Dedicating myself to being a lifelong learner.
As educators, professional development is a topic we are constantly talking about. Teachers take on two roles: a teacher and a student. This is because teachers are constantly learning and committing themselves to self-reflection. Why? To grow and develop our professional ideas and practices. In the twenty-first century, professional development is easier than ever with all the resources available to us with the use of technology. Online professional development sites, such as EDUPATH, are excellent tools to promote professional development and individual learning and growth as an educator, student, and human being. Having online tools such as EDUPATH widely available, and free, for educators highly promotes engagement in self-reflection and development in teaching methods. EDUPATH contains a multitude of different kinds of lessons, all with a reasonable time requirement to complete. Tools such as this make it almost too easy for us to not give them a try. Having a variety of engaging, relevant courses on how to be the best educator you can be, for free, for such a small time commitment? Count me in.
For my first experience using EDUPATH, I completed a module titled “Asking the Right Questions to Guide Student Learning.” This lesson took an hour to complete and covered content such as the importance of asking the right questions, the significance of promoting students to ask their own questions, and how to create questions that will help guide student learning in the future. Throughout my college education, I have learned quite a bit about asking leading questions to promote students to think critically for themselves. One experience that immediately comes to mind is learning how to use the spiral technique to teach students to read images. Once I learned this technique of asking leading questions to promote higher thinking and reflection, I never went about reading or teaching a visual text the same. I wanted to know more about how to do this, how to ask the right questions, therefore I thought this lesson was the perfect opportunity to satisfy my curiosity. Something very interesting that I learned while completing this lesson was the concept of asking students before-learning, during-learning, after-learning, and future questions. These four levels of questions help guide students through the learning process and find meaning, significance, and relevance in what they are learning, which in turn promotes students’ motivation. Questions for each level could look similar to this:
Before-Learning: What do you already know about this subject?
During-Learning: What process did you take to come to this conclusion?
After-Learning: What grade would you give yourself on this assignment and why?
Future: If you were to complete this assignment again, what would you do differently?
These levels of questions can also be called backward-looking, inward-looking, outward-looking, and forward-looking. These are four different modes of self-reflection that follow the student through the learning process. Once all levels of questions have been answered, students should come away feeling as though what they learned holds a purpose and will have a toolbox full of questions they can use to improve and monitor their own learning in the future.
Another important concept to keep in mind when asking questions to promote learning is Bloom’s Taxonomy. In an article posted by Washington University, it is stated, “ Ideally, you should combine questions that require “foundational thinking” to assess students’ knowledge and comprehension with questions that require “complex processing” to assess students’ abilities to apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate.” (Asking Questions to Improve Learning - Center for Teaching and Learning, 2021) Asking students questions based on the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy does two things: 1. Promotes self-reflection within the student, and 2. Allows the teacher to assess where each student is at in terms of fully understanding a topic. If a student is stuck on the application level of Bloom’s Taxonomy, for example, the teacher knows where the student is struggling and how to help the student achieve the next level of understanding, which in this case would be analysis.
Asking questions as a tool for learning provides many benefits for both the teacher and the student. In an article discussing these benefits, it is stated,
“Using effective questioning in your classroom brings a host of benefits, as it:
Encourages students to engage with their work and each other.
Helps students to think out loud.
Facilitates learning through active discussion.
Empowers students to feel confident about their ideas.
Improves speaking and listening skills.
Builds critical thinking skills.
Teaches respect for other people’s opinions.
Helps students to clarify their understanding.
Motivates students and develops an interest of a topic.
Allows teachers to check students’ understanding.” (Collier, 2018)
Asking questions might be one of the most powerful tools we possess as educators in facilitating our students’ learning. Not just asking questions, but asking the right ones, helps us better connect with our students, help them achieve higher levels of understanding, and helps everyone in the classroom, both teacher and student, reflect on and commit to learning and self-improvement.
References
Asking Questions to Improve Learning - Center for Teaching and Learning. (2021, March 2). Center for Teaching and Learning. https://ctl.wustl.edu/resources/asking-questions-to-improve-learning/
Collier, E. (2018, December 31). What is Effective Questioning & Why Should I Use it in My... The Hub | High Speed Training; High Speed Training. https://www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/hub/what-is-effective-questioning/