Contrasting Instructional and Structural Importance: The Seductive Effect of Teacher Questions

Abstract

Two studies were conducted to investigate the nature of teacher questioning and its relationship to what learners consider important to remember when processing exposition. Specifically, we wanted to determine if teachers who are asked to write questions over an expository passage focus those questions on segments of text that have been determined to be of high, medium, or low structural importance. Further, we wanted to compare the questions that teachers ask with those that their students predict they would ask in order to assess students' strategic ability to determine what information is instructionally important. The results of the initial study demonstrated that neither teachers nor their students are highly influenced by structural importance when writing questions. The results generally supported the hypothesis that students are cognizant of what teachers value in text (i.e., instructional importance) and seem guided by this understanding when processing exposition. In Study II, we examined the questioning patterns of three physical science teachers as they developed quizzes and led discussions over a segment in their course textbooks. Results again demonstrated that students are relatively aware of the information that their teachers will test and that this information is not necessarily structurally important. Other similarities and differences between teacher and student questions are discussed and implications for research and practice presented. 20 Journal of Reading BehaviorThe role of interest and importance in text comprehension has become the focus of much research in the past decade (e.g., Anderson, Shirey, Wilson, & Fielding, 1987;Garner, Gillingham, & White, 1989;Hidi & Baird, 1986Hidi, Baird, & Hildyard, 1982;Schank, 1979;Wade & Adams, 1990). Some researchers concerned with interest and text learning have investigated those aspects within the text itself that have captured students' attention and have thus affected comprehension. Schiefele (1991) classifies this dimension of interest as "situational" interest. Because the text is the means by which students' interests are gauged, Hidi (1990) more specifically refers to this dimension as "text-based" interest. One outcome of the research on situational, text-based interest is the realization that readers' attention during text processing is often drawn to information that appears highly interesting but of little structural importance (e.g., Wade & Schraw, 1991). For instance, students reading a passage about Horatio Nelson are much more likely to remember content related to his sexual conquests than his naval ones (Wade & Adams, 1990). Likewise, students reading a passage about Stephen Hawking are more apt to remember information about a wager Hawking made with a colleague than they are to remember anything about his research on Grand Unification Theory (Garner, Alexander, Gillingham, Kulikowich, & Brown, 1991). Because of their effect on text processing, referred to these highly intriguing but relatively unimportant text segments as...

Instructional Approaches to Improving Students' Writing of Compare-Contrast Essays: An Experimental Study

“…While the two showed no interactive effect in this study it seems likely that in longer term interventions students would be more capable of mastering the strategies to a high level and develop the ability to transfer them in a meaningful fashion. We also recommend further investigation of students' domain knowledge (Alexander et al, 1994), interaction with strategy knowledge and use in writing (Sitko, 1998), and effects of high and low knowledge levels (Murphy & Alexander, 2002). Including an objective knowledge measure might clarify the issue of content and structure demands in compare-contrast text.…”

“…Students' domain knowledge may have a different conceptual organization from that of the texts they read, which may influence processing of text information (Alexander, Jetton, Kulikowich, & Woehler, 1994). Learners may not perceive a need to utilize a strategy if they think they already understand the material (Meyer, 1987).…”

“…The number of idea units in each category (High Importance, Medium Importance, Nonessential) was not equal from text to text, in part the result of our decision to use more authentic texts. Our decision is in accord with the increased use of more authentic-type texts in studies (cf., Alexander et al, 1994;Buehl, Alexander, Murphy, & Sperl, 2001;Murphy & Alexander, 2002), as well as meeting criteria for essay questions (Gronlund, 1993). As a result, however, source texts varied on number of ideas at the three levels of importance.…”

Signaling task awareness in think-aloud protocols from students selecting relevant information from text

“…In this way, textual overlap between educational and linguistic main points was avoided. Obviously, educational main points do not correspond per definition to relevant details, but many (real) teachers indeed consider these particular text parts to be important to learn (Alexander et al 1994;Van Hout-Wolters 1990). In school, teachers frequently require children to find facts in text chapters, locate critical details in narratives, and isolate numbers in tables (cf.…”

“…Butler and Cartier 2004). Teachers, however, may disagree about the importance of selecting specific text contents (Alexander et al 1994;Van Hout-Wolters 1997). For example, Van Hout-Wolters asked secondary school teachers to indicate the information they thought to be important for their students.…”