Introduction
This paper aims to explore Questioning Strategies and the Absence of Higher-Order Thinking in the ELT classroom situations through the National Curriculum Framework, 2076 has set 12 goals for school-level education, and one of the goals is to prepare citizens with creative and critical thinking skills, and soft skills. The classroom activities should be directed to the national goals of education and the students are expected to be produced with 21st-century skills. So to promote higher-order thinking skills in the students, the teacher’s questioning techniques can play a very important role. One of the incidents struck me and I am interested in working on this issue.
Once I went to class three as one of the teachers of that period was absent. Social studies was the subject to be taught in that period. The lesson was about a boy and his family. The name of the boy’s grandfather was given in the textbook. I asked some students about the name of the boy’s grandfather, and they could tell. When I asked the names of the students’ grandfathers, they could not tell. I was shocked. Then I went exploring if they did not have a grandfather at home. But I found that they all had grandfathers at home. But they could not tell because the teacher had taught only the text from the textbook but did not do any activities to internalize the knowledge in their own life. If I were to scale the student’s performance, the student would not be able to reach to the application level according to Bloom’s taxonomy. This incident made me curious to study the English Language Teachers’ practices to enhance higher-order thinking.
The questions are classified into different levels based on the level of difficulty. Benjamin Bloom classified them into six categories. They are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The knowledge level questions are lower level and the evaluation questions are the highest level questions. The original work of Bloom et al was taken as a work in progress. Anderson et. al. revised Bloom’s original taxonomy in 2001. The revised version has some terminological changes. They are categorized as remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create (Anderson et al, p.268)
Asking questions in the classroom is a very common activity in the classroom. Maybe most of the classroom activities begin with questions and end with questions. To check students’ concepts and prior knowledge in the particular subject matter, a question is used. After teaching when evaluation is done, again question is used. So it is being continued from the past to the present. What is the quality of the question? How they are asked? What kinds of questions are used? are the main issues here. The general tendency to ask questions is related to comprehension and understanding level. If the students can answer the questions, teachers feel that the objectives are met. However some questions for higher-order thinking skills are not generally used. It is believed they are not measurable. Similarly, teachers are not aware of the value of those questions that enhance higher-order thinking skills. So I wanted to study the frequency of questions and the nature of the question according to Bloom’s taxonomy.
Wiboonwachara L. studied on ‘effects of question-based activities on Critical Thinking’ at Chiang Mai Rajabhat University where 43 undergraduate English major students were participants in the Inferential Reading Course. In his quantitative study, there was significant progress in learners’ Critical Thinking after exposing the students to the questioning technique.
Teachers’ classroom practices can be seen when rigorous involvements are done being emic or attic observers. A single class observation cannot make a judgment of the practice of particular classroom activities. Very few classes are observed in pre-service education courses. For example, campuses and universities run education courses in Nepal. Generally in the practicum phase, supervisors or experts make a visit to the student teachers’ class and do observations. And some pedagogical recommendations are suggested to the practitioners. After teachers are recruited, their classroom activities are not generally evaluated and suggested. So such activities fully depend on teachers’ general behavior and actions though it is crucial to develop higher-order thinking skills.
Similarly, different training programs are run by the governmental institutions related to the education sectors in Nepal. It is assumed that the training programs would make the classroom delivery very effective. Generally, there is no strong monitoring system of the classes after the training. Transferability of training to the classroom is a big question now. There are different kinds of teachers’ positions and all the teachers do not get the opportunities of training as well.
In this kind of diverse situation, we can only get the real picture of the classroom practices if we can observe the situations very closely. So ethnographic study can be one of the key instruments to have a close view of the situation. H. Kamile (2012) finds in his research that the teachers seem to use only 6.12 % of questions on higher-order thinking skills. To find out the practices of English Language teachers in rural settings about the questioning practices in Nepal was the issue of study.
Theoretical Instances for the Research
Social constructionists believe that individuals seek an understanding of the world in which they live and work (Creswell and Creswell, 2018 p.46). Individual understanding and meaning is focused. The setting to interact or observe is natural where the participants have no changes in the routine of daily life and work. It is used for understanding the historical and cultural setting of the participants. Social constructivism indicates a view that social properties are constructed through interactions between people, rather than having a separate existence.’ (Robson, C. et.al. 2016. P.24). Meaning meaning-making process is done in a quite natural setting. It is also called real-world research because the researcher goes to the natural setting where the participants have original feelings, beliefs and practices.
