“…most classrooms are characterised by a dearth of students questions and a deluge of student of teacher questions. Over a whole school year the average-rate of student generated questions is one per student per month. One child, having learned too well by observing his teacher, thought that you had to know the answer before you could ask a question.”

~ quoted from “What’s the point of schools?” by Guy Claxton

One of the key skills required to be an effective learner is to learn how to ask questions. Claxton proposes that students become more effective learners when they “grow more ready, more willing, and more able to ask good questions.” To do so students should be taught how to ask questions and also be made aware of the kinds of questions that should be employed on a given subject of discussion.

According to Claxton, the first dimension, that is to “grow more ready” is concerned with getting students “to be alert to the whole range of occasions when asking certain kinds of questions might be a good idea.” So students who ask questions in one class but don’t in others, may be encouraged to see these opportunities to ask questions in these other classes.

The second dimension, “to grow more willing”, is to help students “to be independent of external support and encouragement” to ask questions. No more prodding is needed and more importantly perhaps, the teacher creates an environment that is safe for questions and the teacher also gives time for questions.

The third dimension is concerned with helping students questions to become richer, more flexible and more sophisticated. It is these questions that will stretch their minds and they should be given plenty of room to practise this.

Teachers can turn to Art da Costa’s levels of questioning (which is based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to teach their students to reach that third dimension of questioning. After familiarizing themselves with the levels of questioning, teachers can model it at work in the classroom (see here for an example).

Bear in mind that the modeling also includes the teachers being ready to say, “I don’t know” without shame. That is a reflection of a teacher who is learning. As Claxton wrote:

“…of course teachers know more about some of those things than young people do…Of course I want my surgeon to be knowledgeable and competent. But I am safer in the hands of a doctor who is still an enthusiastic and unashamed learner than I am with one who closed her mind to new things thirty years ago. And my children are better off in the hands of a teacher who is continually open to wonder and puzzlement than they are being hectored by someone who lacks the honesty and courage to acknowledge a mistake or doubt”

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

- Albert Einstein

How often do teachers allow students to ask questions in school? Not very much actually. Studies have shown that teachers usually do most of the talking. Most teachers don’t even practice “wait time”. A constant droning of the teachers seems to be the norm in most classrooms. Many teachers will disagree but as Betty K. Garner has pointed out in her book, Getting to “Got It”, most teachers are surprised to see that when they have been videotaped, that they are the ones doing most of the talking in the class and they are also the ones who answer their own questions.

The rush to complete the syllabus doesn’t allow for much reflective thinking on the part of the students (and teachers too). Yet getting students to ask questions is an excellent way to gauge how much learning has taken place. As Garner said:

“The true level of understanding is evident in the kinds of questions students ask.”

Teachers therefore should model asking open-ended questions. The concomitant side of this is of course to give students time to think about these questions, and better still, ask further questions about what they are learning. Unfortunately, the only kinds of questions that seem to be prevalent in the classrooms are the kinds that we see being given as part of the homework or written assessments so common in schools of today.

Two “leading” countries in education, Singapore and Finland had a head-to-head of sorts with regards to how they perceive and take care of their teachers. At the Global Education Competitiveness Summit, a representative of the responsible departments for education in the two countries presented their approach to maintaining the well-being of teachers.

A snapshot of Finland

Low Khah Gek, the Director of the Curriculum, Planning and Development Division (CPDD) of the Ministry of Education represented Singapore’s approach while Timo Lankinen, the Director General of the Finnish National Board of Education represented Finland.

It is interesting to note the differences in approach to teacher welfare and teacher selection. According to Low, in Singapore only the top third of the graduating classes are selected to be teachers. She also mentioned the pre-service and in-service training training that teachers in Singapore are expected to undergo, mentioning the hours of training. She also described the career track of those in the education service adding that the jobs of administrators is the “pinnacle of education service” because of their influence over instruction and the school environment. She also talked about the performance bonuses of between one and three months pay that teachers can get.

In contrast, in the Finnish system, Mr Lankinen says that in Finland they only have a “very limited” performance pay. For him what is more pressing is “how to maintain good working conditions in school” as Finland’s leaders feel that such good conditions are essential to luring talented people into the classrooms and retaining them there.

In response to a question about America’s current pre-occupation with NCLB and testing, he said that Finland only tests representative samples of students, primarily as a way to gauge trends in school performance and teachers routinely assess students’ progress in class in order to improve instruction. According to him, to the Finns, “having well-trained and educated teachers” is more important to raising student achievement. He says in Finland, “people dream to be teachers.”

I cannot help feel that in Singapore the approach is to see teacher welfare as just a case of paying them and they will keep quiet about the working conditions. Bear in mind also the civil service code in Singapore of not criticizing the service in public. The Singapore approach is very impersonal. It is all about numbers. Tests are the norm in Singapore schools because the only measure of student achievement are written tests. They didn’t mention what Singapore’s representative means by performance bonus for good instruction. It usually means how well the students do on high stakes examinations. Singapore also harps on numbers in terms of hours of teachers training. It is numbers and numbers and more numbers. From this love affair with numbers you can see that Singapore’s approach is very administrative and seldom from the teaching point of view. It is therefore no surprise that someone high up in the administration says that the job of administrators is the pinnacle of the service.

Maybe another statistic is worth mentioning. According to a Straits Times report, teachers form the highest proportion of patients at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) in Singapore. Of course, this wasn’t mention at the summit.

So which approach do you think is more enlightened?