Among the functions of the Country Support Team towards this end, the injunction "to provide active and close backstopping to the local pool of national experts" implies more frequent interaction between CST Advisers and national counterparts than is afforded by the occasional in-country technical advisory visit.
This Discussion Papers series has been initiated by the CST, Suva, in an attempt to establish a dialogue among national population programme personnel on the multidimensional aspects of population programmes. The major objective of the series is to help in the conceptualisation and development of a more holistic programme approach.
In the area of population education, many countries in the Pacific region have embarked on UNFPA-funded population education projects, and, through them, have integrated population education into their school curriculum, developed instructional materials, conducted teacher training and have begun teaching population education in the schools. However, there have been few reports regarding what is happening in the classrooms and in how well the objectives of population education, especially in developing attitudes and values, are being met. It can only be surmised that the common practice of teaching for knowledge and passing examinations still predominates.
The present paper was prepared to alert teachers and teacher trainers on how teacher questions can stimulate higher levels of thinking on the part of students. It is an attempt to focus on the classroom, especially the most common means of teacher-student interaction. It is hoped that the paper will stimulate teachers, teacher trainers and curriculum developers to ask questions which go beyond the purely factual (and often trivial). It is hoped that through teacher questions, students will develop personally meaningful attitudes and values and ultimately responsible behaviours related to population-related issues.
January 1994
Stephen Chee
Furthermore,
"As an educational programme, it means affording young and adults knowledge and understanding about population dynamics, the causes and consequences of population growth, the interrelationship of population change to development, as well as the components of quality of life - health, housing, environment, food and nutrition, education, employment, and social services.
Not that knowledge and understanding of these population related concepts are ends, but rather are instruments for a thorough evaluation of the problem, which will hopefully result in desirable changes in attitudes and values, and more important, appropriate changes in behaviour in dealing with population related problems which are impinging on individual, family, community and national development efforts".2
If the goals of population education as described above (especially in relation to "development of appropriate skills," "making better-informed decisions," and "changes in attitudes and values") are to be achieved, then the teaching of population education must take radical departure from the kind of teaching generally practised, especially in an examination-oriented system. Emphasis in teaching must shift from the factual to the conceptual (relationships), from mere understanding to personal attitudes and values (based on understanding), from knowing to feeling. In some cases effective population education may mean the development of attitudes contrary to traditional attitudes - e.g., attitudes related to family size.
While much of the content of population education may be found in existing subjects like social science, science, and home economics, attainment of the goals may necessitate a change in the methodologies of teaching the same content - from a different perspective, or for a different purpose - more consistent with the goals of population education. For example, a learner may well understand the relationship between family size and nutrition on a fixed budget. But that understanding, while necessary, may not be sufficient to result in a change in attitudes. But a demand to make conscious and informed decisions (even for the future) based on this understanding and evaluation of consequences, may take the learner a step further toward achieving the goals. In short, traditional teaching must be changed if population education is to be a meaningful, relevant and personal experience, and not just another academic subject to be studied, examined, and stored away in the learner's vault of knowledge (and forgotten).
One of the most powerful ways of developing understanding, skills, attitudes and values related to population issues in instruction is through teacher questions. Aside from lecturing, traditionally, the most common verbal instructional practice consists of teacher questions. Questions are used to give directions, manage classrooms, elicit known answers, stimulate low and high level thinking, serve as a springboard for discussion, and evaluate learning among other uses. However, classroom research has shown that generally, the preponderance of questions asked by teachers is for recall or memory (knowledge), and the least common use of questions is to stimulate higher level thinking. And yet questions teachers ask often determine the kind of thinking a student engages in. A question asking for simple recall of facts draws on one's memory (e.g., "What is the population of Fiji?"). On the other hand, a question that asks for unknown solution(s) to a problem (e.g., "How would you stem the flow of urban migration from the villages to Suva?") stimulates a higher level of thinking, as does one that asks for one's opinion, with a demand for justification, on issues (e.g., "How do you feel about enforcing strict birth control policies, like China's?"). A study by Taba, Levine and Elzey3 found an almost perfect correlation between the levels of thought pupils displayed in their answers to teachers' questions and the types of questions asked by their teachers. Therefore, questions used in a teaching strategy directly influence the thinking of students or learners. Low level questions stimulate low level thinking and higher level questions stimulate higher level thinking. Hence, in the teaching of population education, questions that require students to reason, to create, to examine and evaluate attitudes and values must be used if the lofty goals of population education are to be achieved. Effective questioning is a key to effective population education.
This paper is intended to help you to become more aware of types of questions which might be employed in population education to achieve the stated objectives and goals by providing you with a conceptual framework, and perhaps to further develop your question-asking skills.
