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This article was downloaded by: [University of North Carolina] On: 06 October 2014, At: 15:29 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Educational Psychologist Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hedp20 Facilitating Elaborative Learning Through Guided Student-Generated Questioning Alison King Published online: 08 Jun 2010. To cite this article: Alison King (1992) Facilitating Elaborative Learning Through Guided Student-Generated Questioning, Educational Psychologist, 27:1, 111-126, DOI: 10.1207/s15326985ep2701_8 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep2701_8 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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Page 1: Facilitating Elaborative Learning Through Guided Student-Generated Questioning

This article was downloaded by: [University of North Carolina]On: 06 October 2014, At: 15:29Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Educational PsychologistPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hedp20

Facilitating Elaborative Learning Through GuidedStudent-Generated QuestioningAlison KingPublished online: 08 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Alison King (1992) Facilitating Elaborative Learning Through Guided Student-Generated Questioning,Educational Psychologist, 27:1, 111-126, DOI: 10.1207/s15326985ep2701_8

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep2701_8

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable forany losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use ofthe Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: Facilitating Elaborative Learning Through Guided Student-Generated Questioning

EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST, 27(1), 11 1-126 Copyright o 1992, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Facilitating Elaborative Learning Through Guided

Student-Generated Questioning

Alison King College of Education

California State University, San Marcos

A guided learner-generated questioning strategy was designed to prompt learners to elaborate on new material in an effort to facilitate their under- standing of that material. In a series of studies conducted in naturalistic settings, the. relative effectiveness of this strategy was compared with that of several other learning and study strategies for high school and college students learning regular course content presented in classroom lectures. Findings from these studies indicate that the guided questioning strategy facilitated learning by prompting students to generate specific thought-provoking questions pertaining to the material to be learned, and those questions in turn elicited relevant explanations. The characteristics of the questioning strategy that accounts for these effects were the critical-thinking nature of the question prompts and the high degree of learner autonomy within the structure of the strategy. A model of the components and processes of the strategy is included.

According to contemporary models of learning, individuals understand and remember new material best when they elaborate on that material in some manner (see Pressley, McDaniel, Turnure, Wood, & Ahmad, 1987; Pressley et al., 1992, for "elaborative interrogation" and Wittrock's, 1990, model of "generative learning"). Elaboration can take the form of adding details to the information, clarifying an idea, explaining the relationship between two or more of the new concepts, making inferences, visualizing an image of some aspect of the material, applying an analogy relating the new ideas to familiar things, or in some other way associating the new material1 with

Requests for reprints should be sent to Alison King, Associate Professor of Education, College of Education, California State University, San Mwcos, San Marcos, CA 921D96.

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information already known or with past experience. Such elaborative activity makes the new material more meaningful to the learner and therefore easier to understand and remember. However, learners often do not engage in elaboration, particularly with expository material, unless they are prompted to do so (Britton, Van Dusen, Glynn, & Hemphill, 1990; Pressley, Wood, & Woloshyn, 1990; Spires, Donley, & Penrose, 1990), and do not spontaneously activate and use their relevant prior knowledge without prompting (Pickert & Anderson, 1977; Pressley et al., 1987; Pressley et al., 1992). Therefore, an important question is, How can elaborative activity be prompted, and what kind of elaborations are most beneficial?

Self-generated elaborations have been found to be more conducive to learning then elaborations provided by a teacher, textbook or other external source (e.g., Pressley et al., 1987; Wittrock, 1990; Wood, Pressley, & Winne, 1990). Presumably, such personalized elaborations are more mem- orable to the learner because they are more consistent with the learner's own experience and knowledge base. Schema theory suggests that because personal knowledge is already schematized, when new information is related to it (rather than established as a separate schema), it is easier to process and recall. Self-generated elaboration would probably create more links to what is already known and therefore provide more and stronger cues for recall. On the other hand, learners may simply find the activity of engaging in personal elaboration more motivating than the memorization of others' ready-made elaborations, and such motivation may play a role in enhancing recall of the elaboration.

This article presents a procedure for prompting self-generated verbal elaboration. The procedure is a guided student-generated questioning strategy, and it has been used successfully by high school and adult students to help them understand regular course material presented during teacher- led expository instruction. In a series of classroom intervention studies conducted over the past 2 years, the effectiveness of this procedure has been compared with several other learning and study strategies. The results of these studies are presented and discussed in terms of the role that student- generated questioning plays in elaborated learning.

