TEACHERS AS QUESTIONERS
STUDENTS AS QUESTIONERS
Questions and questioning may well be the most powerful tool we have for teaching and learning.
Teachers ask good questions – they are well trained to do just that. But when left to their own devices, do they ask a good range of questions and do they develop learning activities that will see students engaging in a balanced range of thinking tasks?
As McKenzie (2000) suggests,
“smart questions are essential technology for those who venture onto the information highway. Without strong questioning skills, you are just a passenger on someone else’s tour bus. You may be on the highway, but someone else is doing the driving.”
These workshops will look at the two sides of the questioning coin as they:
* challenge teachers at all levels of schooling to examine their questioning skills
* demonstrate the need for structures to provide a balanced range of questions and activities that will evoke qualitatively different forms of thinking.
* introduce the recently revised Bloom’s Taxonomy and Question Mapping – a simple tool that sees students themselves developing questions that will evoke different forms of thinking
* suggest other strategies that will enhance the ability of all students in developing their own questions for worthwhile investigations.
Teachers as Questioners
Students as Questioners
