As far as the confusing aspects that I referenced at the beginning, I am mainly just curious to see if this is actually the paper that McComas and Abraham threw together, or if Lisa assembled it on her own. It just feels like a few pieces are incomplete. For instance, I was so excited to reach the "post-secondary" section, only to find that it was literally one sentence. Then there was that long video transcript that I was eager to read the analysis of, only to find that such an analysis does not exist. It seems to me that the teacher in the transcript was being used as an example of "Joe the Failed Question Asker", but still being a newb, I'm not sure and I would have appreciated some discussion on that.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Better Questions
What a wonderfully helpful (and somewhat confusing) article! I suppose at some level I knew about these different levels of questioning, but I had never seen them taxonomically laid out. It certainly made me take a hard look at the types of questions I have been asking in the programs so far. I think that in some instances I have been succeeding in asking the higher level, divergent questions, but as seems to be typical across the teaching landscape, I have definitely reverted to the lower level convergent questions when I feel rushed or if the students just aren't very interactive. I really look forward to applying some of these lessons to my question asking. What a novel idea the "think time" is! It seems so obvious, but apparently the majority of teachers do not utilize it, and I fear that I may be guilty too. Hopefully no more!
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I too was disappointed in the secondary ed. section.
ReplyDeleteI thought more about this article again after teaching 5th graders today. I was wondering if I had asked lots of good questions or not. I asked a lot of general questions trying to figure out where they are in their studies so I could stay on topic and not be too far ahead or below what they are studying. I think I began a lot of questions with "Why do you think such and such is the way it is?" These kids were pretty knowledgeable about a lot of things already and I wonder if I could have taken the questioning even further. I think I may have merely pulled out what they already know rather than cause them to reflect on relationships between all of this knowledge. It would be great if we had our dialogue recorded so we could replay it to really find out if we are doing the things we think we are doing. It is something to keep in mind.
ReplyDeleteI was also thrown off by the post-secondary section, and the appendices that followed. It seemed as the though the paper sort of just stops.
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