Many experts argue that the most important skill that all teachers need is the capacity to ask good questions. In Ancient Greece, asking questions was the way the philosopher Socrates taught so successfully. His methodology was built around asking increasingly probing questions that eventually built frameworks of knowledge in his students’ understanding of philosophy.

Your classroom is a long way from the conditions of Ancient Greece! However, the questioning approach to teaching remains very important. Questioning is a valuable tool in helping children and young people learn and make sense of their world. Questioning encourages deeper thinking and creativity. The more teachers ask questions, the more they become aware of individual, group and class learning, understanding and progress.

Few — if any — of us learn in a totally linear way. Sometimes it is easy for us to miss important links and sometimes we find it difficult to make sense of what is being said or done. The teacher needs to be aware of the difficulties students may have and to plan more precisely to help them and “scaffold” their learning. Questions are at the heart of this process. However, research shows that questioning in many classrooms today can be very restricted.

There is a range of different types of questions that you as a teacher can use to help the students in your classes think more actively and creatively. For example, the rapid questions and answers of a teacher-led “brainstorming” session can be used to arouse interest, provide information about what the students already know or gather information about what a group has learned.

The activities linked to Question 4 ask you to look at some of the ways to classify questions and how they can impact on teaching and learning in the classroom. The first activity asks you to reflect quickly on reasons to use questioning to start you thinking about its crucial place in the teaching and learning cycle.