In the classroom, teachers spend a considerable amount of time asking questions and responding to answers on a daily basis. In fact, teachers can “ask up to several hundred questions per day” (Gall, 1970; 1984 in Alford, Herbert & Frangenheim, 2006). Both the questioning and responding to answers process are fundamental in “arousing interest, summarising major points, encouraging discussion, stimulating higher cognitive level thinking, check on class progress, routines and behaviours, maintain attention and evaluating learning” (Alford et al., 2006). According to Gall (1970, 1984) teachers utilise two main types of questioning: fact and higher cognitive level questions (Alford et al., 2006). Furthermore, approximately 60% of teacher’s questions are fact questions, while the remaining 40% are higher cognitive level (Alford et al., 2006). However, it is recommended teachers dedicate half the total number of questions to higher cognitive level questions into their lessons (Alford et al., 2006).
Benjamin Bloom (1956) devised a taxonomy which categorised the level of abstraction of questions that frequently occur in schools. As there can be a tendency to have too much class time spent on the lower level of Bloom’s taxonomy, it can be used in directing more tasks and questions at the higher level of his ‘thinking’ taxonomy. In the 1990s however, Lorin Anderson led a team of cognitive psychologists, and made significant changes to Bloom’s (1956) previous work. The revised Bloom’s taxonomy consisted of (from lower to higher order questioning and thinking): remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate and design (Alford et al., 2006).
In one particular prac visit, I witnessed a questioning and responding to answers session where the class could have benefited from adopting Bloom’s taxonomy. In this lesson, the students were just being introduced to a unit on electricity. I noticed that mainly all the questions the teacher asked were ‘fact’ questions, and hardly any higher cognitive level questions. After the questioning finished, the teacher wrote factual information about electrical circuits and the students had to then copy the information on the board. When applying this lesson to Bloom’s taxonomy, the level of thinking would have stopped at the lower end of the spectrum: remember. This was an awful shame, as this lesson could have had so much potential. For instance, the teacher could have used a constructivist approach where the students would firstly experiment constructing their own circuit which could have then led to a more higher order cognitive discussion at the end of the lesson. When applying Bloom’s taxonomy then, the level of thinking would have increased to design. Students are not empty vessels and should not be treated as such.
Reference:
Alford, G., Herbert, P. & Frangenheim, E. (2006). Bloom’s Taxonomy Overview. In Innovative Teacher’s Companion, (pp 176-224). ITC Publications.
