They say experience is the best teacher. This week, I was engaged in an experience that taught me a great deal about the use of questions with students. It caused me to ask, "How do questions change the way students mentally interact with text? How might questions drive critical thinking vs surface-level comprehension?"
What was the assignment?
As an adult learner, I was given a text and a set of discussion questions. For an 11-page article, I had nine questions. For a six-page article, I was given six questions. At first glance, the questions looked like they caused me to think deeply about the content...but my experience changed as I was reading. I found myself reading the question and then hunting for the answer. It was apparent the questions were written based on specific statements that would appear chronologically throughout the text. While I would never use this scan and locate strategy as a reader in real life, I found myself focused on answering all the questions (because there were quite a few). Sadly, I also found that I really didn't understand the article even though I was able to complete the assignment.
What did I learn?
As teachers, we must always consider how our decisions impact student learning. It might make sense to ask several questions of students because educational traditions allow us to interpret a series of correct answers as, "This student understood the text. This student receives an A." But, in some traditional experiences where students answer a series of questions, it can be argued that students are not truly understanding the content. From the student perspective, my comprehension of the entire text was non-existent. The list of questions, while created with positive intentions, completely impeded my understanding of the more significant conceptual ideas within the text.
If I had been given one or two open-ended questions, I would have approached my reading of the text in an entirely different way. If I had been given one or two questions grounded in the significant concepts, I would have approached my reading of the text in an entirely different way. In the end, I would have developed a richer understanding of the text one grounded in the more enduring, braoder conceptual ideas within the text.
From a student's perspective, a few guiding questions instead of a list of questions would have had a far more significant impact on my learning and conceptual understanding. As teachers, we are continually developing assignments that utilize questions as a tool to assess how students engage with, and understand, text. From a teacher's perspective, ask yourself, "Are my questions causing students to think deeply about the significant concepts OR are my questions created in a way that asks students to locate information to complete the assignment?"
What's the connection to 21st century skills?
In an age where our goal is to embrace the 21st century skills of Information Literacy and Critical Thinking, we must reflect on the creation of our assignments from a student perspective and ask, "Are my students being asked to think deeply about important concepts? Are my students being asked to use facts and details to support their conceptual understanding (claims and evidence)?" The details within text are important, especially when they are used to support rich understanding of more significant ideas and concepts.