THE GUIDED STUDENT-GENERATED QUESTIONING STRATEGY

In this questioning-answering procedure, students pose and answer their own thought-provoking questions pertaining to the lesson content. To guide them in this process they are provided with a set of generic question stems, such as "What are the strengths and weaknesses of. . .?" and "What do you

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LEARNING THROUGH QUESTIONING 1 13

think causes. . . ?" (adapted from Ryan, 1971). After listening to tlhe lesson presentation, students use these general questions, which are content free, to create their own specific questions relevant to the presented mi%teriall; then they answer those questions fully. Table 1 shows a set of generic question stems used in the guided student-generated questioning strategy. In the context of this strategy, the generic questions function as supports to prompt high-level cognitive activity on the part of the students. Otheir kinds of procedural supports have been used elsewhere to facilitate students' classroom learning in several areas of the curriculum. For example, in the area of problem solving, King's (1991~) "strategic questions" (e.g., "What are we trying to do here?"; "What do we know about the problem so far?"; and "Do we need a different strategy?") were used by students to guide their planning and monitoring activity during problem solving. In the area of reading comprehension, Lyman's (1987) "Think-trix" matrix has been used by students to help them make connections between types of thinkiing;, such as cause-effect, and categories such as story setting, plot, and character. In the area of written composition, Scardamalia, Bereiter, and Steinbach's (1984) "open statements" (e.g., "No one will have thought of. . . ." and "My own feelings about this are. . . .") were used by students to facilitate their planning and reflection during creative writing. Unlike those other procedural supports, which focus on the accomplishment of the concrete task at hand (by stimulating students to think of ideas for solving a

TABLE 1 Generic Question Stems

What is sn new example of . . .? How wouid you use . . . to . . .? What would happen if . . .? What are the strengths and weaknesses of . . .? What do we already know about . . .? How does . . . tie in with what we learned before? Explain why . . .. Explain how . . .. How does . . . affect . . .? What is the meaning of . . .? Why is . . . important? What is the difference between . . . and . . .? How are . . . and . . . similar? What is the best . . ., and why? What are some possible solutions for the problem of . . .? Compare . . . and . . . with regard to . . .. How does . . . effect . . .? What do you think causes . . .? Do you agree or disagree with this statement: . . .? Support you answer.

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particular problem or writing a specific story), the question stems empha- size knowledge building. The stems induce extensive inferencing, generali- zation, and other elaborative activity on the part of students, thereby promoting their understanding of the presented material but also guiding them to build on that material to extend their knowledge well beyond what was presented. This knowledge-building emphasis is facilitated by the requirement that students generate highly elaborated answers to the ques- tions.

Both individual and small group versions of the guided student-generated questioning strategy have been developed (King, 1989, 1991b). In the group version, called Guided Peer Questioning, students listen to the presentation or lecture and then, using the generic question stems, each student work independently to generate two or three questions relevant to the presented material. (For a more detailed description of classroom applications of Guided Peer Questioning, see King, 1990c.) Next, in small cooperative groups, they engage in peer questioning, taking turns posing their questions to each other and answering each other's questions in a reciprocal manner. In the individual (Guided Self-Questioning) version of the guided student- generated questioning strategy, students work alone using the stems to formulate their own questions. They then write answers to those questions, and the answers are shared with either the teacher or their peers.

The question stems are based on the higher levels of Bloom's (1956) taxonomy of thinking - application, analysis, and evaluation - and are designed to prompt students to think critically about and elaborate on presented material. Specifically, the stems are intended to stimulate stu- dents to generate applications (e.g., "How would you use . . . to. . . ?"), develop examples (e.g., "What is a new example of. . . ?"), analyze relationships (e.g., "How does . . . effect. . . ?'3, explain concepts (e.g., "Explain why. . . ."), activate and use relevant prior knowledge and experience (e.g., "How does . . . tie in with what we have learned before?"), make predictions (e.g., "What do you think would happen if. . . ?"), synthesize ideas (e.g., "What are some possible solutions for the problem of. . . ?'3, compare and contrast (e.g., "How are . . . and . . . alike and different?"), and evaluate (e.g., "Which one is the best . . . and why?").

