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How to ask questions thatpromote high‐level thinkingKieran Egan aa Assistant professor of education , SimonFraserUniversity , Burnaby, British Columbia, CanadaPublished online: 04 Nov 2009.

To cite this article: Kieran Egan (1975) How to ask questions that promote high‐levelthinking, Peabody Journal of Education, 52:3, 228-234, DOI: 10.1080/01619567509538021

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How to Ask Questions thatPromote High-Level Thinking

KIERAN EGAN

Asking questions is one of the commonest teaching techniques. The most educationallyvaluable kinds of questions are those requiring students to extend knowledge, deepen under-standing, or achieve new insights in the process of composing a response. They challenge andmotivate students to make inferences they might otherwise have missed, to analyze conceptsthey might have accepted simplistically, to synthesize ideas they might never have seenconnections between, to render judgments of value leading to wiser decisions, etc. When suchquestions—commonly classed as divergent—are well posed, they help realize some idealsadvocated under the label discovery learning.

The enormous teaching power of well-posed questions we generally recognize, and whatresearch exists indicates they contribute significantly to student achievement.1 Unfortunately,though, most of the literature on question-asking tends to describe and classify, usuallyconcluding with exhortation rather than practical techniques. Over half a century of evidenceof the much greater educational value of divergent (or analysis, synthesis, and evaluative)questions over convergent (or knowledge, comprehension, and application) questions, andexhortations to improve the quality and kind of questions asked has led to no significant shiftfrom a persistent, enormous preponderance of factual recall questions.2 This suggests thenot-surprising conclusion that recognition and detailed classification of a problem coupledwith exhortation, is insufficient to solve it.

Perhaps the main reason such slight progress has occurred, despite a constant literaturetelling teachers to ask different kinds of questions, is that engaging the higher-level intellectualprocesses by questioning is a lot more difficult than realized by many persons doing the telling.Also, of course, the typical way we organize classes militates against exploiting the potentialof divergent questioning. Recent research has suggested that in discourse with a class some

KIERAN EGAN is assistant professor of education, SimonFraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.

1 Francis P. Hunkins, "The Influence of Analysis and Evaluation Questions on Achievement in Sixth Grade SocialStudies," Educational Leadership Research Supplement (January 1968), 326-32.

2 Romiett Stephens, "The Question as a Measure of Efficiency in Instruction," Teachers College Contribution toEducation No. 48 (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1912), and the replica of that study inThomas Howard Adams, "The Development of a Method for Analysis of Questions Asked by Teachers in ClassroomDiscourse," Dissertation Abstracts, 25, 5 (1964), 2809 (Rutgers University), both cited in Caroline J. Gillin et al.,Questioneze (Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1972), p. 1.

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teachers ask an average of 3.5 questions per minute,3 and normally wait only one second for ananswer.4

In this article I want to describe a new technique that offers a means of routinely engaging thehigher-level intellectual processes. But, alas and of course, there is a price. Payment mustcome in the form of time and disturbance to some established routines. It also requires thesacrifice of the smooth informality of typical classroom discussions and introduction of anartificial, slightly cumbersome element. One other thing must be sacrified: the belief thatstudents can achieve high-level, analytic, synthetic, and evaluative thinking by simply chang-ing the kind of questions teachers ask. But still, as this technique enables us to do with onlyminor difficulty something of considerable educational value (hitherto enormously difficult),it seems to me well worth the price.

The technique is called Structural Communication (S.C.). Invented in England about fiveor six years ago, development work continues there and is beginning now in a few centers inNorth America. S.C. contributes to a number of educational activities, including simulationgaming, assessment, and teaching complex subject matter clearly.5 Here I want to concentrateon those features of S.C. that sustain the claims suggested above about its contribution toasking questions that promote high-level thinking.

