MICHAEL P. CLOUGH
Center for Excellence in Science & Mathematics Education, Iowa State University

Teachers exert the greatest influence on student learning in the classroom through the ways they engage students in the curriculum. However, the complexities of classrooms often cloud the value of important findings regarding the teacher’s role in creating powerful learning experiences for students. Just as Taoism challenges us to, “See simplicity in the complicated” and “Achieve greatness in little things,” effective teaching demands attention to teachers’ interaction patterns and the intricacies that make up those patterns. Foggy notions of teaching (e.g. “facilitator” and “guide at the side”) obscure the importance of teacher behaviors crucial in shaping classroom experiences that foster meaningful and deep learning.

While interesting activities spark students’ curiosity, several teacher behaviors implemented in concert are needed to establish meaningful interactive environments. To begin, intellectually engaging extended-answer questions help stimulate and focus students’ thinking while helping the teacher understand students’ thinking. Extended-answer questions are phrased to avoid “yes/no” responses and begin with words such as “how” and “what” rather than “can,” “did,” or “will.” The expectations created by these subtle changes in phrasing raise the intellectual climate that permeates a classroom and require students to show more of their thinking, thus providing important diagnostic information to teachers that ought to guide future instructional decisions.

Just as important, initiating questions at an appropriate level of difficulty and then scaffolding to more challenging questions is necessary to avoid intimidating students and stifling interaction. Numerous questioning taxonomies exist, but Penick et al. (1996) suggested a questioning strategy particularly suited to science teaching that emphasizes using students’ prior experiences to build relationships, apply knowledge, and create explanations. While effective questioning need not always begin in any one place nor occur in a linear sequence, attending to a question’s level of difficulty and scaffolding between questions are critical for encouraging student participation.

HRASE Questioning Hierarchy Suggested by Penick, Crow and Bonnstetter (1996)

History—questions that relate to students’ experience:
• What did you do . . . ?
• What happened when you . . . ?
• What happened next . . . ?

Relationships—questions that engage students in comparing ideas, activities, data, etc.:
• How does this compare to . . . ?
• What else does this relate to . . . ?
• What do all these procedures have in common?

Application—questions that require students to use knowledge in new contexts:
• How could this idea be used to design . . . ?
• What recognized safety issues could this solution solve?
• What evidence do we have that supports . . . ?

Speculation—questions that require thinking beyond given information:
• What would happen if you changed . . . ?
• What might the next appropriate step be?
• What potential problems may result from . . . ?

Explanation—questions that get at underlying reasons, processes, and mechanisms:
• How does that work?
• How can we account for . . . ?
• What justification could be provided for . . . ?

Unfortunately, teachers who improve their questioning are often frustrated when student interaction does not immediately increase. While questions set an academic mood, they alone do not encourage students to ponder and respond. Thought-provoking questions require time for thinking, yet teachers often wait less than one second after asking a question before moving on in some manner that conveys to students they need not respond. Increasing wait-time I, the amount of time that teachers wait after having asked a question to at least three seconds (significantly more in some situations) along with incorporating wait-time II—the amount of time a teacher waits after a student has answered a question—has been shown to result in the following desirable outcomes (Rowe, 1974a, 1974b, Rowe, 1986):
• length of student responses increases by 700%;
• number of unsolicited, but appropriate, responses increases;
• failures to respond decreases;
• confidence, as reflected in decrease of inflected responses, increases;
• incidence of speculative responses increases;
• more inferences are supported by evidence and logical argument;
• incidence of student-student comparisons of data increases;
• the number of student questions and proposed experiments increases; and
• the incidence of responses from students rated by teachers as relatively slow increases.
Because students are expressing more of their thinking for a teacher to use in further questioning, and because teachers have more time to think, wait-time also helps improve teachers’ questioning.

