Creating Questioning Learners
While I sit here in the warmth of the winter sun, writing report comments about the learners in my collaborative whanau, my mind drifts towards what possible learning opportunities we (my #oresome team of learning coaches in LH6) can design for Term 3. The OrmPS focus will be Curious. A word that I quickly associate with curiosity is questioning and this links to a problem that has been discussed with my fellow LCs several times over the course of Terms 1 and 2. We have noticed that many of our learners are either asking low level questions, or unfortunately, no questions at all - unless specifically encouraged by a learning coach! I'm finding this situation very concerning. Is this a result of having a large number of English Language Learners (ELLs) who are not confident in asking a question in english? Or, after five and six years of schooling, have we (educators) snuffed out the wonder and curiosity that existed in the pre-schooler?
CORE Education's Trevor Bond provides some disappointing statistics and informative suggestions
on how to transform our current learners into active learners who ask questions.
The following data from Bond's video illustrates how questioning decreases over the time that children attend an educational environment:
- 50% prior to going into any form of schooling
- 10% once they are at preschool
- 0.08% when at high school
This means that within the learning environment, a question answerer will only be "sharing what's in their head" whereas a 'question asker' will be "somebody who can think, find information, get the things that they need to solve problems, to think deeper and wider, to see new perspectives".
"If we go on doing what we have always done, we will go on getting what we have always got". (Bond)In other words, we're not content with what we currently have, then we need to redesign what we are currently doing in order to raise the number and quality of questions that our learners are asking.
Provocations
Bond suggests that we should be providing experiences to create stimuli. He says that as result of responding to that stimuli, we will create that moment of cognitive dissonance. This new information can't link to their current schema and questions should start to form in their head.Provocations during iExplore would be an excellent place to start a change. In LH6 we currently enable our learners to create and design their own iExplore, but I have noticed that many, even after being involved in an iExplore 2-3 times, are still not delving deep in the question phase of their iExplore planning. I've also noticed that it's often the same handful of learners who are asking the questions - when either in small, larger or whole habitat groups.
With some additional time given to our weekly design for learning, we could plan for several provocations each week. Rather than 'biting off more than we can chew' and trying to provide provocations to suit 100 learners, I feel that it would would be best to identify a group of learners and 'know' where their current knowledge and interests lie, then design a provocation to 'hook' them in. This might help to ensure that our provocations are linking with their prior knowledge and schema.
Creating Questioners
Bond's research suggests that 80-90% of the children are asking questions that are irrelevant or missing vocab that's needed to make the question work. Question needs to be taught. With this in mind, further development of how to ask questions needs further development. I've requested Bond's 'waka graphic' and I'll also take a closer look at his questioning wiki.
Points to Consider
- What negative signals am I giving to the learners?
- What is my reaction and body language to the questions that learners are asking?
- Make time - don't be so busy that questions are ignored
- Provide a space (Wonder Wall) to 'store' those questions that are not relevant to the current conversation
- Make time to explore and answer questions from the 'Wonder Wall'
- Create an environment where the learners do not have to put their hand up to 'negotiate a right' to ask a question
