On the Significance of Questioning in Learning Activity

Abstract

The article analyzes and compares modern educational technologies: the so-called ‘leading dialogue’ and the technology for generating student questions in collective learning activity. We discuss the role of spontaneous and provoked meaningful questions in collective learning activity. Using the experimental school course ‘New Biology’ (for 6th—9th grades) as an example, we provide a description of a teacher’s work aimed at promoting questioning in students: the questions are considered as a starting and finishing point in the collective search activity. Also, the article discusses the data of a comparative analysis of questions by students from different grades presented with the same problem. It considers the role of modeling in the emergence of meaningful questions and outlines the conditions in which meaningful questions appear, as well we the effects of systematic questioning in classrooms.

Keywords

• learning activity
• student questions
• learning model
• activity approach