Questioning as a pedagogical strategy

Children’s curiosity is regarded as a natural resource for classroom learning and inquiry (Gillies and Khan 2009). It can be stimulated by asking questions. Gillies and Khan (2009) are of the opinion that asking questions promote people’s abilities to elaborate on the information they give and it allows people to draw on their prior knowledge. The question and answer strategy, therefore, promotes high level thinking.

In literacy instruction, questions help to support learner’s thinking about what they read and they also guide the teacher in identifying learners who read without understanding, so that intervention or support can be provided.

Eun (2010) emphasises the important role the teachers play in the mediation process. According to Eun (2010) teachers need to become participant observers in the learning process to enhance contribution by every learner in a non-threatening environment. Mediating learning by asking questions, therefore, is an important aspect of co-constructing new information in the classroom. Questioning could lead to different interactions in the classroom which take different formats with the aim of constructing meaning. For example, the teacher could interrogate a specific

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scenario in order to encourage learners to think, or ask for information or ask somebody to do something (Droga and Humphrey 2005). Lantolf and Thorne (2006) further mention that through the process of using language as a resource to make meaning, higher thinking skills are developed. The manner in which language is used in sociocultural theory suggests that it possesses developmental function as far as learning is concerned. Gibbons (2002), influenced by the view of Sociocultural Theory suggests that learning is a social act and interaction between the teacher and the learner, and also an interaction among learners themselves.

In this study, questioning was one of the dominant pedagogical strategies that were used for literacy teaching and learning in the Grade 3 classroom as evidenced in lessons A, B and D. However, the manner in which Thandi mediated instruction using questions seemed to limit learner’s thinking abilities because the questions she asked encouraged single to two word answers. More questions that she asked focused only on literal understanding of the text and did not develop the learners’ higher order thinking skills. Instead of using questions and pictures to inspire interaction in the classroom, Thandi tended to ask closed and vague questions that did not allow the learners to express their views and understanding of the lesson.

In lesson B (line 6), for example, Thandi started by probing questions in finding out from the learners the meaning of the word ‘umphanga’ (bereavement). In providing an answer, Mavis, said ‘umphanga’ happened when the passengers were involved in a car accident. Mavis left out the crucial information about death which qualifies the incident as bereavement (umphanga). Instead of guiding the learner to arrive at the correct answer, Thandi interrupted the interaction by giving an answer to the question. Similarly, in line 22 of lesson B, Thandi did not probe about what learners knew about chickens. Rather, she elaborated on how people named the chickens that are reared at home and are normally slaughtered by hand. In that way, Thandi limited active interaction in the classroom.

According to Rose (2005) low order thinking questions suggest a surface scaffolding that does not lead to individual cognitive ability. This kind of scaffolding approach is different to the Learning to Read: Reading to Learn scaffolding approach suggested by Rose (2005), which requires teachers to change their mindset when it comes to teaching reading and writing. According to this approach, the teacher engages all learners by making use of prompts or cues in order to equip learners with knowledge and resources they need in order to learn for academic

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success. This approach follows a cycle or a pattern that serves to deconstruct and reconstruct the text with the aim of negotiating meaning with the learners.

Again, in lesson B, questions were also used to mediate a discussion regarding why people write a letter. Unlike the type of questions Thandi used in lesson A, in lesson B she incorporated vocabulary as the content of the lesson relied mostly on the learners’ general knowledge drawn from their own experiences. This lesson led to learners becoming more curious as more unfamiliar words kept coming up. For example, different unfamiliar words were experienced by learners, and those words could have been used to develop their vocabulary, e.g. words like “umphanga” (bereavement), “umleqwa” (chicken reared at home that would be chased and slaughtered).

There were also cases where learners had to draw from their personal experiences and share their knowledge with the rest of the class. Some of these experiences were personal and some were observed in the community. In lesson B, excerpt 2 (line 16) Mavis drew from her experience that when they applied or renewed their passports, the Department of Home Affairs alerted them through a letter. While discussing the exposition text, in lesson D, the learner drew from his knowledge about the assistance nurses normally made when a person experienced spasms as evidenced in line 17. Boyce made reference to the damages that people experienced as a result of alcohol abuse. Both learners who drew from their own experiences in lesson D might not have personally experienced the mentioned challenges, but they could have been exposed to them as members of the community.

The strategy of using cues to support text comprehension, according to Rose (2005), falls within the stages of the Curriculum Cycle. The Curriculum Cycle, as mentioned in Chapter 2, is a model that enables the reader to analyse the text by deconstructing reading and the writing tasks. The focus of the Curriculum Cycle is to negotiate meaning which is made explicit by the intervention and support that is provided by the teacher. Since the learners involved in this study were still young readers, an effective use of the pictures, accompanied by higher order questions could have played an important role in enabling learners to actively identify the information on their own. So, with regard to what I heard and witnessed in the Grade 3 classroom, there was limited the interaction between Thandi and the learners.

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The CAPS document provides guidelines on how teachers can mediate and scaffold reading for comprehension purposes (DBE 2011). It proposes that teachers should select a text that is age and grade appropriate. This is followed by analysing the text, paying attention to illustrations and other diagrams or pictures that are available in the text and how learners receive the text by looking at the ways that they are making connections with it. Lastly, the learners, together with the teacher, interact with the text by engaging on a discussion. This kind of interaction was not fully explicit in Thandi’s lessons. CAPS commands teachers to provide an instructional environment that exposes learners to different ways of solving problems by making use of different types of questions in order to support and develop high mental abilities of every learner. CAPS does this by providing a framework that teacher could follow to support learners. CAPS categorises questions from lower order to higher order to help develop thinking. The questions are summarised in the table below (DBE 2011).

