, followed by a Response by the student(s), followed by an Evaluation by the teacher of the student’s response). A ‘reflective toss’ question type refers to teacher questions that elicit further thinking by catching the meaning of a student’s prior utterance and then throwing the responsibility for thinking further on the topic back to the students.

Sample

The study looked at one teacher and 31 high school students.

Method

The study was positioned as an ethnography of communication, with an audio recording of a class discussion, audio recordings of a series of debriefing sessions over the following two weeks and field notes.

Findings

The findings identified that for the discussion analysed, reflective tosses served three goals:

engaging all students in considering a complex method proposed by one of the students;
beginning the refinement process by clarifying a method discussed earlier; and
evaluating an alternative method.

The authors presented a visualisation of how the questions can shift classroom discussion towards more student-generated discussion to help teachers develop this type of communication in their classrooms. The authors state that, by teachers acknowledging student contributions in a neutral manner, an environment was created where students felt comfortable enough to comment publicly. A subset of goals also surfaced to help students make their meanings clear, consider a variety of views, and monitor the discussion and their own thinking. The process was important in developing reflective practices among students.

Implications

The authors suggest that teachers may be able to change the nature of their classroom discourse by changing the nature of the third turn of an IRE questioning sequence from an evaluation to a reflective toss. The authors suggest that the visualisation of questioning they developed could be used by teachers in professional development workshops.

Original article retrieved from Taylor & Francis.