Student questioning is an important learning strategy, but rare in many classrooms, because teachers have concerns if these questions contribute to attaining curricular objectives. Teachers face the challenge of making student questioning effective for learning the curriculum. To address this challenge, a principle-based scenario for guiding effective student questioning was developed and tested for its relevance and practicality in two previous studies. In the scenario, which consists of a sequence of pedagogical activities, mind maps support teachers and students to explore and elaborate upon a core curriculum, by raising, investigating, and exchanging student questions. In this paper, a follow-up study is presented that tested the effectiveness of the scenario on student outcomes in terms of attainment of curricular objectives. Ten teachers and their 231 students participated in the study. Pre-and posttest mind maps were used to measure individual and collective learning outcomes of student questioning. Findings show that a majority of students progressed in learning the core curriculum and elaborated upon it. The findings suggest that visualizing knowledge construction in a shared mind map supports students to learn a core curriculum and to refine their knowledge structures.

Student questioning is an important self-regulative strategy and has multiple benefits for teaching and learning science. Teachers, however, need support to align student questioning to curricular goals. This study tests a prototype of a principle-based scenario that supports teachers in guiding effective student questioning. In the scenario, mind mapping is used to provide both curricular structure as well as support for student questioning. The fidelity of structure and the process of implementation were verified by interviews, video data and a product collection. Results show that the scenario was relevant for teachers, practical in use and effective for guiding student questioning. Results also suggest that shared responsibility for classroom mind maps contributed to more intensive collective knowledge construction.

Although the educational potential of student questions is widely acknowledged, primary school teachers need support to guide them to become effective for learning the curriculum. The aim of this review is to identify which teacher guidance supports effective student questioning. Thirtysix empirical studies on guiding student questioning in primary education were analysed. Four emer-gent themes for teacher guidance of effective student questioning were identified in the data: first, guiding effective student questioning requires confident teachers, who create a supportive class-room culture for question generation and acknowledge the potential in students' initial questions; second, defining a conceptual focus supports teachers in aligning student questions to curricular goals; third, organising collective responsibility for the question process in the classroom fosters effective student questioning; and fourth, teacher guidance is supported when the process of ques-tioning is visualised on a collective platform.