Students have to think critically about the material just to be able to formulate such relevant, thought-provoking questions. Formulating high- level questions based on the presented content forces students to identify the main ideas presented and think about how those ideas relate to each other and to the students' own prior knowledge and experience. Responding to others' (or their own) questions further extends such high-level thinking. When students think about and elaborate on course material in these ways (vs. simply memorizing information as it is presented), they process the ideas more thoroughly and construct extensive cognitive networks con-

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LEARNING THROUGH QUESTIONING 1 15

necting the new ideas together and linking them to what they already know (cf. Mayer's, 1984, internal and external connections). Developling such cognitive representations of the new material facilitates understanding and provides cues for easier recall.

In terms of cognitive processing in general, there are several ways in which these particular question stems may help students to construct effective representations of new material for storage in long-term memory. In particular, using a variety of question stems may induce students to think about the material in different ways and consequently forge more paths connecting their new knowledge with their existing knowledge structures. Questions generated by the stems may also force students to think about the material in specific ways, depending on the form of the stem. For example, questions of the comparison/contrast sort would very likely elicit a specific sort of elaboration quite different from evaluation questions (cf. compar- ison networks vs. argument response networks, Mayer, 1981). The stems may also assist students to focus their questions on particular aspects of the material to be learned and, as a result, help them to give and receive elaborations more specific to that material.

Thus, the generic questions used in this strategy control the quality of the specific questions, which in turn influence student thinking and elabora- tion. More specifically, the high-level generic questions guide students to write thought-provoking questions specific to the material to be learned. Asking and answering those questions induces high-level thinking and elaborated explanation. Such cognitive activity is likely to pronmte the building of accurate and effective representations of the presented material in long-term memory, leading to better comprehension and recall.

EFFECTS OF GUIDED STUDENT-GENERATED QUESTIONING

In two initial studies (King, 1989, 1991b), Guided Self-Questioning and Guided Peer Questioning were compared with discussion and independent review of material presented in lecture format. In each study there wwe four conditions: Guided Self-Questioning, Guided Peer Questioning, unguided small-group discussion, and unguided independent review. In the first study (King, 1989), college students listened to a series of five classroom lectures on topics in educational psychology and after each lecture reviewed that lecture's content while practicing their respective study strategy. Obj~ective and essay tests requiring recall and understanding of the lecture content given immediately after each of the strategy practice sessions revealed that those students who used either Guided Self-Questioning or Guided Peer Questioning significantly improved their lecture comprehension over time;

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and they demonstrated comprehension superior to that of the students who simply discussed the lecture material in small groups or reviewed the lecture independently. In the second study (King, 1991), high school students in the four study strategy conditions learned and practiced their respective strat- egies in conjunction with regular lectures in their ninth-grade honors history class. During a final lecture-study session, students in the two questioning conditions used the question stems to generate high-level questions during the lecture and then engaged in either Guided Self-Questioning or Guided Peer Questioning after the lecture. As in the first experiment, students in the two questioning conditions showed better recall and understanding of the lecture content than did students in the discussion and review conditions.

In both of these studies, the performance of the peer questioners was somewhat better than that of the self-questioners. The group setting of the Guided Peer Questioning Strategy may help to account for this superiority of performance on the part of the peer questioners. For example, it is possible that the self-questioners may have tended to generate questions to which they already had ready-made answers (thus reducing the extent of cognitive processing required), whereas the peer questioners, being required to answer each others' questions, would undoubtedly encounter ones to which they did not already know answers. Furthermore, from a social- cognitive perspective, a group context may be important in facilitating students' learning for several reasons. First, discussion within a peer group often reveals individuals' misconceptions about a topic and exposes gaps in their understanding. Input from peers can help to fill in those gaps and correct misconceptions. Second, students working in a small group of peers are often concerned about being ridiculed for "dumb" behavior (which is not the case when students work individually), and such social pressures may motivate students to ask better thought-provoking questions and provide more elaborated answers. Third, asking and answering high-level questions in a group setting forces students to think about the material in new ways because they are confronted with a variety of (sometimes conflicting) peer perspectives on the to-be-learned content. They must also verbalize their own ideas and defend them. Defending one's position encourages individuals to clarify their own thinking, reconcile conflicting views, relate new concepts to what they already know, and generally integrate the new material with their existing knowledge. Finally, another sociocognitive benefit of the Guided Peer Questioning strategy is that it promotes student-generated explanations.

