Answer Me! Factors Affecting Students Propensity to Ask Questions in Class and How Stimuli Polish Student Questioning

Abstract

Student voluntary question-asking enhances student engagement and academic achievements. Nevertheless, there is little understanding of the mechanism of questioning. Against this background, the primary objectives of the present study were to do a comprehensive evaluation encompassing three dimensions of students questioning behaviour, namely the motivations underlying their question-asking, the types of questions, and the strategies employed in encouraging more questions. This study has found that classroom environment, students self-efficacy and self-awareness, peer influence, and gender & cultural factors are the main factors influencing students propensity to ask questions. Question types can be divided into procedural and content-related, from which students generate their questions. In addition to the unimportant off-task attention questioning, confirmation, on-task attention questioning, and clarification are low-order questioning while evaluation, comparison, problem-solving, cause and effect/correlation, and extended questions are valued as high-order ones. Class material, class strategies, and teacher intervention are supposed to be utilized and upgraded to polish students question-asking in both quantity and quality. Based on the comprehensive analysis, more research should be done into teachers perceptions of receiving and responding to different kinds of questions and their proper intervention in student questioning.