The Art of Questioning

One of the assignments we had during this course was to record ourselves during a lesson with students which focused on questioning. The purpose was for us to become aware of the types of questions we ask, recognizing that all questions are not created equal for driving thinking forward. Bloom’s Taxonomy reminds us that recall and summarizing questions are useful to ensure basic understanding, but don’t push a person to make and defend informed judgements, create new ideas based on prior information, or compare new concepts with previously held beliefs. I knew this when I went into my “questioning” lesson, but I still found it to be incredibly difficult to ask higher level questions on the fly! Looking over the transcription of my interactions with the students, I can easily see where I should have asked an analyzing question instead of a knowledge one. This is a case, I imagine, where practice makes perfect (well, perfect-ish!). Instead of simply bemoaning that it is hard to do, I need to orchestrate questioning periods with students for the specific purpose of practicing my questioning technique. I’ve also noticed that I actually had to go back and carefully examine the various stages of questioning, as I had a misconception that “predicting” was higher on the Taxonomy than it really is. I asked a lot of predicting questions! Those same questions can be improved by asking students to defend their prediction. This provides an evaluation component which definitely requires higher level thinking.

As this is a course on the supervision of instruction, this lesson on the importance of questioning is meant not only for teachers with their students, but also for administrators working with the teachers in their building. Teachers are also constantly learning, and the administrator can play a pivotal role in helping shape that growth. All of the research I have come across on the subject highlights the importance of administrators asking guiding questions which allow the teachers to determine their own needs and potential steps forward. We again had an assignment to simulate this process, and again I found that it is something more easily said than done! I found it challenging to think that I had the perfect solution, but to instead formulate guiding questions that prompted the teacher to be introspective without my input. That’s not to say that I have all the answers...not by a long shot!...but it is human nature to jump in and offer advice when the other person is uncertain. Thoughtful questioning techniques as an administrator mean that jumping in is the opposite of helpful. Instead, I must have faith that the teachers I work with have the ability to recognize their need for growth, and then take the small steps needed to make that growth happen. And of course...they do!