Questioning and feedback

Also connected to explanations and demonstrations is questioning both by the teacher and by students. Students generally endorsed teachers who gave them the opportunity to ask questions whenever they did not understand a particular aspect of the lesson. Talking about what a good teacher should do, KinivoB4 recommends that: ‘Il doit bien

enseigner, qu’il ne nous interdisse pas de lui demander si on ne comprends pas’. [He

should teach us well, he shouldn’t stop us from asking him questions when we do not

understand him.] This opinion relates to their experience with one of their teachers,

whose strictness impacts negatively on their learning:

There is one thing that I am afraid of Mr Kingsley. I am afraid of him because when you ask him a question and you don’t understand, after he will abuse [insult] you that you are a bullock or a sheep (KinivoB1).

Questions help students clarify doubts and as such, enhance their comprehension. In most cases, when they said a teacher teaches well, they explained this by referring to the teacher’s ability to explain clearly, ask and elicit questions as well as give examples and practice exercises. In the case of questioning, students thought learning will be facilitated if their teachers encouraged them to ask questions freely. Describing the practice of a good teacher in this regard the students held that:

He will make sure that we understand by doing that if you don’t understand you should put your hand up and ask him what you don’t understand and he will tell you how to do it. Or if it is reading comprehension, he will explain to you what

happened in the passage that you never knew and you will understand what he wants you to understand. (KinivoB1)

More specifically, Alberto’s students explained how he encourages them to ask questions recounting an instance in which by encouraging students to ask him questions and by providing alternative explanations their learning was enhanced:

AlbertoG3: I like him because when he teaches, after he finish explaining, he will ask us if we have any questions. He will even call some people and say they look like they have not understand and that they should ask him what they have not understand.

[…]

Harry: When you ask questions, what does he do?

AlbertoG1: He will explain again until we understand

AlbertoG3: Then he will ask if we have other questions, if we don’t ask questions, he will ask us his own questions.

Harry: Why do you think it is good to ask questions?

AlbertoG2: Because if I cannot understand something in class and I cannot ask, I will never understand and I will fail. But if I can ask questions, the teacher will explain it to me more better. Like when Mr Alberto was teaching us composition, I did not know what to put in the introduction and in the body so I asked him and he explain to me. Now I can write better.

In addition to encouraging students to ask questions, good teachers, according to these students should also challenge learners to think, by asking them questions. It is when they are challenged to answer questions from their peers and from the teacher that they remember what they learn. Talking about how he would respond to student questions if he were a teacher, JosephineB5 says:

If they [students] ask me questions, I will not tell them the answer first; I will tell them to think about the answer and if they cannot answer, I will ask the class who can answer the question and if the class cannot answer the question, then I will give them the answer.

The excerpt above reflects students’ own awareness of the importance of engaging in cognitively challenging endeavours in learning. Students are not just empty vessels; they can be challenged to think beyond their present knowledge. JosephineB5 thinks that it is

necessary to encourage students to find answers to their own questions; for him, the teacher’s role is to provide answers only when the whole class is unable to provide an answer.

A further perspective expressed by students was that a good teacher is one who checks students’ understanding by asking them questions: ‘[...] she will ask us questions to see

if we have understood [...]’ (JosephineG1). Students thought that it is not enough for

teachers to ask them if they understand the lesson; a good teacher should ensure that they have effectively understood a lesson, by asking them questions about the lesson content. AlbertoG5 expresses this view in the following statement: ‘I prefer a teacher

who ask us if we have understood and if we say yes, she ask us her own questions

because she will make sure that we have understood well.’ This perspective was shared

by students across all interviews as they described the good practices of their teachers with statements like the following:

I like that when we said that we have understood the teacher will ask us to stand up. Then he will ask us questions and if you answer, you sit down, if you don’t answer, you keep standing up. Because if we just say we have understood and the teacher continues the lesson, some children will be ashamed to say they have not understood. But if the teacher ask back his own questions, he will see that some people cannot answer and he will explain it again better (AlbertoG4)

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He is the best teacher because [...] when he teaches us, at the end he asks us if we understand and if we do not understand, he will repeat what he was teaching. Then we can ask some questions; [students] will put up their hands to ask questions and he will answer, and he will also ask us questions and we will answer.(KinivoB2)

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He always asks us a lot of questions during the lesson; when we answer we understand better, even if we give the wrong answer, another person can correct me or even Mr. George can correct me and I will understand better. (GeorgeG1)

She asks questions and helps us to understand better. When you don’t know the right answer and you give a wrong one, she will say that you have tried and she will correct you. When you give the correct answer, she will ask you to explain why you think that your answer is correct and you will explain it and understand better (GraceB5)

The foregoing excerpts reveal students’ perception of the pedagogic importance of questions in the learning process. To them, questions helped them develop and consolidate understanding especially when they were cognitively challenging. Students did not just want to be provided with knowledge, but to be challenged not only to find the knowledge, but also to justify the knowledge. It was not only the fact that they could ask and answer questions that made for good teaching; they had clear ideas about how a good teacher was supposed to mediate the questioning and answers in the classroom. Comparing two teachers, students were able to express their opinion about classroom processes involving questions and answers:

I want that [Kingsley] should teach us well because when he is going to give the reading comprehension, he is going just to write the answer. He gives us the reading comprehension passage and gives us 5 minutes to read and answer the questions. When we finish, he chooses only people who put up their hands and he will just write the correct answers on the blackboard. But with Mr Ivo, if you answer a question, he will ask you where the answer comes from in the passage and why did you chosen that answer, but [Kingsley] will just write the answer without making us to think. So I think that he must first look well at the answer and ask questions for us to understand the answer better. (KinivoG1)

This perspective in Yaounde was consistent with that expressed in Buea; students liked Josephine because in addition to encouraging them to ask and answer questions, she sometimes ‘will ask somebody [who had answered a question] in class to explain the

answer well so that we can understand how he knew the answer.’ (JosephineB2). The

perspectives expressed by both groups of students shows that they are equally interested in practices that push them beyond just providing answers to questions.