Questions

Focus

Types and purposes of questions in formal education

Principal Metaphors

Interpretations of the word “question” and opinions on what constitutes a “good question” are tethered to beliefs about the purposes of formal education and underlying conceptions of knowledge. See Dominant Frames for Knowledge for a summary of prominent attitudes and ranges of contemporary metaphors.

Originated

Ancient

Synopsis

Questions are integral to contemporary teaching. Indeed, it might be argued that most learners’ experience of formal education is structured by and around questions – and that, in fact, contrasting conceptions of knowledge, perspectives on learning, and purposes of education might be distinguished according to what sorts of questions that are deemed important. As might be expected, then, many ways of classifying questions have been devised, only a small subset of which are represented in this entry.

Positioning: Categorizing questions according to the relationships among asker, answerer, and information/knowledge

Hans-Georg Gadamer’s offered that there are three basic question types:

  • Hermeneutic Question – a question for which the questioner does not know the answer and is sincere in their desire for a meaningful response. Similar types include:
    • Fertile Question (Yoram Harpaz, 2000s) – a question that supports genuine inquiry – that is, that is focused on complex and relevant issues, that likely have consequential answers, and that are likely involved
  • Rhetorical Question – a question that lacks both a questioner and an answerer – i.e., the person who states it doesn’t expect an answer, and the person who hears it isn’t expected to respond
  • Teacherly Question (Pedagogical Question) – a question that lacks a questioner – i.e., one for which the answer is already known by the person asking. The following are common types of Teacherly Questions:
    • Ignorance Questions – questions that the questioner poses with conscious ignorance of their own knowledge, usually with the intention of being provocative. Examples include deliberately inserting an error, invoking a taboo, and denying an accepted truth.
    • Funnel Questions – a series of prompts intended to model rational and systematic thought by starting with broad matters and “funneling” to a narrower band of considerations
    • Hinge Question(Dylan Wiliam, 2000s) – a question posed at the “hinge” point of a lesson, usually in multiple-choice format, that is designed to afford the teacher a quick sense of what each student knows, doesn’t know, and needs to do next in relation to the topic at hand
    • Probing Question – a follow-up prompt, intended either to glean greater insight into the answerer’s understandings or to support the answerer’s learning. Examples include:
      • Affective Question – a query about the answerer’s emotional state, often used to gauge engagement with the situation at hand
      • Clarifying Question – a prompt requiring the answerer to explicate their intended meaning (e.g., of a word or concept)
      • Critical Awareness Question – a prompt requiring the answerer to be explicit about assumptions, rationales, and other aspects contributing to a response or position
      • Prompting Question – a question that includes cues or clues to assist the answerer in generating a useful response
      • Redirecting Question – an invitation to others present to elaborate an answerer’s response
      • Structuring Question – an open prompt focused on the answerer’s sensemaking, usually intended to reveal aspects of a discussion that need to be reviewed or emphasized
    • Leading Question – a prompt intended to provoke a specific response, often perceived as manipulative
    • Refocusing Question – a prompt intended to remind participants of the focus of discussion or study
    • Socratic Method – a form of dialogue/argument in which one participant asks strategic questions in an attempt to draw out the other’s assumptions and ideas – hoping to reveal inconsistencies, gaps, and/or contradictions in support of more critical understandings
Structure: Categorizing questions according to the format of answers
  • Closed Question (Close-Ended Question; Convergent Question) – a prompt with a narrow and predetermined set of possible responses. Formats include:
    • Fixed Response Question – a question with a predetermined response
      • True/False Question (Yes/No Question) – a prompt comprising a single statement that is identified as either True or False (or either Yes or No)
      • Matching Question – two sets of items, requiring the answerer to create pairs comprising one item from each set
      • Fill-in-the-Blank Question – a phrase or sentence with a missing term, for which there is a narrowly acceptable range of responses
      • Multiple Choice Question – comprising a question (“stem”) and several choices, of which one is the correct/desired answer and the others are “distractors”
    • Rating Question – a question that is answered on a scale. Types include:
      • Likert Scale Question – an opinion-seeking Rating Question for which responses range from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree
      • Semantic Differential Question – a bipolar Rating Question – that is, one posed in terms of a continuum with two extremes (e.g.: Rate “textbook style” according to Traditional [1] to Reform [5].)
      • Stapel Scale Question – a unipolar Rating Question – that is, one focused on a single attribute (e.g.: Rate “textbook clarity” from –3 [Very Poor] to +3 [Very Good].)
    • Short Answer Question – a prompt that demands an answer of several words or a few sentences. When used in formal education, most often, responses to Short Answer Questions are expected include predetermined elements (e.g., What’s “genetic epistemology”?). That’s typically not true of such questions outside of schooling (e.g., What medications are you on? Are there any good restaurants nearby?)
  • Open Question (Open-Ended Question) – a prompt that permits (and, perhaps, invites) different answers, interpretations, and/or strategies – typically involving application of concepts, synthesis of ideas, contextualization of information, and/or some manner of conjecture. Formats include:
    • Divergent Question – an Open Question with no correct or incorrect response that’s usually intended to invite opinions, discussion, and/or debate
    • Essay Question – a complex prompt that invites extended explication of knowledge and demonstration of understanding, typically requiring analyses of situations and/or synthesis of information
Purpose: Categorizing questions according to the reason for asking

(Note: The entries in this section are sequenced according to perceived levels of difficulty and/or complexity.)

