Abstract:
Questioning is one of the most commonly used techniques at the disposal of
teachers during teaching to check students’ level of understanding about the
concepts. Questioning technique assists teachers to communicate them about the
level of understanding of their students. Questions are promoting students’
creativity in classroom interaction. Without higher order, thought provoking
questions, learning become little more than memorization. Questions, if asked
intelligently not only elicit information and develop cognitive thinking processes
but also develop analytical and critical thinking. Perhaps a few studies have been
carried out on this vital issue in the Pakistani classroom situation.
The overall purpose of the proposed study was to investigate questioning leading
to critical thinking in the classrooms setting. It was focused to determine the levels
of questions keeping in view the Bloom’s Taxonomy. The study was also focused
to analyze lower and higher order questions and to explore convergent and
divergent questions at secondary and tertiary levels. The study was an
observational type of the descriptive method. The target population composed of
21965 teachers at Secondary Level and 3000 teachers at Tertiary Level in Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa. Using proportional allocation of population (Walpole, 1968), 176
Secondary School teachers and 24 Tertiary level teachers were observed in their
classrooms during their teaching. Using simple random sample technique, the
study was conducted in districts Peshawar, Kohat, D.I.Khan, Mansehra, Mardan,
Malakand, and Swat. To achieve the objectives of the study, the instrument
“observation guide using Bloom’s Taxonomy” was used. A total of two hundred
observations were made at both the levels. During the observation the researcher
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noted down the questions asked by the teacher and was also audio recorded. The
questions were then categorized on the observation sheet as knowledge,
comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
The study results revealed that teachers practice of asking questions was very
weak, majority of the teachers asked dominantly lower order and convergent
questions at secondary level which could not help to develop the habit of critical
thinking among students at secondary level. There were variations in terms of
classroom time duration and number of asked questions by teachers. The results of
the study showed that no question was asked by teachers in some of the classes at
secondary level. The asked questions were predominantly lower order and
convergent questions with a very low asking ratio and, not encouraging critical
thinking at tertiary level among students. The teachers both at secondary and
tertiary level provided very short wait time to students to respond. There found no
awareness of teachers regarding the positive impact of increasing wait time and
getting divergent answers. The results also concluded that there is no significance
difference between type of teachers’ questions at secondary and tertiary level. The
observations in the study revealed that teachers at secondary and tertiary level
employed almost similar type of questioning technique while teaching in order to
check student’s level of understanding. Of all the questions asked in the study,
lower order and convergent questions elicited the greatest number of responses
from the students. Teachers rarely posed questions at the application, synthesis
and evaluation levels.
Teachers generally preferred to pose simple questions that would accelerate the
teaching learning process and would need little efforts on the part of students to
answer the questions.
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It was recommended that the use of multiple types of questions in the classroom is
crucial for promoting students’ critical thinking. In teaching, it is necessary for the
teachers to plan questions for students learning, as well as for promoting students’
higher level of thinking process.