STUDENT-GENERATED EXPLANATIONS

To respond to a peer's high-level question, the other members of a group often must generate explanations and communicate those explanations to

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LEARNING THROUGH QUESTIONING 1 17

the questioner. A number of recent studies have shown that the prolcess of explaining something to someone else promotes learning (e.g., King, 1990b; Pressley et al., 1992; Webb, 1989). For example, Webb's extensive research on interaction and learning in peer groups indicates that the students who learn the most are those who provide elaborated explanations to jothers in their group. These findings are consistent with both the peer tutoring research, which shows benefits for the tutor as well as the tutee, and Dansereau's (1988) work with cooperative pairs, in which the recadler of presented material learns more than the partner who listens and checks for errors. As Bargh and Schul (1980) pointed out, explaining something to someone else often requires the explainer to think about and present the material in new ways, such as relating it to the questioner's prior knowledge or experience, translating it into terms familiar to the questioner, or generating new examples. Engaging in these cognitive activities forces the explainer to clarify concepts, elaborate on them, reorganize content, or in some manner reconceptualize the material. By requiring students to e:xplain ideas and information to each other, the Guided Peer Questioning strategy promotes those same cognitive activities. Furthermore, asking and an- swering those particular questions with each other would presumably reveal individuals' differing perspectives on ideas and issues and induce them to explain their positions. As Cobb (1988) has pointed out, in the process of attempting to understand each others' ideas and come to agreement on meaning in such ways, individuals continually modify and restructure their own thinking. According to theories of the social construction of howl- edge (e.g., Bearison, 1982; Doise & Mugny, 1979), such conceptual restructuring results in increased understanding.

In a follow-up study (King, 1990b), the verbal interaction occurring among students in the questioning and discussion groups was exmiined in an effort to determine what specific elaborative activities were actually induced by the guided questioning. In particular, the effects of high-level questions were examined to determine whether those questions actually did elicit explanations. Results revealed that the peer-questioning students gave significantly more explanations than did the cliscussion students. (Given Webb's (1989) findings that explanation giving is the type of verbal behavior that promotes achievement in small learning groups, it was not surprising to find that students in the Guided Peer Questioning condition did better than the discussion students on the comprehension posttest. The ques;tioning students also asked more high-level (i.e., critical thinking) questions than did the discussion students. This was not surprising either, because they had been trained to do just that. However, it was also noted that iln the untrained discussion condition very few questions of any sort were asked, resulting in a significant difference between the two groups on total questions asked. Apparently students do not spontaneously ask ]many

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questions during discussion without being forced to do so. From this experiment it was concluded that Guided Peer Questioning does induce students to ask high-level questions and those questions tend to elicit explanations, the kind of elaborative response that has been found to mediate achievement.

THE ROLE OF THE QUESTION STEMS

In this latter study (King, 1990b), the question stems apparently functioned in such a way as to guide students to generate the sort of questions that elicited explanations and other elaborative activity. On the other hand, the questioning students asked a much greater number of questions than did the discussion students; therefore just the process of asking questions in and of itself may have accounted for the differences in elaborative activity between the two groups. Perhaps the question stems are not really a necessary component of this questioning strategy, and simply telling students to ask each other questions and answer each other fully might result in the same peer interaction and learning outcomes.

In order to examine the role of the question stems more precisely, another study was conducted in which the use of the Guided Peer Questioning strategy (with question stems) was compared with an unguided peer- questioning strategy (a no-stems approach) (King, 1990b). On post- treatment lecture comprehension tests, students who used Guided Peer Questioning outperformed those who engaged in unguided peer questioning without the aid of the generic question stems.