  • Informational Question (Factual Question; Recall Question) – a prompt that intended to elicit specific facts or details, which may be either known to the asker (e.g., on a formal test) or not known (e.g., about another’s well-being)
  • Application Question – a prompt to apply a skill or concept, typically for the purpose assessing levels of mastery
  • Process Question – a prompt that requires the answerer to apply, analyze, and/or evaluate a concept or situation. Examples include:
    • Comparison Question – a prompt that invites the answerer to identify similarities and differences across objects, ideas, etc.
    • Inference Question – a prompt that challenges the answerer to move from a set of established facts to a useful generalization or conclusion, typically for assessing depth of understanding
  • Innovative Question – a prompt that relies on, but requires the answerer to go beyond, what has been studied and mastered. Examples include:
    • Evaluation Question (Evaluative Question) – a prompt that invites a value judgment of an idea, person, or situation – based on a synthesis of information, typically intended to inform choices and future decisions
    • Fermi Problem (Fermi Estimate; Fermi Question; Fermi Quiz; Order Estimation; Order-of-Magnitude Estimate, Order-of-Magnitude Problem)(Enrico Fermi, 1930s) – a type of well-defined question that requires one to consider the broad contours of a complex situation and identify appropriate orders of magnitude (vs. accuracy of measurements) for multiple variables with little or no data. (A classic example is “How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?”)
    • Hypothetical Question – a prompt that invites speculation on possible outcomes or future actions
    • Problem-Solving Question (Inquiry Question) – a scenario-based prompt that requires a non-obvious and non-trivial solution, typically used to gauge range of understanding and/or creativity
  • Metacognitive Question – a prompt intended to trigger the answer’s self-awareness. Specific types include:
    • Reflective Question – a question aimed at prompting critical awareness of one’s emergent understandings
Format: Categorizing questions according to how they are structured
  • General Question – a question that’s (1) typically answered Yes or No, (2) usually spoken with rising intonation, and (3) that’s formed by flipping subject and verb of a regular sentence (e.g.: You are listening. → Are you listening?; They speak French. → Do they speak French?; We haven’t seen the video. → Haven’t we seen the video?)
  • Alternative Question (Choice Question) – a question that (1) presents choices that are separated by the word “or” and (2) is usually spoken with rising intonation for the first option(s) and falling intonation for the final option (e.g.: Is that a correspondence discourse or a coherence discourse?)
  • Special Question (WH Question) – a question that (1) includes an interrogative (i.e., who, what/which, where, when, why, or how) and (2) is usually spoken with a falling intonation (e.g.: What’s the website about? How might you define “discourse”?)
  • Disjunctive Question (Question Tags) – a question that (1) comprises an affirmative statement followed by a negative question (or vice versa) and (2) begins with a falling intonation and ends with a rising intonation (e.g., Piaget was a constructivist, wasn’t he? Vygotsky wasn’t a constructivist, was he?)
  • Indirect Question – any of the above question types that is rephrased to sound less blunt or more polite (e.g., How does this site work? → Could you please tell me how this site works?)
Specific Question Typologies

As might be expected. Some commentators have developed models to categorize question types. Examples include:

  • Questioning Toolkit (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a typology of teacher-posed questions. Types include:
    • Clarification Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a question designed to prompt students to interrogate underlying assumptions and arguments
    • Divergent Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a question inviting students to consider topics adjacent to their current focus
    • Elaborating Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a question intended to focus students’ attention onto implicit or unstated meanings
    • Essential Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a question that probes a relevant and consequential issue, often touching on “how” and “why”
    • Hypothetical Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a “what if” type of question intended to prompt students to consider possibilities and relationships
    • Inventive Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a question designed to expand students’ considerations beyond popular ideas and existing habits
    • Irrelevant Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a divergent question intended to deflect students from their immediate focus, typically in the hope of opening other relevant avenues
    • Irreverent Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a deliberately disruptive invitation to students to “think outside the box”
    • Organizing Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a question intended to support student efforts to organize gathered information
    • Planning Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a question intended to support student efforts to organize thinking and structure activities
    • Probing Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a question designed to prompt students to think systematically (e.g., to apply logic, to invoke prior learnings, to test a thought, etc.)
    • Provocative Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a question intended to sow doubt or skepticism among students to prevailing thinking
    • Sorting and Sifting Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a question designed to focus students’ attentions to the relevance of information at hand to the issue under consideration
    • Strategic Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a question intended to add depth to the discussion at hand by inviting students to compare or consider alternatives,
    • Subsidiary Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a “small” question that might contribute and/or lead to more substantial questions
    • Telling Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a fact-seeking question, often used to orient students’ focus within an evidence-based investigation
    • Unanswerable Question (Jamie McKenzie, 1990s) – a question intended to open students’ considerations to potentially unanswerable – but nonetheless consequential – matters
  • Q-Matrix (Weiderhold Question Matrix)  (Chuck Weiderhold, 1990s) – a hierarchical arrangement of 36 question stems, which can be subdivided into three clusters:
    • Literal Questions (Stems 1–12) – information-focused questions, of the sort: What is …? Why do …?
    • Inferential Questions (Stems 13–24) – interpretation-inviting questions, of the sort: What can …? Why should …?
    • Evaluative Questions (Stems 25–36) – value-engaging questions, of the sort: What will …? Who might …?

