“Just who is doing the work?” Some of you know that this is one of Jeff’s favorite catch phrases. I try to ask myself this question before every lesson I teach or workshop I lead.
I need to. Like many other teachers I know, I am often guilty of doing the “heavy lifting” of sorting through content, identifying critical concepts and skills, and thinking how best to present key learning outcomes. And, when I’m done, I endeavor to enthrall (or overwhelm or perhaps bore...) my students (or instructors) with my knowledge, insight, and wisdom. The trouble is, when I do all the work, I can cheat my students out of the often exciting, sometimes frustrating, and always mind-expanding struggle that we call learning. They also need to engage with the outcomes in much the same way as I had, otherwise they are simply parroting what they’ve heard me spout forth. Wisdom indeed! Asking the right kind of questions. We can often inadvertently shut down thinking by defaulting to closed questions in our lessons. I call these “guess what’s in my head?” questions. We often use closed questions to check for listening, confirm understanding, test recall of facts, or gather specific information. Examples might include "What year did World War II end?" or "Who wrote 'Romeo and Juliet'?". These questions have their place in instruction, but they limit critical thinking and stifle discussion and exploration by focusing on recall and regurgitation rather than analysis or interpretation. One way to stimulate thinking, provoke discussion and sustain focused inquiry in our lessons is through the strategic use of open questions. Open questions invite students to think critically, consider multiple perspectives, and engage in problem-solving. As educators we would like our students to develop higher-order thinking skills (analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) and to develop professional judgement. So, just pop in a few good questions, right? Not so fast! Simply committing to use more open questions in our lessons isn’t enough. Good questions–questions that push our students to reflect and respond–don’t simply pop into our heads while we are in the high flight of teaching. So, while we prepare our lecture notes, plan out the necessary breaks, and think about our slides, we also need to rough out questions for our students (and ourselves) to chew on while the lesson is being taught. How can we get the students to connect to the learning, and think their way through? One of the best ways to produce a few juicy questions is to review the learning outcomes and turn them from outcomes into inquiry questions:
Questions play an important role in teaching and learning, but when used ineffectively, they can often shut down thinking instead of opening it up.
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AuthorJeff Kuntz Ph.D. ImagesExcept where indicated, images used in the blog posts are personal photos, images from NorQuest College or images from Pixabay. Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright free images, videos and music. https://pixabay.com/ Archives
March 2024
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