• Thinking Home
• What is Thinking?(2)
• What is Thinking (3)
• What is Thinking (4)
  
• The Brain
• Blindsight
• Booba & Kiki
• Visible/Invisible
• Illusion
• Picasso on Toast
• Headache
• Thinking Principles 1
• Thinking Principles 2
• Thinking Principles 3
• Thinking Like a Genius
• Socratic Questioning
• Multiple Intelligences
• Learning Styles
• Habits of Mind
• Transfer
• Research

There has been a shift in the role and status of children caused by children's mastery of computer based technology. Children speak the language of high-tech as their mother tongue whereas older people are immigrants in the land of technology, not familiar with its language."

Professor Edna Aphek: Jerusalem; Israel

When we ask questions we are often attempting to encourage students to reflect on their understanding. Two questions arise from this desire

• " How can we best frame the question such that it will encourage discussion and reflection rather than students justifying their present point of view or knowledge?
• " What is the role of the teacher when students are using online discussion groups?

The web site http://www.covington.k12.tn.us/resources/question.htm provides an excellent summary of this taxonomy and we have included the generic taxonomy below:

QUESTIONS OF CLARIFICATION	What do you mean by… What is your main point? How does ____ relate to ______? Could you put that another way? What do you think is the main issue here? Is your basic point ______ or _____? How does this relate to our discussion/problem/issue? What do you think John meant by his remark? What did you take John to mean? Jane, summarise in your own words what Richard has said. Richard, is that what you meant? Could you give an example? Would this be an example: ______? Could you explain that further? of Would you say more about that? Why do you say that?
QUESTIONS THAT PROBE ASSUMPTIONS:	What are you assuming? What is ***** assuming? What could we assume instead? You seem to be assuming _____. Do I understand you correctly? You seem to be assuming _____. How do you justify this as your position? All of your reasoning is dependent on the fact that _____. Why have you based your reasoning on ____ rather than ____?
QUESTIONS THAT PROBE REASON AND EVIDENCE:	What would be an example? Why do you say that? Why do you think that is right? What led you in that belief? How does that apply to this case? What would convince you otherwise? How could we go about finding out if that is true? By what reasoning did you come to that conclusion? Who is in a position to know if that is the case? Are those reasons adequate? Could you explain your reasons to us? But is that good evidence to believe that?
QUESTIONS ABOUT VIEWPOINTS OR PERSPECTIVES:	What would someone who disagrees say? What is an alternative? How are Mary's and John's ideas alike? Different?
QUESTIONS THAT PROBE IMPLICATIONS AND CONSEQUENCES:	What are you implying by that? When you say ____ are you implying ____? But if that happened, what else would also happen as a result? Why?
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE QUESTIONS:	Is this the same issue as? Does this question ask us to evaluate something? Is this question easy or hard to answer? Why?