As in the earlier studies, the guided questioners' superior comprehension suggests that they processed the lecture material more extensively and there- fore were better able to understand and remember it. Some support for this thinking was found in the kind of verbal interaction the students displayed in their small groups. Analyses of tape recordings of the small-group dis- cussions showed that students in the Guided Peer Questioning groups gave more explanations to each other than did students in the unguided peer- questioning groups. As discussed earlier, providing explanations helps those doing the explaining to clarify and defend their thinking, often leading the explainers to elaborate and modify their own mental representations, at least to some extent (Bargh & Schul, 1980; Cobb, 1988). Thus, the guided ques- tioning strategy, which requires students to explain and justify their thinking, may encourage this sort of reconceptualizing. In fact, in this study the guided questioners did give more explanations than did the unguided questioners, and this suggests that there may have been some degree of cognitive re- structuring on the part of the guided questioners.

A comparison of the students' questioning behavior showed no differ-

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LEARNING THROUGH QUESTIONINlG 1 19

ences between the two groups for total number of questions asked; however, there were striking differences in the kinds of questions asked. The guided questioners asked significantly more critical-thinking questions and fewer recall questions (those that required the responder to simply recall information) than did the unguided questioners. The scarcity of higher level critical-thinking questions asked in the unguided questioning groups suggests that students do not spontaneously generate such hig,h-level questions even when specifically prompted to ask each other questicons.

When the critical-thinking and recall questions were categorized as; either internally oriented (related to ideas within the lecture only) or e~tiernally oriented (specifically accessing the students' prior knowledge or experience), it was clear that the guided questioners asked somewhat more externally oriented questions than did the unguided questioners. It is interesting to note that, although the posttest in this study evaluated only comprehension of material presented within the lecture, the guided questioners, who asked and answered more external questions, performed better on it than did the unguided questioners, whose questioning tended to be more internally oriented. Although the success of these students cannot be attributed to their use of externally oriented questions (because of the confounding of external questions and high-level questions in the guided questioning condition), this finding may suggest that elaborative activity that causes students to relate new information to prior knowledge and experience might improve their memory for that material. This notion is certainly consistent with current views on generative learning (e.g., Pressley et al., 1987; Wittrock, 1990) as well as those on situated cognition (e.g., Seely-Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989).

Together these findings suggest that the question stems are a necessary component in the guided student-generated questioning strategy because they apparently guide the students to ask the kinds of questions that elicit explanatory responses (i.e., critical-thinking questions). Thus, the stems control the quality of the specific questions students generate, which in turn shape their answers to those questions.

THE ROLE OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE IN GUIDED STUDENT-GENERATED QUESTIONING

Obviously, students' prior knowledge plays an important role in elalmated learning. Recent research has shown that the amount and type of prior knowledge a student possesses strongly affect what that student learns (e.g., Chi, Hutchinson, & Robin, 1989; Chi & Koeske, 1983; Gobbo &Chi, 1986; Pearson, Hanson, & Gordon, 1979). In the case of Guided Peer Question- ing, for example, the kinds of elaboration a student is able to generate are

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120 KING

clearly influenced by the knowledge and experiences that student brings to the learning situation. However, as mentioned previously, students often do not spontaneously activate and use their relevant prior knowledge, but must be prompted to do so (Pressley et al., 1987). Therefore, providing students with the kind of question stems (e.g., externally oriented high-level stems) that explicitly prompt them to think about relevant material that they already know should elicit the sort of student-generated elaborations that relate the new material to that prior knowledge.

Although none of the students reported here examined the role of prior knowledge directly, Martin and Pressley (1991) have shown that such acti- vation and use of relevant prior knowledge is the central mechanism ac- counting for fact learning in their "elaborative interrogation" procedure, in which participants are required to answer why questions about to-be-learned facts. In that study, participants in several conditions were asked to answer why questions about facts pertaining to Canadian provinces. The conditions varied in the extent to which they prompted attention to relevant prior knowledge. In one condition participants answered the why questions by searching for information supporting the facts to be learned (i.e., activating information in long-term memory consistent with the fact as stated), whereas in another condition participants answered by searching for information much less related to the fact and perhaps even interfering with it (they tried to explain why facts were unexpected in terms of information about other provinces). Martin and Pressley found that memory for the facts was better in the condition that prompted the most attention to relevant prior knowl- edge. They concluded that the extent to which answering why questions facilitates learning of facts depends on how much the question stimulates the activation and use of prior knowledge that is consistent with the facts to be learned. Although there are important differences between Martin and Pressley's why-question procedure and the guided student-generated ques- tioning strategy (in particular the emphasis on associative fact learning vs. complex thinking and meaningful learning), it seems reasonable to expect that the activation and use of relevant prior knowledge is a central mech- anism in both approaches (see also Pressley et al., 1992).