The Means of Response

As a result of the experimental work preceding development of S .C, researchers andteachers concluded that most students rarely engaged in sophisticated and fruitful thinkingwhen challenged by a divergent question unless also provided with things to think with. Thatis, one of the weaknesses of oral divergent questions seemed to be that they left the student withthe complex, often confusing, task of working out first what would serve as answers, and thenwhich of these ideas, or which combination of them, would offer the best answer. (This in noway leads to an argument for making thinking overly simple for students, but rather suggeststhat our implicit assumption that everyone understands what we mean because we find it clearmisleads us into believing that communication of complex ideas without ambiguity is mucheasier than in fact it is.)

In designing S .C , then, experimenters tried to deal not only with how to pose questions butalso with how to enable students to think most fruitfully in devising their responses. They hadto devise some kind of medium that would reduce the noise in the communication process,remove irrelevant and distracting intellectual activity (like data retrieval and formulation), andfocus precisely on analytic, synthetic, and/or evaluative thinking about the appropriate subjectmatter.

A good response medium should delimit the world from which students would compose theanswer, restrict the relevant vocabulary, reduce the task to appropriate proportions, and allowas much freedom as possible within these restrictions. Teachers needed something that

3 William D. Floyd, "An Analysis of the Oral Questioning Activity in Selected Colorado Primary Classrooms,"Dissertation Abstracts, 22 (1960), 45 (Colorado State University); cited in Questioneze, p. 3.

4 Mary Budd Rowe, "Science, Silence, and Sanctions," Science and Children (March 1969), 11-13; cited inQuestioneze, p. 3.

5 For details of these and other uses of the S.C. method, see Kieran Egan, Structural Communication (Belmont,Calif.: Fearon Publishers, forthcoming).

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provided a sensible middle ground between a too-restricted response medium which wouldinhibit higher-level thinking—such as one finds in linear and branching programs, and atoo-open medium that lacks sufficient guiding limits to the student's inquiry and thus serves todiscourage thinking of any kind—such as one often finds in oral divergent questions, or thosequestions starkly posed at the end of a chapter of a text.

Thus, research designers created the matrix system. The matrix arises out of composition ofa set of divergent questions on main subthemes—in our model, for example, questionsinvestigating Elizabethan sea merchants. (See figure 1.) The matrix is designed so the student

On a unit about the Elizabethan Merchant Adventurers, the set of questions investigating the main subthemes may beabbreviated as follows:

1. What factors favored the growth of the company?2. Construct an argument for the claim that the Merchant Adventurers were not very adventurous.3. Why did the company's fortunes decline during the latter part of the century?4. Why was there a burst of new trading activity after 1551?

Figure 1.

cannot go through it item by item simply ticking off relevant entries according to a yes/nocriterion like a big multiple-choice game. (See figure 2.) Rather, the student builds an adequateresponse by combining items, and the organization does not allow one to be included withoutaffecting all the others. So a single, whole, and coherent response is required, rather than anuncoalesced set of relevant items. A matrix with twenty items allows more than a milliondifferent responses. A lot of these would be incoherent or meaningless, of course, but a largenumber could represent adequate responses to any particular question.

Use of a set of divergent questions directed at the same matrix enhances the process andvitiates any potential comparison with multiple-choice techniques. (See figure 1.) Eachquestion engages the student in viewing the matrix from a different perspective, and compos-ing from its elements different arguments. (See figure 2.)

It may clarify what kind of intellectual tasks the student engages in if I describe briefly ho w thematrix is constructed. We may represent our understanding of a particular body of material in asimplified way by means of a ven diagram. (See figure 3.) The subthemes we perceive in thebody of material are suggested by A, B, C, and D. We then compose our questions to investigateeach subtheme. The body of material we classify carefully into elements of appropriate general-ity and randomly place in the matrix. The challenge set by the questions, then, will engage thestudent in recomposing into some coherent form the set of subthemes, and, in the process, inrebuilding the body of material. Unlike typical divergent questions, which would tend to treat thesubthemes as more or less discrete areas, employment of the matrix as a medium of responseencourages the student to recompose a structural coherence across the whole area. Thusinterconnections between subthemes become as important in building responses to questions asthe factual content itself. The student also discovers clearly that factual content is not fixed andinflexible, but may be combined in different ways to produce different, sometimes opposing,arguments.

