Questioning for Thinking

One of the things that I fre­quently see in class­rooms that I visit is stu­dents who can mechan­i­cally pro­duce an answer to a ques­tion or prob­lem but who don’t really under­stand how or why the process they used works. As teach­ers, we need to focus more on the think­ing process that a stu­dent used to get to an answer rather than on the answer itself.

Cer­tainly there are times when sim­ple recall is impor­tant, and when it’s best to give stu­dents a brief indi­ca­tion of whether their response is cor­rect or incor­rect. But for any ques­tion that involves rea­son­ing, judg­ment, assim­i­la­tion, syn­the­sis, or sim­i­lar higher level think­ing, I like to ask follow-​​up ques­tions like these:

• “Why did you do that?”
• “How did you get that?”
• “How do you know?”
• “What does that number/​fact/​word represent?”
• “What does that mean?”
• “Can you jus­tify your answer?”
• “Can you prove it?”

I ask these regard­less of whether the ini­tial answer is right or wrong. This has sev­eral benefits:

1. I can get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of both the right and wrong answers a stu­dent gives. Was it sim­ply an auto­matic appli­ca­tion of a rote process? Is there valid rea­son­ing going on with sim­ple mis­takes? Was the right answer a guess or a fluke? Does the stu­dents have a mis­con­cep­tion that hap­pens to work right in this instance?
2. Occa­sion­ally a stu­dent will have a good jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for an alter­na­tive answer I hadn’t con­sid­ered, and ask­ing for the ratio­nale saves me from a hasty dismissal.
3. It makes it clear to the stu­dent that they are respon­si­ble for their answers, not me.
4. It cre­ates an atmost­phere that is simul­ta­ne­ously more rig­or­ous and more open. It becomes safer to be “wrong”, because when they can explain their think­ing, we focus on the process instead of the result. It is rare that a stu­dent does noth­ing right in that think­ing process, and so we can begin with “I under­stand where you are com­ing from. This part was really good think­ing, but here is where you got off track and how you can fix it next time.”

So many times I have been in a class­room where a stu­dent gives an incor­rect answer to a ques­tion, the teacher gets a cor­rect answer from another stu­dent (or sim­ply pro­vides it him– or her­self), and moves on. I’ll some­times go to that student’s desk and pri­vately ask for the expla­na­tion. “Show me how you got that,” I’ll say, and they’ll walk me through the process. It rarely takes me more than a few moments to explain the flaw in the think­ing and help the stu­dent understand.

Take the time to ques­tion every­thing your stu­dents do. Cre­ate an envi­ron­ment for think­ing in your classroom.