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Discussion Strategies and Classroom Questioning

Encouraging Student Participation in Discussion
Students' enthusiasm, involvement, and willingness to participate affect the quality of class discussion as an opportunity for learning. Your challenge is to engage all students, keep them talking to each other about the same topic, and help them develop insights into the material (Barbara Gross Davis, University of California-Berkeley).

Types of Questions Based on Bloom's Taxonomy
As teachers we tend to ask questions in the "knowledge" category 80% to 90% of the time. These questions are not bad, but using them all the time is. Try to utilize higher order level of questions. These questions require much more "brain power" and a more extensive and elaborate answer. The link below provides six question categories as defined by Bloom.

Answering and Asking Questions
This resource is concerned with the answering and asking of questions in college-level courses. It makes suggestions regarding questioning techniques that are appropriate for lecture classes as well as for discussion groups (William E. Cashin, Kansas State University).

Socratic Questions
Socrates was one of the greatest educators who taught by asking questions and thus drawing out (as 'ex duco', meaning to 'lead out', which is the root of 'education') answers from his pupils. Here are the six types of questions that Socrates asked his pupils.

Effective Classroom Questioning
Some instructors believe that interjecting questions during instruction is a natural process which should be spontaneous. However, questions can become an effective teaching strategy when employed thoughtfully and less than effective when poorly employed. A timely, well-phrased question can capture students' attention, arouse their curiosity, focus upon important points, or even occupy a student's thoughts after class has ended (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).

Five Types of Questions
The art of asking questions is one of the basic skills of good teaching. Socrates believed that knowledge and awareness were an intrinsic part of each learner. Thus, in exercising the craft of good teaching an educator must reach into the learner's hidden levels of knowing and awareness in order to help the learner reach new levels of thinking (Leslie Owen Wilson).