Tag Archives: questioning

Thinking Skills

Leave a reply

Everybody thinks, at least we hope everybody thinks. However, few are aware of the various skills that can be used in thinking. In this post, we will look at several different skills that can be used when trying to think and understand something. There are at least four different skills that can be used in thinking and they are…

  • Clarification
  • Basis
  • Inference
  • Evaluation

Clarification

Clarification, as you can tell from the name, is focused on making things clear so that decisions can be made. Clarification involves developing questions, analysis, and defining terms.

Clarification lays the groundwork for determining the boundaries in which thinking needs to take place. In many ways, clarification deals with the question of what are you trying to think about.

Basis

Basis involves categorizing the information that has been gathered to think about. At this stage, a person decides if the information they have is a fact, opinion, or just incorrect information.

Another activity at this level is assessing the credibility of the sources of information. For example, facts from experts are considered more credible than the opinions of just anybody.

Inference

Inference involves several different forms of reasoning. These forms of reasoning have been discussed in a previous post. The forms include inductive, deductive, and abductive reasoning.

Whatever form of reasoning is used the overall goal is to develop conclusions based either on principles or examples. As such, the prior forms of thinking are necessary to move to developing inferences. In other words, there must be clarification and basis before inferences.

Evaluation

Evaluation involves developing a criteria upon which to judge the adequacy of whatever decisions have been made. This means assessing the quality of the thought process that has already taken place.

Assessing judgment is near the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy and involves not only having an opinion but basing the opinion on well-developed criteria. This is in no way easy for anybody.

Tips for Developing Thinking Skills

When dealing with students, here are a few suggestions for developing thinking skills.

  • Demonstrate-Providing examples of the thinking process give students something to model.
  • Question-Questioning is an excellent way to develop thinking. Most of the thinking skills above involve extensive questioning.
  • Verbalize thinking-When students are required to think, have them verbalize what they are thinking. This provides insight into what is happening inside their head as well as allows the teacher to analyze what is happening.

Conclusion

Thinking involves questioning. The development of answers to these questions is the fruit of thinking. It is important to determine what one is trying to do in order to allow purposeful thinking to take place.

Questioning Strategies

4 Replies

Asking questions in the classroom is often more of a science than an art. There are core definitions and strategies to questioning that can be used by teachers. Below are just a few thoughts on this approach

Purpose of Questions

First, one purpose behind questioning in the classroom is to assess the understanding of the students. In this way, the questioning serves as a type of formative assessment. Questioning also allows for the expression of thoughts and to maintain the attention of the students.

Types of Questions

There are two types of questions and they are convergent and divergent questions. Convergent questions only have one answer. An example of such a question is “what time is it?” There is no debate over the answer. The student is either right or wrong.

Divergent questions are questions that have many different reasonable answers. An example would be”who is the greatest athlete of all-time?” There are many different possibilities for such a question. To assess the answer it is appropriate to evaluate the criteria the student used to develop their response

Excellent teaching involves using a combination of convergent and divergent questioning. Convergent questions often involve lower level thinking such as recalling, summarizing, and understanding. Divergent questions involve higher level thinking such as applying, synthesizing, and evaluating.

Sequence of Questions

The order of the questions matters when teaching. Questions can go from simple to complex or vice versa. Questions can start broad and then become narrow or the opposite. The decision on the sequencing can be made in relation to the type of reasoning you want the students to do. If you want the students to reason inductively, you would start with convergent questions and move to divergent questions. For deductive reasoning, you would do the opposite. Below is an example of convergent to divergent questioning also known as narrow to broad questioning sequence.

Teacher: What do you see in the picture? (convergent question)
Student: I see a man with lung cancer smoking a cigarette
Teacher: What do you think about smoking after seeing this picture (divergent question)
Student: I think smoking is bad for you because it could cause health problems

Below is an example of divergent to convergent questioning also known as broad to narrow questioning sequence.

Teacher: What do you think about smoking? (divergent question)
Student: I think that it is an expensive habit
Teacher: How much did the average person spend on cigarettes in your country last year? (convergent question)
Student: $800.00

The first example was an example that employed inductive reasoning in which an example was given followed by a general statement. The second example employed deductive reasoning in which a general example led to a specific statement. Both employed questions but for slightly different purposes.