On the other hand, the differences between these two questioning approaches may shed some light on the kinds of prior knowledge that are relevant (and therefore facilitate learning) in the two contexts. The Martin and Pressley (1991) study pointed out that with fact learning, the kind of prior knowledge that is relevant (and beneficial) is knowledge consistent with the material to be learned. However, this consistent prior knowledge interpretation may not always fit in the case of the guided student-generated questioning strategy. Guided student-generated questioning is not used for learning material in the sense of memorizing it as stated (as in associative fact learning); on the contrary, the strategy was designed to foster mean- ingful learning of complex ideas. Therefore, in true constructivist fashion,

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LEARNING THROUGH QUESTIONING 121

the focus of the strategy is on stimulating students to generate meaning for the material being learned by making inferences, drawing conclusions, and generally elaborating on the material, rather than memorizing it as pre- sented. To do so, students draw heavily on their prior knowledge to make sense of the new material, and they generate connections among the ideas presented and between the new material and prior knowledge. Although a few of the generic question prompts explicitly direct students to activi~te and use prior knowledge that is consistent with the material being learned (e.g., "How does . . . tie in with what we learned before?"), many of the qulestions (e.g., "What do you think would happen if. . . ?") prompt attention to relevant prior knowledge in general, which may often be consistent (or at least compatible) with the material being studied; however, questions such as "How do . . . and . . . differ?" activate relevant prior knowledge that clarifies a distinction or is inconsistent (rather than consistent) with material to be learned. The value of accessing such inconsistent prior knowledge in the guided questioning strategy must not be overlooked. According to constructivist theory (as discussed earlier), deliberately raising suclh incon- sistencies with students may lead to the emergence and resolution of cognitive conflict, resulting in increased understanding. Therefore, al- though accessing prior knowledge that is consistent with the material to be learned is what benefits fact learning, other kinds of relevant prior knowledge may be equally effective in enhancing the kind of meaningful learning emphasized by the guided student-generated questioning strategy.

The role of prior knowledge may be somewhat different for g,roups working together using the guided questioning strategy than for iln indi- vidual working alone. For any learning group, the amount of available prior knowledge is larger than for any individual, and such a pooled knowledge base would presumably lead to elaborations that are both more complete and more accurate than those produced by an individual learner. As discussed previously, in the group context of this questioning strategy, differences in students' background knowledge may give rise to differing perspectives on a particular issue or concept, which may lead to cognitive conflict. Resolving that conflict through discussion may result in th~e social construction of new knowledge. Thus the opportunities to benefit from activation and use of prior knowledge are greater for an individual using the guided student-generated questioning strategy within a group than for that individual working alone.

A MODEL OF THE GUIDED QUESTIONING-ANSWERING PROCESS

Figure 1 depicts the components and processes involved in the guided student-generated questioning strategy. In this model, the high-level generic

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122 KING

I relevant prior knowledge I

4 comprehension 1 and recall

FIGURE 1 Components and processes of the guided student-generated questioning strategy.

questions prompt students to generate high-level specific questions per- taining to the material being learned. Asking and answering these specific questions induces students to engage in high-level thinking (e.g., applica- tion, analysis, and evaluation) and high-level elaboration (e.g., explana- tion). These cognitive activities promote the building of accurate and complete cognitive representations of the material, which in turn enhance comprehension and recall. Throughout this process the high-level nature of the questions activates students' relevant prior knowledge, which they bring to bear first in generating their specific questions and again in generating their elaborated responses (and consequently their cognitive representations of the material).

STUDENT AUTONOMY

An important factor contributing to the success of the guided student- generated questioning strategy might be personal autonomy. The individual student has a great deal of control over the questions that are asked and the answers that are generated. Using the guided questioning strategy may increase feelings of autonomy because students are free to choose which question stems to use. Furthermore, they can create their own specific questions rather than having to respond to teacher-provided questions, which may not match individual students' particular comprehension needs, such as misunderstandings or gaps in prior knowledge. A student's self- generated questions (and therefore the subsequent self-generated elabora- tions) presumably are highly relevant to that student's own comprehension needs. Making these kinds of choices puts students in control of deciding what they already understand, what they don't understand, and what they

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need to study further. Putting students in control of their own learning in such ways has often been found to increase their intrinsic motivation and subsequent achievement (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 1985; King, 1983; Pdlincsar, David, Winn, Stevens, & Brown, 1990). Presumably, use of the guided questioning strategy, which provides so much autonomy for the learner, would tend to promote self-regulated learning.

