Skill Of Probing Questioning

One must acquire the skill of probing questioning if he wants to prove himself a skilled and effective teacher in reality

Skill of questioning has two parts - one is skill of fluency in questioning and other one is skill of probing questioning. One must acquire the skill of probing questioning if he wants to prove himself a skilled and effective teacher in reality. Probing questioning is a skill to handle the situation when students responses like 'I don't know', or 'no response' or 'partially correct response' to the asked question by a teacher. In such a situation an effective teacher will try to get correct response from the learners without resorting to punishment. In simple, as a teacher, you have to go deep or probe into the learners responses by asking a series of questions about what they already know and to lead them to the correct responses. Even if the learner's response is correct you may lead them to view that specific topic from a broader perspective.

Components of Probing Questioning

Skill of probing questioning comprised of following components-

• Prompting
• Refocusing
• Seeking Further Information
• Higher Order Cognitive Questions
• Re-directing Questions
• Increasing Critical Awareness

Prompting

This refers the teacher to give clues or hints to the learner and ask leading questions. With the help of the clues or hints the learner will try or able to give correct answer of the asked question. However, this does not mean the teacher supplies the answer to ther pupil. It means helping the pupil to answer the question himself. Prompting technique is generally used when the learner gives - (i) 'I don't know' response ; (ii) 'a very weak' response ; (iii) 'a partly incorrect response, etc. During prompting, the techer should not discourage the pupils for his no or wrong response, and at the same time, he should reinforce the pupil for the partially correct response.

Refocusing

This technique is used when the learner gives correct response. The teacher ask the learner to relate or compare his response with other issue. In this case, the teacher wants to help the learner to develop their ability to find out similarities and disimilarities of a given situation with an other one. Questions like -

1. In what ways India's democratic system is similar to that of the American democraric system ?
2. How will you compare British India and Independent India ?
3. How will you relate the functions of the United Nations Organization with the Europian Union in terms of protecting Human Rights ?

stimulate pupils to view his response in a broader perspective.

Seeking Further Information

With this technique teacher should try to extract more and further information related to the said issue from the learner.This technique is used when the initial response of the student is incomplete, or partially correct, or not up to the mark as expected. Here, the teacher ask the student to clarify or elaborate or explain what he wants to say. Teacher should reinforce the student to elaborate his answer with example, if possible. To do so, the teacher should ask questions like -

• What do you mean by 'State' as you have used in your answer ?
• Do you think the terms 'State' and 'Nation State' are same in their meanings ?
• Can you give an example for your answer ?

Higher Order Cognitive Questions

Aim of questioning is not only to get the answer. Questioning should have an aim to develop students cognitive ability. So, teacher should not ask those questions which the students can give answer from their memory. That means, knowledge level questions should be minimised as much as possible. He should ask the students higher order cognitive questions so that they can have opportunity to think critically for their answer. Thus, instead of asking 'Who', 'What', 'Where',- type questions, teachers should ask 'How', 'Why', 'Expalin', 'Elaborate','Compare', 'Distinguish'- type questions to the students.

Re-directing Questions

A question is re-directed to other pupils when the first pupil gives no or incorrect response. If the second pupil gives right answer then the teacher can direct other pupils to give thier opinion on his answer - 'whether is it right or wrong ?', 'If right, how ?', 'If not, why and what is the right one ?' etc. After getting the right answer from the pupil other than the first one, the teacher should ask and reinforce the first one to tell the answer as given by the other one. This technique help increasing students participation in class activities.

Increasing Critical Awareness

This technique is used when the student gives complete correct or expected response to the asked question. With 'Why' and 'How' - type questions teacher should evaluate the learner whether his answer is from knowledge or from understanding. This is to increase students critical awareness. Some examples of the questions for increasing learners' critical awareness are as under -

• Why do you think so ?
• How would you combat global warming ?
• Why is democracy right for us ?

In conclusion, it can be said that skill of probing questioning is a very impornt skill to be acquired by each and every teacher.

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