While we have talked about "lower level" and "higher level" questions, it would be useful to specify different types of questions in each category, especially the higher level, in order to identify some of the thinking processes involved. Many studies on questioning behaviour use categories of thinking levels, like Bloom's taxonomy with which most of you are familiar. For our purposes, however, I would use a classification system suggested by Cunningham4 because the categories are simpler to use and more relevant to the goals of population education. Furthermore, little mention will be made of lower level questions since all teachers almost instinctively use them - e.g., questions asking for recall, name, definition, yes-no, identification, explain, etc., all with a factual right-wrong answer. And since our purpose is to become more aware of and to stimulate higher level questions, we will concern ourselves only with the higher level categories. Cunningham uses the three main categories for higher level questions:
The mental operations associated with each category are outlined in Figure 1. It is not necessary to be able to make fine distinctions between the mental operations within each category. However, you should have a clear understanding of each major category and the differences between them.
| Try constructing your own reasoning questions: |
Creating questions encourage the students to create their own solutions - to speculate, predict, hypothesize, invent. He/She concocts something is a new form, constructs a plan to solve a problem, visualizes possibilities and probabilities beyond the present. Some examples are:
| Try constructing your own creating questions: |
Valuing questions ask students to make selections against a set of values, to make discriminations, to provide a rationale, to express options or to take a self-selected position on an issue. In so doing he may have to justify choices, judge the validity or quality of something and evaluate solutions. Some examples are:
| Try constructing your own valuing questions: |
If you have tried to construct your own reasoning, creating, and valuing questions, you will realise that it takes much thinking. You should also realise that the questions you have constructed will, in the same way, demand higher level thinking on the part of students and learners when used in teaching.
In order to give you further practice in formulating higher level questions in a situation closer to actual teaching of population education, read the following summary of Epeli Hau'ofa's essay, "Our Crowded Islands"5 and try writing a few questions in each category:
"Some of the ideas raised in the previous pages may be regarded as advocating the curtailment of personal liberties. But I am convinced that the population problems we are facing today are of the magnitude that demands emergency and drastic actions. If we do not forego some of our liberties now, in order to deal effectively with these problems am afraid that in the near future, and out of even greater necessity, our state will have to impose so many regulations that instead of losing a few freedoms, we will lose most, if not all, of the liberties that we have today. Moreover, we will lose the most cherished of our national qualities: those things which we subsume under such terms as fe'ofa'aki fefaka'apa'aki, mo'ui nongaa, mo'ui fiemalie, nofo fiefia, nofo fakalata, fonu ae kete, and so forth. these are not racial characteristics; they are things which grew out of our peaceful, stable and prosperous circumstances. Although we do not have much money and we lack industrial resources, we have been a very fortunate and rich people in just about every other way. Ours is a country of plenty: of yams, kava, sugarcane, pigs, tapa and mats. We derive joy from exchanging food with our neighbours on Sundays, calling passers-by to share our family meals, drinking kava in an atmosphere of convivial fellowship with our friends, showering hospitality on visitors to our shores, caring for our elders and for those who have fallen on hard times, and offering first-fruits to our monarch and thanksgiving feasts to our God. Our songs are full of allusions to the beauty of nature. Our language is blessed with a great capacity for capturing the most subtle shifts in mood and the most minute changes in the state of the sky, the wind, the sea and the trees. The bodies of our dancers are adorned with leaves and flowers and anointed with the perfumed oils of life. All these things which provide quality and joy to our national existence and a richness and depth to our culture, are based on our generously endowed land and sea. There is a strong probability that within a few decades our environment will not be able to support the quality of life that we have known for generations. Should this occur, the continuity between ourselves and our ancestors which has been the cornerstone of our identity as people will be broken. We will then become a nation without a past, without a soul, and probably without a future. In conclusion, our fathers and grandfathers have given us a fertile land of Kahokaho, kaumelie and kava, and a culture of the gentle eye and the soft hand. Our children and grandchildren deserve no less a heritage".
Some examples of questions that could be raised from the passage are listed below by categories:
Reasoning
Creating
Valuing
The focus on higher level questions in population education does not mean that lower level questions asking for knowledge are undesirable or unimportant. Knowledge is very important, and hence, knowledge questions are important. In fact, most of the responses to higher level thinking depends on a knowledge base. For example, in asking students to evaluate plans for locating a factory, a very important assumption is that the students understand the effects of pollution - air, water, noise, etc. on the environment. Hence, the preponderance of lower level questions in a lesson does not necessarily mean it is not a good lesson. The objective of the lesson may be one of conveying information - i.e., knowledge. There is not hard and fast rule about what types of questions to ask, how many, and when. It depends on the objectives of the particular lesson, and how the lesson contributes toward achieving the goals of population education. Even on higher level question might produce an excellent lesson, one that stimulates all students to think, to explore, to evaluate. Furthermore, in a classroom discourse, all students usually cannot be called on to answer a particular question. If that question is an important one that stimulates thinking desired in the lesson, the question might be posed for all students, and the responses written down to be handed in. Or several high level questions might be assigned, one to a group, to be discussed and reported to the class. Hence, unlike lower level questions, higher level questions afford a wider variety of teaching methodologies.
On every important consideration related to asking higher level questions is the time given to students for responding. Rowe6 found that teachers in her study waited only one second after asking a question. Perhaps if all the questions were low level knowledge questions, a second of "wait-time" might be sufficient, because if only memory is required, a student either know the answer or he doesn't. However, if high level questions are asked, time for thinking - reasoning, creating, valuing - is required:
| Which of the population-related issues do you feel is the most serious in your country? Answer, quick, quick! |
Higher level thinking takes time.
Unfortunately, teachers seem to be uncomfortable with silence - even for a few seconds. But effective higher level questioning behaviour necessitates longer "wait-time" for students to think and respond. Therefore, effective questioning behaviour in population education demands not only the ability on the part of the teacher to formulate and ask higher level questions but also to tolerate a longer time after the question is asked before reacting.
How can we develop more effective questioning behaviours in population education?
1 Population Education: A Sourcebook on Content and Methodology, UNESCO Regional Office for Education in Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok, 1980, p.5