‘Ethnographic designs are qualitative research procedures for describing, analyzing, and interpreting a culture-sharing group’s shared patterns of behavior, beliefs, and language that develop over time. Central to this definition is culture’ (Creswell 2015, p.488). An ethnography provides a description and interpretation of the culture and social structure of a social group (Robson, C. et.al. 2016. P. 156). People in this research are studied for a long period. It tries to grasp the lived experience, and shared patterns and does a descriptive analysis. The researcher aims to observe the activities for a long period of time focusing on the nature and possibility of teachers’ practices on questioning style, scaffolding and promoting higher skills can be different according to the content of the subject as well.
Participants and data collection procedure
Participants in this study were the teachers teaching at primary and lower secondary levels in public schools in Nepal (Manthali Municipality). After obtaining the consent from school administrator and concerned teachers, their classroom activities were observed from the perspective of questioning techniques. The focus of the study was the classroom situations where the opportunities of questioning activities take place, the way the teacher handled the situation. The researcher used a detailed form. The section of the form was divided based on the revision, scene setting, content activities (pre-while-post phase), evaluation phase. Every sections has six common sections based on Bloom’s Taxonomy. Each time, the researcher used the form to collect the data. The researcher focused on the opportunities and frequencies of questions that were used in the classroom while the teaching was going on.
Findings
Based on the observation form, the researcher collected the data from an attic perspective. The researcher was aware of the possible hindrances to the quality of data to be collected in the natural setting as it used to be. The participant teachers were not informed about the areas of observation. So the researcher did not show the presence in the classroom as far as possible. The researcher divided the class into three sections where the teachers could use the questions; questions for revision, questions in input discussion, and questions in evaluation.
Questions for revision
Revision in each lesson is generally done to make the learners link the previous lesson with the activities that is going to be discussed in the class. The most frequent way of revising is by asking questions. The participants of my research were found using questions in this stage. But the questions were not for the revaluation and revising purpose. But they used questions to ask about the homework or problem. Teacher A was found asking the questions to know if the students had done homework only. If the students were confused in any activities, the teacher wrote the answer on the whiteboard. But there was no elicitation, no scaffolding, and no explanation. There was not much difference between Teacher A and Teacher B in the phase of revision. Teacher B collected the exercise book. Then, she used a red pen and tick and cross. There was no verbal feedback either. Neither of the students shared any difficulty. The students were found counting the tick that they received. The teacher did not analyze the students’ difficulty areas either.
Question during Input
When the teacher entered the main activities of the day, I found teacher A explaining the lesson with frequent confirming questions. The most frequent question was ‘Isn’t it?’ and the students were found saying ‘yes’. When students asked the meaning of the difficult words, the teacher directly provided the synonyms with translation. He used the whiteboard for it. There was no opportunity for elicitation and usage of the particular vocabulary. The teacher could simply use his time to let the students think or imagine the situations. Those opportunities were also skipped. His main focus was to go through line by line and explain everything of his own. National Curriculum Framework 2077 talks about the different levels of questions i.e. literal questions, inferential questions, evaluation questions, and reflection questions. The classroom activity of the teacher was preparing students for literal comprehension at most. So this is the issue of how the students will be able to handle the higher-level questions. Similarly, teacher B picked up a student’s book and asked, ‘What I taught yesterday?’ The students showed the page and she started the lesson in her style. It was a teacher-centered class. The classroom activities continued in the same pattern. One of the examples is, ‘…Rajesh is 10 years old. How old? 10 years…’. After the lesson, the activities were done in sequence. The teacher did not go beyond the given exercises. Special focus was given to the questions of lower-level thinking skills. The teacher was sufficiently promoting lower-level skills, especially of remembering and understanding. One more thing she did good was the drill of vocabulary in a loud voice. Students pronounced the words loudly with her.
