Improving Chinese junior high school students’ ability to ask critical questions

Abstract

The present study explores ways to enhance students’ question‐asking ability (i.e., the ability to ask critical questions), which is the premise of scientific inquiry and a precondition for effective science teaching. A survey of junior high school students in Zhejiang province in China showed that students’ questioning behavior was not well developed and that their ability and willingness to question authority were weak. These results are consistent with an educational culture that dictates that textbooks and science teachers are always correct and cannot be questioned. The intervention involved several designed cases that included the explicit teaching of questioning strategies and ample opportunities to ask questions for inquiry and question card use. After the intervention, a dependent t‐test of several dimensions was conducted, the students’ question‐asking consciousness and question quality were compared, and the frequency distribution of different levels of questions was analyzed and compared. The development of question‐asking ability was further identified in the interviews. The efficacy and implications of the treatment for enhancing the critical question‐asking ability of middle‐school students in Chinese science classrooms are discussed. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 9999:963–987, 2017

Facilitating Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning with Question-Asking Scripting Activity and its Effects on Students’ Conceptual Understanding and Critical Thinking in Science

“…With this, students were able to learn with and through technology because of these sense-making activities that allowed students to internalise and externalise concepts. Question-asking activity allows students to extend their frame of mind and engage in complex and meaningful processing of information since students have to consider and analyse multiple perspectives (Chin & Osborne, 2010;Huang et al, 2017;Vogel et al, 2016). This is in coherence with the Cognitive Elaboration Theory which states that one of the effective ways of learning is by explaining information with other people (Slavin as cited in Abdullah & Shariff, 2008).…”

“…In line with this, allowing students to explain concepts, such as those that happened in the questionasking activity, fosters critical thinking skills that is associated with the strengthening of conceptual understanding and applications (Heijltjes, Van Gog, Leppink, & Paas, 2015). The various questions generated by the students reflect the way they comprehend the lesson which could be used as an indicator of their learning progress (Huang et al, 2017).…”

“…Previous studies revealed that the utilisation of fading scripts can result in significant effects in learning such as improved scientific inquiry, transfer of learning, and conceptual understanding (Bouyias & Demetriadias, 2012;Su-Chi et al, 2016). Furthermore, the scripting in this study specifically integrated question-asking activity that could provide a learning environment that nurtures higher order thinking skills (Chin & Osborne, 2010;Huang, Lederman, & Cai, 2017). Specifically, Cuccio-Schirripa and Steiner pointed out that "questioning is one of the thinking processing skills which is structurally embedded in the thinking operation of critical thinking, creative thinking, and problem solving" (as cited in Hofstein, Navon, Kipnis, & Mamlok-Naaman, 2005, p. 210).…”

“…This is made possible since the process of questioning entails revisiting prior conceptions, searching relevant ideas, investigating interconnections between and among concepts, refining alternative conceptions, and evaluating reasoning (Chinn, 2002;Lee, 2015). Additionally, the student-generated questions provide means to assess students' understanding of the lesson and their ability to extend the concepts learned (Huang et al, 2017). In the context of the present study, this is further validated quantitatively by measuring the effects of the intervention through the use of assessments that measure students' conceptual understanding and critical thinking.…”

Identifying Student Teachers’ Inquiry-Related Questions in Biology Lessons

“…Despite many studies highlighting the need for training teachers in questioning, research has focused mainly on mathematics [29][30][31][32] and chemistry classrooms [6]. In addition, students' competences to question have been widely studied [33][34][35][36][37][38]. In this study, we are interested in inquiry-based lessons cf.…”