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How TO ASK QUESTIONS THAT PROMOTE HIGH-LEVEL THINKING

Increasinglyoften interlopersignored the Mer-chant Adventurersmonopoly andtraded in clothwith the Contin-ent.

1

Henry VIII de-based the coinage.

5

The Merchant Ad-venturers' monop-oly was with- •drawn.

9

In 1485 the cus-toms tax on clothwas only 3 per-cent of thecloth's value.

13

The formation ofthe joint-stockcompanies offereda new meansof financingtrading expedi-tions.

17

English seamenhoped for thegood luck of theSpaniards infinding silverand gold.

2

Some foreigntrading organiza-tions were weak-ening.

6

Some of the newtrading venturesreaped enormousprofits.

10

The price riseaffected theContinent morestrongly thanEngland at first.

14

The Merchant Ad-venturers con-tinually appealedto the Govern-ment for protec-tion against com-petitors.

18

Parliament back-ed up the Mer-chant Adventur-ers' claim tocontrol the saleof cloth abroad.

3

Trade with theContinent wasdisrupted by warsof religion, andthe Spaniards'destruction ofAntwerp.

7

The Merchant Ad-venturers intro-duced "stints."

11

Steps were takento repair thedamage done tothe coinage byHenry VIII.

15

By trying tosell undersizedcloths duringthe boom years,the Merchant Ad-venturers damagedtheir reputationsabroad.

19

Money was avail-able in London,to back riskyexpeditions.

4

Henry VII nego-tiated the"intercursusMagnus."

8

It was "outport"merchants whofirst tradedwith the Americas.

12

The Merchant Ad-venturers had topay heavily forthe privilegesgranted to themin Elizabeth I'sreign.

16

The Merchant Ad-venturers con-trolled nearlyall the clothpassing throughthe port.

20

Figure 2. Response Matrix from which responses to the four questions are composed.

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Figure 3.

Discussion of the Student's ResponseOnce the student responds, a further stage seems required before the questioning cycle is

complete. We want to evaluate the response in some way, to ascertain its appropriateness oradequacy, and if satisfactory, we will want to extend thinking from it. This extension mayassume the form of discussion, a response to the response, or a further question. Because S. C.was designed to engage students in relatively complex thinking, designers decided thatresultant responses should be treated with appropriate complexity. That is, it would beinsufficient to reduce it to a single comment or a single direction. Teachers would need a meansof exploring many ramifications of the response—thus, the discussion guide and sets ofprepared comments. (See figuré 4.)

Question 1

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

I

I

0

O

I

4 and 6 /

11 and 18 )>

3 or 8 )>

13 or 20 y

5 or 14 )>

any three or more of 1,15, 16, 17 and 19

A

B

C

D

E

2,7,

(A, B, C, etc. refer to thecomments which would normallybe printed below)

9, 10, 12, \ p

Figure 4. Discussion Guide

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How TO ASK QUESTIONS THAT PROMOTE HIGH-LEVEL THINKING

Figure 4 offers an example of a discussion guide prepared for question 1 of the MerchantAdventurers unit, a typical classroom unit. We would read as follows: the first test underquestion 1 signifies, "If you included in your response items 4 and 6, then read comment A."The " O " in the third test under question 1 signifies, "If you omitted from your response. . . ."The tests are carefully designed, and revised in light of field-testing, to investigate a variety ofaspects of the student's response, and for each one there is prepared a comment of someappropriate kind.

The first tests we design to catch items the student included that seem irrelevant or to catchthose cases where the student omits apparently essential items. In these instances the preparedcomment will explain why the items were considered either irrelevant or necessary for thatquestion and either suggest reading some material on the topic or reattempting the question.

Thereafter a teacher may pose a variety of tests to see whether the student includedcombinations suggesting a particular bias (then, the teacher could direct the student to acomment outlining reasons for an alternative position); whether the student included a set ofmutually contradictory items; whether he included or omitted items whose presence or absencefrom the response was of interest for other reasons that might be dealt with in comments.

