Evidence Base: Inquisitive Classrooms

Are your classrooms full of student led questions or are you the one asking all the questions?

I am getting deeply interested in this notion of 'inquisitive classrooms'. I have suddenly become aware that I am not hearing children ask interesting, engaging questions in their lessons. Where has the intrigue in their own learning and the content of lessons gone? Has it gone or have I just noticed it's never been there?

This MA research, published in summary by the Chartered College of Teaching is immensely interesting... Beth Budden writes many insightful things as she investigates similar questions, including:

'There is a conspicuous absence of pupils’ questions in classrooms paralleled with a powerful presence of those asked by teachers.'

and 

'However, as Alexander (2008, p.15) suggests, British and American classrooms have long since been dominated by a seemingly unnatural ‘question-answer recitation script,’ as opposed to continental classrooms where more time is devoted to dialogue and enquiry. Alexander (2008) also finds that ‘authentic questions’ – questions which the teacher has not ‘prescribed or implied a particular answer’ are rare in British classrooms (Alexander, 2008). Could it be that pupil conceptions of questions in classrooms relate more to testing and checking rather than to genuine mechanisms for learning?'

I am observing lots of lessons with lots of pupil voice present; however, like Budden, I have noticed that the pupil voice is more question/answer with lots of think-pair-share, but students are responding performatively to the right/wrong answer. I don't hear students questioning the content of the lesson. I wonder why?

Budden's article concludes with her reflections on the action research she engaged with. She speaks convincingly of the power of involving her primary school students with the research. She explains she believes that being explicit with them in her goal to have more enquiry based questions is the thing that supported a change in her classroom culture.

My own action, following read it, is to be more explicit with my students. I am going to explain to them my vision for my classroom and why I think this is important. I will see if it makes a difference to their engagement with asking me questions. Will I go as far as keeping a question asking chart to collect some data to test this experiment... I need to wrap my head around that.

It is well worth the 12 minutes read if you are pondering the same questions in your own classroom. 

Are your students asking enquiry based questions?

Has student voice increased or decreased since you started teaching?

What mechanisms do you have for eliciting interesting questions from your students?