Муталиева Д.А., Хамза А.

Южно Казахстанский государственный педагогический институт, Казахстан

THE PRACTICAL IMPLEMENTATION OF QUESTIONING IN THE FORMATION OF CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS

Contemporary research methods in education develop learners’ cognitive skills based on learners’ high order of thinking. Critical thinking strategy contributes to this process. From this point of view learners should be taught how to think rather than what to think in an autonomous situation. To achieve these goals critical questioning based learning including judging, reasoning, problem solving, decision making are vital for successful academic and social lives.

A teacher armed with the clearly defined critical thinking development schemata will probably motivate and direct the learners to the targeted goals and aims of teaching and learning. The problem we have today is to inspire teachers to adopt these rules to their teaching methodology and to explain that critical thinking should not be taught separately. It is applicable at every stage and type of discipline, in spite of age and other teaching background. The essence of critical thinking is to achieve the ability to judge an idea/claim based on reliable evidence by determining one’s own criteria. Thus a learner performing high level of thinking is to be prepared for further self - regulated learning and applying the acquired skills in various contexts outside the teaching environment.

The article attempts to discover the practical implementation of critical questioning in the context of foreign language teaching. Questioning has been used as a teaching instrument since ancient times. This tendency has been proved by the term Socratic question derived from the great teacher Socrates, who taught his students by questioning. But what has changed since that time? We still ask a lot of questions and our students still prepare ready-made answer without a deep reflection. In my opinion, this tendency has been resulted from teacher-centered education where teaching was centered on the progress checking and accumulation of theoretical knowledge.

Fortunately, the situation has been reformed by the integration critical thinking development into the teaching processes of various academic disciplines. Previously the knowledge was assessed by the ability to learn and memorize, nowadays teaching is more autonomous, competent based and open to high order thinking. Teachers should instruct students to apply knowledge in real life. In this case I suppose we should change the quality and types of questions to more thought-provoking, critical ones.

As J.T.Dillon (1988) states, teachers should involve students in questioning, and step aside [1]. The teacher is the one who must be a facilitator of high quality questioning and reasoning, he should use questioning in order to stimulate students for further researches, teach them to apply learning material in different contexts.

In this paper, some classroom applications to improve critical thinking skills by appropriate questioning will be presented. To prove the usefulness of high order questioning we take one simple sentence, and try to apply such kind of questions, which belong to critical thinking technique.

First, there are a number of questions not related to critical thinking. It is possible for a learner to answer the questions related to a text without thinking much. If we consider the following example, the questions put, raise only the grammatical competence.

e.g.: The children played in the park.

Questions:

Where are they?

Who played in the park?

Where did the children play?

What did the children do?

The result to be taken out of this is that students answer low-level questions without thinking. What, then, should be done to include critical thinking into classes? We should change the questioning of the problem or situation. In our case we should change the interpretation and presentation of the task and put appropriate questions to motivate reflection. Critical thinking is a disciplined manner of thought a person uses to assess the validity of something, therefore, the statement practice can be suggested for classroom use. The above sentence must be transformed to the statement.

e.g.: Playing in the park is very useful for children.

This statement is relevant to critical thinking teaching, as it may arouse a range of critical questioning samples.

The next, we may interpret six types of Socratic questions even to this simple example, and avoid so-called “dead” questions [2]. Socratic questioning is considered to be the one of the essentials of critical thinking: 

1. Questions for clarification: Why do we say that? How does playing in the park relate to usefulness?

2. Questions that probe assumptions: What could we assume by usefulness for children? How can you verify or disapprove that assumption?

3. Questions that probe reasons and evidence: What would be an example of healthy activity for children? What activity is similar to playing to keep children fit? Do you think that little action is responsible for the lower level of health?

4. Questions about Viewpoints and Perspectives: What would be an alternative to physical training for children? What is another way to look at it? Would you explain why it is necessary or beneficial, and who benefits?

5. Questions that probe implications and consequences: What generalizations can you make? What are the consequences of that assumption? What are you implying ? How does physical activity affect children? How does this statement tie in with what we learned before?

6. Questions about the question: What was the point of this question? Why do you think I asked this question? What does this statement mean? How does this statement apply to everyday life?