In typical oral discussions, whole areas of most students' thinking are not considered at all.Using a discussion guide, one ensures that all main points for each question are raised, thateach student's response is analyzed in some detail, and that he is directed precisely to thosecomments appropriate for him. That is, a part of fruitful questioning involves an evaluation ofthe results of the question and a further extension of thinking after the initial response.

How to Use the Techniques in ClassroomsClearly the technique cannot be adopted directly to a typical free-flowing oral discussion. If

one wants to benefit from the technique one must adapt the typical oral discussion somewhat toaccommodate it. I will describe below, then, one way of using the technique to promotehigh-level thinking, and, as a result, a more sophisticated discussion.

The teacher may overcome the sticking point about free-flowing oral discussion if he allowsabout an hour to prepare a matrix on the theme prior to class discussion. (With practice,teachers can construct effective matrices in less time. Do not consider it a definitive resume ofthe theme but rather a set of the main facts, concepts, judgments, etc., constituting a sufficientvariety of elements to allow students to think sensibly about it. A typical matrix for an oraldiscussion in class might be a lot simpler than that in figure 1.) With a matrix provided,students may be asked to compose their responses by combining elements provided in thematrix, adding other items if they find the matrix inadequate for saying what they want.

If, then, instead of preparing for a discussion in the usual way, the teacher prepares a matrixand a set of questions, the teacher may employ easily the technique in the classroom. He maywrite the matrix on a blackboard or hand copies to each student. The teacher may ask questionsorally, or he may distribute these on the sheet with the matrix, leaving students time to respondto each question by writing down numbers corresponding to items he would choose incomposing an answer.

A discussion guide, as in figure 4, can help the teacher focus on crucial omissions,inclusions, and combinations significant for proper consideration of theme. It can also assureconsideration of all aspects of the theme and controls and orchestrates a sophisticated discus-sion. Coming to the oral discussion after students have responded to the questions by means of

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the matrix, the teacher may be confident that each student has thought in a relativelysophisticated way about the theme, has considered all its key features from a number ofperspectives, and has committed himself to a particular viewpoint on each.

The teacher may handle the discussion in a number of ways. In the simplest he selects acombination of omissions likely to promote contention and asks: "Who omitted items 6 and 15from question 1?" A proportion of the class will indicate they have, and informed argumentmay begin, focused precisely on a significant aspect of the theme. When this discussionapparently exhausts itself the teacher may ask about other combinations. (This can also be amost fruitful teaching period, due to the efficiency with which the matrix can allow one toconsider quite complex ideas in combination by calling out a few numbers. For example, onemay ask: "Has anyone thought of putting items 3,18, and 20 together for question 4?" thussparking ideas possibly extremely difficult to suggest by other means.) Before engaging indiscussion the teacher may want to compose notes for comments that seem appropriate forparticular inclusions, omissions, and combinations of items.

Conclusion

Using this technique would obviously be more cumbersome than discussing a unit of workwith students in the usual, more or less informal, way. But I think the artificialities of thetechnique pay for themselves again and again. Similarly, most users agree that the matrixsystem introduces an actual restriction on the students' inquiry, but, again, I consider therestriction most fruitful. Just as we tend to overestimate the clarity with which we cancommunicate relatively sophisticated ideas, so we fail to realize how restrictions in scope mayallow great gains in thinking precisely. Rather vague ideas about the value of open "inquiry"can blind us to substantial gains won in moderately extending students' thinking abilities bycontrolled means.

Clearly I am not writing about all questions all the time. The stark divergent question thatrequires the student to organize an essay-type response from a vast mass of material is ideal forcertain purposes, and no doubt multiple-choice and linear program kinds of questions achievedesired goals in other situations. However, I am writing about a large range of questionscommonly asked for pedagogical purposes, and, it seems to me, best used in conjunction witha supplied response medium like that of Structural Communication unit.

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