Questioning skills are fundamental sources of gathering quality information. Some other words for questioning are inquiring, searching, inquisitive and probing which can all be tagged as characteristics of curiosity, the need to know. The art of asking questions as a means to problem solving and decision making has become a necessary requirement in the educational curriculum. Why is questioning important? Why do we need good questioning and listening skills? The importance of questioning skills is limitless as they aid in reforming the way a certain situation is viewed or perceived between two or more individuals. Asking the right questions help to broaden your cognitive senses as well as increase the processing and presentation of larger, complex and significantly intricate set of information. There are so many ways to developing questioning skills but in order develop different levels of questioning skills, it has to come with an insatiable need for information. Always find a viable question in every piece of instruction or information.
In this article, you will learn
- The importance of questions
- How to ask questions to get information
- How to ask effective questions
- Effective questioning for teachers
- The art of effective questioning
- Marzano questioning strategies.
The Art of Questioning.
Questions have been the base of learning for as long as we can remember. The evolution of life, the invention of various instruments, devices, weapons, cures for diseases, machines, and all scientific breakthroughs all came to be by the power of questions that were asked in the past. Your ability to ask quality questions, constructive, and intrinsic questions is an art that can be further developed and nurtured through various means. As children, we started to ask basic questions in which the answers were either a “yes” or “no.” This answer was sufficient then because we hadn’t the capacity to understand anything more complex than that. As we grew, our cognitive and intuitive abilities developed and we can now ask questions that require actual knowledge of the subject matter in order to effectively give quality answers. Questioning skills are essential for decision-making. There are numerous ways and methods to develop your questioning skills, some of which can be found in various articles and books. I have been able to highlight 10 questioning skills you would probably not get from a regular educational institution. They will greatly aid in perfecting your questioning skills. These are;
- Your ability to question the effectiveness, efficiency, or value of specific information. Why do you need this piece of information and what value would be added? You are likely to be more attentive to a particular subject matter if it is of concern to you. Teachers threaten students with tests and this increases their concern for the subject matter because of an impending test that they must prepare for in order to pass. This then requires the students to ask more questions and Listen effectively.
- Inquiring about the genuineness, validity, or legitimacy of a particular piece of information is an effective questioning strategy.
- Some questions or subject matter may be considered trivial. In a lot of cases, some questions become offensive, defensive, obscene, and unprofessional. So asking important questions at school or at the workplace gives you an edge and helps to further analyze information.
- Constructing questions in a manner to create lucidity and to further reduces ambiguity are effective questioning strategy for students especially. Sometimes getting the right answer that hits the nail on the head can be quite tasking, especially for the lack of grammatical representation. Developing your questioning skills can help you gain more clarity on the subject matter.
- The dependence of one piece of information on another or being able to ask questions that bridge the gaps in different random pieces of information in order to create a clearer view of the situation is also great questioning skills. This shows that the person is very attentive to details and has a high level of cognitive intelligence. The questioning skills help to match various independent classifications.
- Synthesis/representation. This particular skill is based entirely on expression. It might be easy to assimilate a particular set of information but the challenge is your ability to express or explain them to another individual verbally. So you can build your questions in such a manner as to be able to synthesize or represent the same answer in your own way.
- Error analysis. This questioning skill is “hyper-cognitive” so to say. It’s not dependent on the just assimilation of details but it also processes those details and uses tools such as logic, facts, emotion etcetera to judge the accuracy of this piece of information and also to be able to reconstruct a follow-up question to tackle the error in reason. This sort of questioning skills helps to determine the level of deviation from fact.
- Sometimes when presented with two similar information or two similar occurrences we tend to link them together as being from the same source of having the same characteristic so we tend to generalize and inference. Good questioning strategies enable you to sieve out generalized applications and those peculiar methods that don’t apply in all cases.
- This genre of questioning skills has to do with human behavior. Being able to question the application of a particular information helps to inform and educate. This is the type of questioning skills that is most applicable in schools. Students are always curious about real life applications of some of the courses they are taught. A lot of which are very practical.
- These are questioning skills which can be referred to as thinking outside the box. This type of question seeks out the inadequacies, imperfection, and constraints in the information, this would help to create a better way or a more effective system
These 10 questioning skills, if well applied would greatly influence critical thinking improves cognitive intelligence and your capacity in asking meaningful, high-quality questions anywhere, anytime.
Questioning skills in the classroom
Educational institutions should teach highly effective questioning strategies using the art of questioning such as the effective one on one questioning. Teachers can also use incentive methods such as tips for asking good questions in order to get the timid students to participate. In teaching questioning skills teachers should use open-ended questioning techniques as well as various types of classroom questioning. Studying some “asking the right questions book” would help the teacher to relate better with the students. It teaches effective questioning techniques for teachers. Teachers can also help students in learning to ask good questions by inculcating activities such as
- Effective questioning skills training
- Training on asking the right questions PDF
- Questioning skills for teachers
- Effective questioning activity
- Making a list of high order questions
These questioning activities for students would increase quality questioning in the classroom.
High order questioning strategies.
High order questioning are questioning skills that are deep and require a lot of analysis and inference while essential/elementary questions are straight forward and direct. High-level questioning requires constructive practices and desires an ability to manipulate the meaning of words to mean something else. Higher level questioning for elementary schools should be encouraged as it helps a student build effective questioning in the classroom. Below are high orders questioning examples;
Essential question- who started the war?
High order question- in starting the war was there a justification for the length of time taken before the surrender.
Essential question- who destroyed the temple?
High order question – could the temple have been saved if such conspiracy was earlier investigated.
Essential question- what is diffusion.
High order – is diffusion affected by hot or cold weather.
Essential question – did he die a poor man.
High order – did his poverty have anything to do with his death.
These are also similar to Socratic questioning CBT examples. They include clarifications, Assumptions, evidence, and perspective.
Marzano levels of questioning.
Robert Marzano, an educational researcher of great repute devised a taxonomy by which teachers could better help students develop their thinking.
Marzano taxonomy stem questions enlighten students on asking the right questions.
This can be further illustrated by the Marzano design question chart and also his published work Robert Marzano 9 instructional strategies. Your asking the right question skills and how to make good questions are the main focus of Marzano higher order Questions. This new taxonomy is made up of 3 systems which are the system of self, meta-cognitive and cognitive. There is also Marzano question stems activity which contains tips on how to guide our decision making and teach how to ask better questions.
In summary developing the right questioning skills significantly increases understanding and should be practiced by modern institutions of learning and teachers as well should be trained on how to monitor and administer such knowledge to their students in order to make them brighter, help them manage information, motivate them through giving them the right attitude towards learning and finally aid them in developing effective questioning skills.
