The art of raising questions

In the conventional mode of education, still prevalent in our digital age, teachers elucidate a concept and then pose questions to students. Pupils are expected to answer queries after listening to the teacher’s explanation. At times, teachers stop for breath and ask students whether they have any doubts.

The more diligent ones may ask for further clarification but the majority of learners typically remain silent. In the traditional model of education, the onus of asking questions is largely left to educators. Contrary to common practice, a new study indicates that when students generate questions around a concept or lesson, their understanding grows more robust.

In an earlier article in DH Education titled 'How to study smartly', I had specified strategies put forth by cognitive scientists Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel to make studying more effective. These included spacing out revisions, answering problems across chapters, testing yourself instead of simply rereading content and revising multiple times by recalling concepts. In this article, I am going to add one more technique to your arsenal of study skills.

Processing of information

In a paper published in Applied Cognitive Psychology in January 2020, psychologists Mirjam Ebersbach and colleagues find that generating questions is a “powerful learning strategy.” They argue that creating questions involves “deeper processing” of information, which, in turn, promotes recall and the ability to apply knowledge.

While students often answer previous years’ question papers while preparing for exams, they may buttress their learning by designing their own question papers. In fact, if students share their self-generated question papers with each other, they are likely to enhance their grasp of the material. They may also pool in their questions to form a question bank.

So, how do you go about drawing up your own questions? To foster higher-order thinking in students, educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom proposed a taxonomy of thinking skills for teachers to use as a rubric while devising exercises and activities.

While Bloom provided learning objectives for cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains in 1956, schools have focused primarily on the intellectual realm, and use a version that was revised and updated by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl in 2001.

In a blog post, educationist Leslie Owen Wilson explains the different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Revised) that can help students frame questions that entail varying degrees of processing. The first level involves remembering information. It encompasses straightforward questions that require either recognition or recall of information. Examples include defining terms or processes, providing examples of a category, listing facts, identifying features etc.

The second level moves beyond memorisation and targets the understanding of concepts. Instead of merely retrieving information, this level involves constructing meaning by classifying or interpreting data, summarising key points, comparing categories, providing explanations and drawing inferences. To frame these types of questions, you need to comprehend the material.

Analysing material forms the crux of the third level. Here, you need to delve even deeper by breaking down material into its component parts and then see how they relate to one another or to an overall structure.

Questions may include creating models, designing experiments or surveys and making deductions. The penultimate level is about evaluating material. Here you need to able to critique information, provide recommendations or write a comprehensive report. The last level requires creating new knowledge by synthesising parts into something original or generating something novel that has merit.

As a student, you don’t have to frame questions involving all the six levels for every chapter. But you should definitely try to target the first two to three levels of processing for single chapters. At the end of a semester or unit, when you need to learn to synthesise material across chapters, you may develop a few questions targeting the higher-levels. Developing these questions may demand time and effort but you may have to create only one or two as most of them will cover overarching themes.

Educators may also encourage students to devise questions, as part of their teaching, as it forges deeper engagement with the material. In fact, the act of constructing questions may spur students to dig deeper and seek answers beyond the confines of a textbook.