Yet, effective questioning along with appropriate wait-time is often still insufficient for enticing many students to respond. The need for teachers to recognize the synergy of several teacher behaviors is illustrated by an experience one of my former student teachers had years ago. After a particularly frustrating teaching experience, he was assessing his performance. The discussion turned to his interaction pattern, beginning with the kinds of questions he asked. After agreeing that his questions were well phrased and within students’ ability to answer, I then asked him about his wait-time. His answer was intriguing both in its content and its message about the complexity of understanding teaching. He said, “I used extensive wait-time—wait-time doesn’t work!” My response was to ask how else we might account for students’ reluctance to answer his questions. After some time, the issue of his non-verbal behaviors was raised. What was apparent to the students and me was that his non-verbal behaviors communicated a quite different message than did his extensive wait-time.

An intellectually safe environment is promoted, in part by exhibiting a number of non-verbal behaviors alongside appropriate questions and wait-time. Body language and how long a teacher waits for an answer communicates how open a teacher is to student responses. Teachers who genuinely want student interaction will appropriately incorporate encouraging and expectant non-verbal behaviors such as smiling, proper eye-contact with students all around the classroom, movement around the room and among students, leaning forward when students are speaking, raising eyebrows to show interest, inviting hand-gestures (Bavelas et al., 1995; Roth, 2001), equality of physical status, and wait-time I and II.

However, even more is required for promoting and maintaining student interaction. Carefully listening to students and sensitively responding to what they say is imperative for creating an intellectually safe environment that encourages students to share their thinking. Rather than evaluating student responses, teachers should encourage interaction by acknowledging student ideas, writing students’ ideas on the board, using student ideas as a focus for further instruction, asking students to elaborate, and asking for the implications of proposed ideas. This does not mean that all student answers are accepted as correct. Instead, by using student ideas for further thinking and discussion, the focus of the discussion moves from a sole concern for right answers to reasoning and justification for ideas (correct or incorrect), and in the process, students often find errors in substance and logic that, with effective teacher questioning, lead them to revise their thinking.

I refer to the synergy that results from effective questioning, positive non-verbals, listening, wait-time, and responding that further engages students as the central core of effective teaching practices. The importance of these behaviors is that they are the essential “tools” teachers always have at that their disposal for encouraging dialogue, understanding students’ thinking, promoting student understanding of content, and advancing all important goals for science education. Moreover, it emphasizes that teaching is, above all else, an activity centered on human interaction. It rightfully places the teacher together with students as the focus of education and education reform.

Action Plan for Improving Teacher Behaviors

(1) Place posters in the back of the room to remind you what you are trying to improve. When teaching you will see the posters and be prompted in positive ways.
• One poster might contain questioning prompts such as “How…?”, “What…?”, “Why…?”, “To what extent…?”.
• Another poster might state, “WAIT for students to respond”.
• Another possibility might be a poster that states, “Use students’ ideas rather than affirming or rejecting them!”

(2) Placed three or four well-phrased questions on a 3 by 5 note card and use these at appropriate times in the lesson.

(3) Rewrite all poorly phrased textbook and worksheet questions. This effort will, over time, improve your ability to ask more effective questions when in the act of teaching.

(4) Audiotape yourself teaching and listen to 10-15 minutes of interaction as you drive to and from work. This will make you far more aware of what you are actually doing in the classroom, and this awareness will cause you to behave differently when teaching.

References

Bavelas, J.B., Chovil, N., Coates, L., & Roe, L. (1995). Gestures specialized for dialogue. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 394-405.
Penick, J.E., Crow, L.W., & Bonnstetter, R.J. (1996). Questions are the answer: A logical questioning strategy for any topic. The Science Teacher, 63, 27-29.
Roth, W.M. (2001). Gestures: Their role in teaching and learning. Review of Educational Research, 71, 365-392.
Rowe, M.B. (1974a). Wait-time and rewards as instructional variables, their influence on language, logic, and fate control: Part I—wait-time. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 11, 81-94.
Rowe, M.B. (1974b). Relation of wait-time and rewards to the development of language, logic, and fate control: Part II—rewards. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 11, 291-308.
Rowe, M.B. (1986). Wait-time: Slowing down may be a way of speeding up. Journal of Teacher Education, 37, 43-50.