From above presented example it has become distinct that critical questioning provides more deep implication and cognitive processing of thinking abilities. By supplying the simplest questioning for a phenomenon, students might be encouraged to produce multiple explanations after a reasonable time to think is given.

Following is the same activity, with a little modified approach, which demands higher level of thinking and deeper understanding. This item to support critical thinking is Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, widely used as an aid for composing critical questioning [3]. Questions using the analysis, synthesis, and evaluation categories seem to work best with the long-time activities. Questions involving knowledge, comprehension, and application work best with the short format activities.

The wording of the question depends on the desired learning skill or level of abstraction. A variety of questions can be used following the model questioning from Bloom's Hierarchy, which provides a guide for wording questions at various levels of abstraction.

Below are listed words from Bloom Hierarchy that can be used to frame questions on the example statement (e.g.: Playing in the park is very useful for children) [4]. A couple of examples of questions follow.

When "Knowledge" level questions are used the target is to recall of facts.

Key Words: what, when, where, define, spell, list, match, name.

1. List the main activities to support children health.

2. What activity protects children immune system?

3. What are the preferable outcomes of this activity?

"Comprehension" level questions aimed at understanding and stating key concepts or main ideas.

Key Words: summarize, rephrase, explain, interpret, compare, contrast, outline, translate.

1. What is the difference between outdoor and indoor games?

2. Draw a Venn diagram outlining the similarities and differences between two kinds of games.

3. Summarize the positive and negative outcomes of playing games.

"Application" level questions apply knowledge in new ways and in novel situations.

Key Words: apply, solve, model, make use of, organize, experiment with, use.

1. Make a model for the best time and place for children activity.

2. Organize a competition for playing games to present the advantages for health.

"Analysis" level questions aim at breaking down information into key components, finding evidence.

Key Words: analyze, find evidence for, examine, inference, assumption, categorize, conclusion, classify, compare, contrast, discover, dissect, inspect, simplify, relationships.

1. What evidence can you suggest to prove the profit of playing games outdoor/indoor?

2. Categorize the benefits of sport activities for children, adults.

3. Find out various international sport activities popular around the world.

"Synthesis" level questions help to combine elements in a novel way, proposing alternate solutions.

Key Words: combine, create, design, develop, build, compile, compose, construct, formulate, imagine, invent, make up, originate, plan, predict, propose, change, improve, adapt, improve, and change.

1. Formulate the list of helpful activities for children.

2. Imagine a new kind of activity popular in future among children.

3. Plan your personal scheme to keep fit.

"Evaluation" level questions serve to make judgments based on accepted standards.

Key Words: criticize, defend, dispute, evaluate, judge, justify, recommend, rule on, agree, appraise, assess.

1. Evaluate the information of the given issue.

2. Make a recommendation for someone who wants to keep fit.

In conclusion, the matter of careful questioning seems rather effective in teaching process. However, there are some other difficulties awaiting both teachers and learners. Questioning itself cannot solve all teaching goals and expectations. While instructing learners, it has been obvious that the high number of questions does not always meet the standard. The fewer we ask ready-made questions for memorizing, and instead put one but challenging question to ponder over, the higher will be the results. The next problem of all teachers is timing. We are always in hurry to instruct more and more, not allowing students to give feedback (not to fail with curriculum, plan). Further is the matter of group members’ respect and attention to each other. Here we also find the common mistake. Students are engaged in their own responses tend not listen to each other. A teacher is the only listener. There is a fashion that if a teacher less talk it means that he is not competent. Unfortunately, it is true in our local context. You must immediately answer all students’ questions, if not, you are considered less intellectual. However, teacher is to talk less but navigate by careful planning a lesson. The last prompt, rather useful, is a matter of writing. Writing can help to organize ideas in one direction, to collect ideas. Writing is a great hand at feedback stage of the lesson. Students having a habit of summarizing and putting down their ideas into correct structure are naturally good speakers too.

Reference:

1. Dillon, J. T. (1988). Questioning and teaching: A manual of practice. New York: Teachers College Press.

2. http://www.ehow.com/info_8238380_six-types-socratic-questions.html

3. http://www.thefullwiki.org/Taxonomy_of_Educational_Objectives

4. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals; B. S. Bloom (Ed.) Susan Fauer Company, Inc. 1956.