Commentary

As might be evident from the above categories, there are as many ways of classifying questions as there are reasons for asking them. Other taxonomies that are present in the current literature are based on time frames (e.g., past-, present-, or future-oriented questions), facticity (e.g., queries into subjective experiences or interpretions, versus those concerned with objective truths), tone (e.g., formal versus informal questions), and complexity (e.g., simple questions with straightforward answers versus complex questions that require more in-depth consideration). Further categorization schemes arise from specfic taxonomies of learning or knowledge. (See, e.g., Bloom's Taxonomy, DIKW Pyramid, Learning Pyramid, Levels of Learning Models, Stages of Understanding Models.)

Authors and/or Prominent Influences

Diffuse

Status as a Theory of Learning

Across educational philosophies and teaching practices, there is something resembling a consensus around the suggestion that Questions are an important part of the learning process. Beyond that point of general agreement, however, perspective diverge wildly – around who should be posing questions, what sorts of questions are valuable, and so on.

Status as a Theory of Teaching

Multiple educational researchers and teacher educators have built their careers around designing and categorizing Questions – which is to say, many regard questioning as a vital and necessary site for educational and pedagogical theorizing. However, as might be inferred from the diversity of classification schemes, above, nothing resembling a “general theory” of Questions has yet emerged.

Status as a Scientific Theory

It turns out that there are quite a number of published studies on questions and questioning in the educational literature. As just noted, however, the underlying perspectives on education, teaching, and learning represented across these studies are too diverse – and rarely rendered explicit. Consequently, we might describe the literature as uneven. There are some powerful, theoretically grounded, and empirically sound publications. And there are lots of advice-heavy-but-evidence-light pieces.

Subdiscourses:

  • Affective Question
  • Alternative Question (Choice Question)
  • Application Question
  • Clarification Question
  • Clarifying Question
  • Closed Question (Close-Ended Question; Convergent Question)
  • Comparison Question
  • Critical Awareness Question
  • Disjunctive Question (Question Tags)
  • Divergent Question
  • Elaborating Question
  • Essay Question
  • Essential Question
  • Evaluation Question (Evaluative Question)
  • Fermi Problem (Fermi Estimate; Fermi Question; Fermi Quiz; Order Estimation; Order-of-Magnitude Estimate, Order-of-Magnitude Problem)
  • Fertile Questions
  • Fill-in-the-Blank Question
  • Fixed Response Question
  • Funnel Questions
  • General Question
  • Hermeneutic Question
  • Hinge Question
  • Hypothetical Question
  • Ignorance Questions
  • Indirect Question
  • Inference Question
  • Inferential Questions
  • Informational Question (Factual Question; Recall Question)
  • Innovative Question
  • Inventive Question
  • Irrelevant Question
  • Irreverent Question
  • Leading Question
  • Likert Scale Question
  • Literal Questions
  • Matching Question
  • Metacognitive Question
  • Multiple Choice Question
  • Open Question (Open-Ended Question)
  • Organizing Question
  • Planning Question
  • Probing Question
  • Problem-Solving Question (Inquiry Question)
  • Process Question
  • Prompting Question
  • Provocative Question
  • Q-Matrix (Weiderhold Question Matrix)
  • Questioning Toolkit
  • Rating Question
  • Redirecting Question
  • Reflective Question
  • Refocusing Question
  • Rhetorical Question
  • Semantic Differential Question
  • Short Answer Question
  • Sorting and Sifting Question
  • Special Question (WH Question)
  • Stapel Scale Question
  • Strategic Question
  • Structuring Question
  • Subsidiary Question
  • Teacherly Question (Pedagogical Question)
  • Telling Question
  • True/False Question (Yes/No Question)
  • Unanswerable Question

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Please cite this article as:
Davis, B., & Francis, K. (2024). “Questions” in Discourses on Learning in Education. https://learningdiscourses.com.


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