In addition, as discussed previously, when students generate their own elaborations (rather than being provided elaborations such as specific examples, images, and analogies) those self-generated elaborations are consistent with the individual student's knowledge base and personal experience and are therefore more memorable to that particular student. Furthermore, when students are allowed to generate their own elaborations, the preferred learning styles of individual students very likely affect the form of those elaborations. For example, visual learners might tend to generate images, whereas verbally proficient learners might prefer to construct analogies or list similarities and differences. Because of their level of cognitive development, children may be more likely than adults to generate elaborations that are in the form of concrete everyday exanlples of the to-be-learned material. Thus, when students are free to generate their own elaborations, the forms of an individual's self-generated elaborations are likely to be highly compatible with that learner's existing strategies and memory processes; consequently, those elaborations will be more memora- ble.

In order to assess the importance of learner control in the success of the guided questioning strategy, student-generated peer-questioning was com- pared with peer-questioning with provided questions (King, 1991a). I[n both of these conditions students engaged in guided questioning and responding, as in previous studies, and elaborative activity was guided by questions. However, students in the student-generated questioning condition used the high-level generic question stems to generate their own task-specific clues- tions, whereas those in the provided-questions condition were given siinilar topic-relevant questions that had been generated by students in the !same class during the previous semester while using identical generic question stems. In both conditions, students in small groups posed their questions to their peers and answered each other's questions. Thus, students in both the student-generated questioning condition and those in the provided- questions condition used similar questions to stimulate discussion within their small groups. Comparisons of the student-generated questions (those generated during this study) and the provided questions (those generated the previous semester by other students) showed no differences between the sets of questions with regard to type of questions or level of question. Students who had generated their own questions outperformed their yoked counter- parts on both objective and essay tests sf lecture comprehension. l[t was

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concluded that learner choice in guided questioning may be an important aspect of that strategy.

It should be noted that in both of these conditions questions of some sort were provided. For the student-generated questioning groups, generic questions were provided from which students chose several on which to base their own questions; on the other hand, the provided-questions groups were given fully articulated task-specific questions. Furthermore, although the student-generated questioning groups created their own task-specific ques- tions (based on the generic questions they selected) the ensuing discussion was heavily structured by those generic (provided) questions. This is an example of giving the learner "freedom within structure," a characteristic found in many of the successful learner control treatments (e.g., King, 1983; Palincsar et al., 1990; for a review of this topic, see Thomas, 1980). In contrast, the provided-questions students were given the structure (question) but no freedom of choice with regard to questioning.

Giving students freedom to make these kinds of key decisions during their learning process while simultaneously providing them with the assistance to do so encourages them to be self-directed in their learning and supports them in that endeavor. In this way, the guided student-generated ques- tioning strategy foster self-regulated learning.

CONCLUSIONS

Results of this line of research indicate that use of the guided student- generated questioning strategy induces students to ask thought-provoking questions and generate elaborated explanations; and these verbal behaviors, in turn, lead to improved comprehension. Throughout this process, the high-level nature of the question stems guides students to activate and use their relevant prior knowledge. For learning expository material presented in lecture format, the guided student-generated questioning strategy was found to be superior to discussion, independent review, unguided question- ing, and guided questioning with provided (but similar) questions. Thus, it is concluded that the characteristics of this guided questioning strategy that account for its success in facilitating students' learning are the particular question stems and student autonomy.

It seems clear that, within the guided student-generated questioning strategy, the question stems and student autonomy may work together to create a learning context of freedom within structure. Specifically, although the guided student-generated questioning strategy gives students freedom to create questions and answers relevant to their own learning needs, they are guided by the structure of the stems to create only those questions and answers that facilitate their construction of meaningful and well-elaborated mental representations of the material to be learned.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

An earlier version of this article was presented in the symposium "When Does Elaborative Interrogation Facilitate Learning?" at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Boston, August 1990.

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