Question on Evaluation
After the explanation of the lesson, teacher A used the time to make the students understand the follow-up tasks. The teacher again explained every task that had to be done. However, the teacher was not aware of evaluating the students after the lesson. The teacher gave clear instructions in both languages to handle the exercises in written form. For the question of higher level thinking skills, the teacher gave his own opinion and asked the students to skip it. Simply, the students nodded and said, ‘Yes’. Teacher B also did almost the same. When the chapter finished, she read the questions and asked the students to answer. Some students answered correctly and some students tried with some mistakes. Then she did not accept the student for making a mistake. Again there was a drilling process. She said the correct answer and students repeated the answer at two times following her. Even the activities at the end of lesson which was about thinking activities were also completed by the teacher. I did not find any single moment where higher order thinking skill can be fostered. Question answer given at the end of chapter were written or dictated by the teacher and students were supposed to recite for the next day.
Discussion
Teachers’ questioning behavior
A question is an important tool in the classroom. It is widely used and can be fitted in almost all situations. Generally, the class begins with the revision, scene setting. A very common tool is the question. To check the prior knowledge, and to check the concept of the students in the content, the teacher can take the help of the questions. Similarly, in the classroom discussion the content and the question is a tool that helps the teacher to evaluate the progress on the part of student learning and the teacher’s delivery. On the other hand, critical thinking can be fostered by questions. Based on the findings of the observation, the teachers do not ask questions particularly to enhance the higher-order thinking skills. Most of the questions were asked for the confirmation of the answers and statements of the teachers.
Students questioning behavior
Students ask questions to know more about the content. Similarly, if there is some confusion or curiosity, they take the help of the questions. Students questioning behavior depends on the environment created by the teacher. The environment contains motivation of the students, teachers’ reaction to students’ queries. In my observation, students are found asking questioning when they have difficulty in vocabulary and freer response questions. When the teacher directly responded to the students, the students were found silent. And the students were not found to ask higher order thinking questions. One of the reason is that the teacher does not provide the situation to think critically so the students are not found asking such questions.
The nature of the questions
The types of questions lead the discussion and thinking activities. Question ignites the responses that can be literal or evaluation level. If the questions are not used in the classroom setting, it is like a dead class and only teacher-centered activities are done. In my observation, the teacher did not give time to ask questions among the students. The questions asked were just for confirmation that students did not have to use any thinking ability. The situation of asking questions was discouraged by providing answers from teachers’ own perspectives. So students’ questionability is determined by the situations provided by the teachers in the classroom.
Teacher Training Perspective
The teachers who were observed had received in-service training. They have completed the required module of training. They have completed the two phases of TPD training as well. Still, they seem to be unaware of very common activities of the classroom that is questioning activities. The reasons can be the training lacks that content or the teacher is reluctant to use the knowledge in their professional activities.
Conclusion
The researcher got opportunities to study the classroom practices of teachers and students about enhancing higher-order thinking skills. The researcher did not find good questioning activities for higher-order thinking skills development. There is no general practice of scaffolding and elicitation. Only yes or no responses are provided. There can be many reasons. They can be: the teachers’ anxiety about finishing the course book, unaware of the objective of the curriculum, do not knowing the value of critical thinking. Whatever the situation, the students are prevented from exposure to questions to develop higher-order thinking skills. The tendency of teachers in the classroom seems to kill the students’ exposure to higher-order thinking skills. Whatever trainings are conducted, researches are done and recommendations are made, the scenario of teaching is still teacher-centered. Teachers led the class in his/her own style. When students are not given opportunities for thinking, if the tasks are not set for the purpose of developing higher thinking skills, the classroom cannot develop the students’ thinking ability and they are confined to the low level of thinking skill. The manpower produced from such situations can be incompetent in the 21st century.
Reference
Anderson, L. W., Krathwohl, D. R., & Bloom, B. S. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. Longman.
Bloom, B. S. (1956). A taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook I: Cognitive domain. McKay.
Creswell, J. W. (2015). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (5th ed.). Pearson.
Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5th ed.). Sage.
Kamile, H. (2012). The impact of teacher questions on student learning in EFL. Journal of Educational and Instructional Studies, 2(2), 20–25.
Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology. (2020). National curriculum framework for school education in Nepal (2077). Government of Nepal.
Robson, C., & McCartan, K. (2016). Real-world research (4th ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
Wiboonwachara, L. (2019). Effects of question-based activities on critical thinking of 2nd year English major students. Chiang Mai Rajabhat University Research Journal, 10(1), 13–22.