LEADING CONVERSATIONS

Types of Questions for Discussions

Vary the cognitive skills your questions call for. Different questions require different levels of thinking…lower-level questions are appropriate for assessing students’ preparation and comprehension or for reviewing and summarizing content. Higher-level questions encourage students to think critically and to solve problems. Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy - a system of ordering thinking skills from lower to higher - has become a classic:

Bloom’s Taxonomy[1]

[2001 – Present]

  • Remembering: Retrieving, recognizing, and recalling relevant knowledge from long-term memory.
  • Understanding: Constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic messages through interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, and explaining.
  • Applying: Using information in a new context to solve a problem, answer a question, perform a task.
  • Analyzing: Breaking material into constituent parts, determining how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose through differentiating, organizing, and attributing.
  • Evaluating: Making judgments based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing.
  • Creating: Putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure through generating, planning, or producing[2].

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I really don’t know what types of questions I should be asking in a discussion…

  • Avoid asking Yes/No questions [a.k.a “Dead End Questions”]
  • Ask questions that don’t require just one answer
  • Ask focused questions
  • Ask questions that require students to demonstrate their understanding
  • Use probing questions
  • Avoid questions that are vague, poorly worded, or unclear [a.k.a “Fuzzy Questions”]

Some typical “ High Mileage” Questions:

1)Playground Questions: Students develop their own themes for exploring material. These questions encourage students to explore, analyze, and interpret course topics or concepts on their own.

For example: “What do you think the author is saying in this particular passage?”

“ What underlying assumptions about the nature of space must this theorist have?”

2)Focal Questions: Students choose one viewpoint from many possible viewpoints and support the view with evidence. In this case, students may present their own or opposing views.

For example: “To what extent is Ivan Illich a victim of his own decisions or of society?”

“Is the society in Brave New World a utopia, a nightmare of moral degeneration, or something between the two?”

3)Brainstorm Questions: Students come up with many ideas on a topic or solutions to a problem.

For example: “How might the public be made to care about ecological imbalances?”

“ What trends starting in the 1960s may have negatively impacted American public education?”

Notes:

Some of the Qualities of Good Dialogue Questions

1)Real questions - not rhetorical, not veiled attacks, not traps. Questions that you do not have the answer to.

2)Clearly stated and focused -they ask a single question, not many questions tied together, and they are understandable.

3) They invite people to find the center, to imagine commonality rather than asking them to take sides. They aim at building understanding rather than stating positions.

4)They bring assumptions into question and ask people to examine power and stereotypes rather than reinforcing current prejudices.

5)They should be framed broadly enough to invite new possibilities, but focused enough to give direction.

6)They should ask people to connect in some personal way: to tell of a time when, to express deeply held values etc.

Notes:

The Process of Developing Good Dialogue Questions in a Group

1Dialogue questions should be created through dialogue in the group with all of the same principles and agreements that apply. In thinking about generating questions about a reading, lecture, event, or movie ask the following questions:

  • What did you notice?
  • What are some of the themes that resonated for you?
  • What are you curious about?
  • What is the difficult dialogue?

2Then, as a group go around and generate possible questions. Let this be a brainstorming at first. Try not to judge too quickly. Allow the questions to play in your mind and see if they work for you. Someone else might want to riff on another person’s question or just create their own to add to the list. After a time, try to consolidate your many questions in to a couple.

3Then test your questions against the criteria that is listed at the bottom of this sheet. If you find that a question you have has elements that limit its dialogic ability see if you can refine and simplify it to make it more dialogic.

4If you are working by yourself to create dialogue questions, follow the same steps.

Some Guidelines for Good Dialogue Questions

Make it personal

Make it broad enough for many possibilities, but focused enough to find direction

What is the deeper issue – is there a question underneath your question?

Make sure they are honest questions, not rhetorical questions.

Be aware of possible assumptions the question has imbedded in it

Make sure you are not asking for a particular answer

Invite many perspectives, not just two.

No “yes or no” questions

If possible, invite possibility, creativity, optimism

Some Questions about your Questions (Adapted from PCP’s power of dialogue)

What work are you asking the question to do? What kind of conversation are you inviting?

Will this invite fresh thinking and feeling? Is it familiar enough to connect but different enough to evoke a new response?

Does this help people see the world as more complex than before?

Does this question help to reveal the cultural givens or the power dynamics at play or are they embedded in the question?

Is this question likely to evoke a sense of hope and creativity or a sense of despair?

Does this foster a possibility for revealing connection or rather isolation?

Does this question feel manipulative in any way?

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[1]Old Version: Pre-2001; New Version: 2001-Present.

[2]Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (eds.). 2001. A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of educational objectives: Complete edition, New York: Longman.