Table: 4 Types of Questions as adapted from Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (DBE 2011).

Types of question Competence developed

Literal comprehension Readers are expected to locate and retrieve explicitly stated information.

Reorganisation The focus is on retrieving information in the text that is placed on different areas of the text.

Inferential The reader uses his/her personal knowledge to provide and connect information that is needed to answer questions.

Evaluation The readers make judgements about the content of the text and evaluate the author’s perspective. Secondly, the reader is able to apply his/her mind into whether the story is imaginary or is factual. Appreciation The reader emotionally connects with the text. In this case the learner

is able to share his/her feelings regarding the message that the author.  

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The observation data showed that Thandi’s instruction was dominated by questions that demanded learners to work on retrieving and reorganising information and did not pay much attention to questions that required learners to analyse knowledge, e.g. evaluation questions that allow learners to make judgments. According to Howie, Venter, van Staden, Zimmerman, Long, du Toit, Scherman and Archer (2006) these analytical and evaluation questions focus on the purpose of reading, which is reading for literary experience. Reading for literary experience implies that learners have to read and make connections with the text. This allows them to get a factual understanding of the text in order to be able to use that knowledge to make predictions and draw conclusions using their experiences. Howie et al. (2006) suggest that when learners read for literary experience, they have to employ certain processes of reading.

To read for literary experience implies that learners would be able to respond to the text and be able to apply different reading processes to show that they can connect the message the author tries to bring across to them and make meaning. In that way, readers engage with the text, by first understanding the purpose, the language used by the author and the context under which the text was produced. Such an understanding provides the learners with the strategies they could employ when they read for literary experience.

When learners read, they first scan the text to identify certain words that are used in the question that would allow them to quickly locate the answer. This skill is said not to require much effort because a proficient reader could easily identify similar phrases that could allow him/her to spot the answer.

After scanning the text, the reader makes use of his/her experience and connect ideas within the text in order to be able to answer the question. The personal experience affords the reader an ability to understand the hidden message that is brought about by the author, either by making use of metaphors or different parts of speech. It would then be through unpacking the message and making connection with personal experience that the reader would be able make straightforward inferences.

Readers employ different reading processes when they read for meaning. They also evaluate the content in order to establish whether the author was not biased in conveying the message. In establishing bias, the reader then makes informed judgements based on whether the text is a

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fiction or a fact. This suggests that the reader needs to understand the purpose of the text so that he/she is able to make judgements and show his/her feelings about the text. This reading process allows the readers to have an internal discussion about the text the author’s intentions about the written piece.

When the reader is able to connect with the text, he/she shows his/her views about the text. Readers at this point do not rely on what is written down, but they use their personal understanding of beliefs and cultural values. In most cases, when one asks questions that evaluate this kind of skill, different responses are provided because each respondent shows his/her view point and how that viewpoint is connected to the message the author conveys. As mentioned earlier, making meaning is central to literary experience. Meaning making is accompanied by understanding the language features each text presents. The language or textual elements make the text communicative, and enrich language the development. They also guide the learners into noticing the grammatical features that are characteristic of a particular text. Noticing the grammatical features of a particular text enables the learners to make use of the correct structure when they have to write that particular text type. Identifying textual features can improve language learning in the classroom because the language features to be taught can be taken from the context, and not be taught in isolation.

This means that when a teacher sets questions to test learners’ understanding, the questions should be designed in such a manner that learners would able to discuss the hidden message the author is trying to bring across to the learners. Secondly, learners should be able to notice the vocabulary that is used in the text in order to understand its purpose. Therefore, setting questions should be done in such a way that they invoke certain thinking processes in a learner’s mind. Questions that require learners to provide a judgement could be used when the teacher is teaching a particular type of text (e.g. recount or narrative). In this study, Thandi exposed learners to a question where they had to reorganise information they had read by offering a definition of the concept “inkokheli” (the leader) (see Appendix I). These types of questions, according to CAPS, focus on literal comprehension and reorganisation of already stated information (DBE 2011). This line of questioning was evident in excerpt 1 of lesson A presented in the previous chapter, when Thandi asked learners to summarise and give the content of the

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text. This was also evidenced in lesson C where learners were taught verbs. In lesson C, for example, Thandi spent more time on the auxiliary verb “baya-” (“they are”) instead of provoking the learner to use her knowledge of the language and experience to explain what she saw in the picture that was pasted on the chalk board. Such guidance could have helped the learner to arrive at the required answer of underlining a verb as was expected of her.

Although Thandi did not make use of evaluative questions, some learners, made reference to them when they offered extended or additional information on the topic of discussion. For example, in excerpt 4, (line 17), the learner shared her general knowledge about what nurses are generally known to do (i.e. to offer assistance when a person experiences a moment of seizure). She needed further stimulation and scaffolding from the teacher to enable her to reach higher order thinking levels. Eun (2010) refers to scaffolding as a dialogical process that happens in learning. Although Thandi tried to facilitate her lessons through questioning, her questions and scaffold to her learners were not strong enough to enable them to reach higher levels of critical and independent thinking. In other words, the questioning strategy used by Thandi during her lesson presentation allowed learners to participate in the discussion, but the discussion did not substantially inspire cognitive development because of the low level of questions that she made use of, as mentioned earlier in section. Such a practice contradicts Vygotsky’s concept of scaffolding that aims at assisting learners to reach maximum level of understanding, the ZPD.