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5 Types of Question

This document discusses different types of questions that teachers can use, including factual, convergent, divergent, and evaluative questions. It provides examples of each type of question using details from Shakespeare's Hamlet. The goal of using different types of questions is to help learners develop higher-level thinking skills like making inferences, encouraging creative thought, and aiding critical thinking. Teachers should aim to include a variety of question types in their lessons.

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Israel Pope
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90 views

5 Types of Question

This document discusses different types of questions that teachers can use, including factual, convergent, divergent, and evaluative questions. It provides examples of each type of question using details from Shakespeare's Hamlet. The goal of using different types of questions is to help learners develop higher-level thinking skills like making inferences, encouraging creative thought, and aiding critical thinking. Teachers should aim to include a variety of question types in their lessons.

Uploaded by

Israel Pope
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Newer Views of Learning- 

TYpes of Questions
 

There are five basic types of questions:


Factual; Convergent; Divergent; Evaluative; and
Combination

The art of asking questions is one of the basic skills of good teaching. Socrates
believed that knowledge and awareness were an intrinsic part of each learner.
Thus, in exercising the craft of good teaching an educator must reach into the
learner's hidden levels of knowing and awareness in order to help the learner
reach new levels of thinking.

Through the art of thoughtful questioning teachers can extract not only factual
information, but aid learners in: connecting concepts, making inferences,
increasing awareness, encouraging creative and imaginative thought, aiding
critical thinking processes, and generally helping learners explore deeper
levels of knowing, thinking, and understanding.

As you examine the categories below, reflect on your own educational


experiences and see if you can ascertain which types of questions were used
most often by different teachers. Hone your questioning skills by practicing
asking different types of questions, and try to monitor your teaching so that
you include varied levels of questioning skills. Specifically in the area of
Socratic questioning techniques, there are a number of sites on the Web which
might prove helpful. Simply use Socratic- questioning as a descriptor. Don't
forget to hyphenate the term.

1. Factual - Soliciting reasonably simple, straight forward answers based on


obvious facts or awareness. These are usually at the lowest level of cognitive
or affective processes and answers are frequently either right or wrong.
Example: What is the name the Shakespeare play about the Prince of Denmark?

2. Convergent - Answers to these types of questions are usually within a very


finite range of acceptable accuracy. These may be at several different levels of
cognition -- comprehension, application, analysis, or ones where the answerer
makes inferences or conjectures based on personal awareness, or on material
read, presented or known.

Example: On reflecting over the entirety of the play Hamlet, what were the main
reasons why Ophelia went mad? (This is not specifically stated in one direct
statement in the text of Hamlet. Here the reader must make simple inferences as to
why she committed suicide.)

3. Divergent - These questions allow students to explore different avenues and


create many different variations and alternative answers or scenarios.
Correctness may be based on logical projections, may be contextual, or arrived
at through basic knowledge, conjecture, inference, projection, creation,
intuition, or imagination. These types of questions often require students to
analyze, synthesize, or evaluate a knowledge base and then project or predict
different outcomes.

Answering divergent questions may be aided by higher levels of affective


functions. Answers to these types of questions generally fall into a wide range
of acceptability. Often correctness is determined subjectively based on the
possibility or probability. Frequently the intention of these types of divergent
questions is to stimulate imaginative and creative thought, or investigate
cause and effect relationships, or provoke deeper thought or extensive
investigations. And, one needs to be prepared for the fact that there may not
be right or definitely correct answers to these questions.

Divergent questions may also serve as larger contexts for directing inquiries,
and as such may become what are know as "essential" questions that frame
the content of an entire course.  

Example: In the love relationship of Hamlet and Ophelia, what might have happened
to their relationship and their lives if Hamlet had not been so obsessed with the
revenge of his father's death?

Example of a divergent question that is also essential and divergent:  Like many
authors throughout time, Shakespeare dwells partly on the pain of love in Hamlet.
Why is painful love so often intertwined with good literature. What is its never ending
appeal to readers? 

4. Evaluative - These types of questions usually require sophisticated levels of


cognitive and/or emotional judgment. In attempting to answer evaluative
questions, students may be combining multiple logical and/or affective
thinking process, or  comparative frameworks. Often an answer is analyzed at
multiple levels and from different perspectives before the answerer arrives at
newly synthesized information or conclusions.

    Examples:

a. What are the similarities and differences between the deaths of Ophelia when
compared to that of Juliet?

b. What are the similarities and differences between Roman gladiatorial games and
modern football?

c. Why and how might the concept of Piagetian schema be related to the concepts
presented in Jungian personality theory, and why might this be important to consider
in teaching and learning?

5. Combinations - These are questions that blend any combination of the above.

More details and suggestions on this topic see - This rough magic by Daniel Lindley

There are other authors who talk about the art of asking questions. One is H.
Lynn Erickson and she talks about 3 types of questions as being factual,
conceptual, and provocative.

If you look at the listing above, it should become apparent that these are the
same types of categories. Erickson's factual are still the ones that are easily
answered with definitive, and comparatively simple answers. These are the
questions you find on the show Jeopardy. Unfortunately they are also too
common in schools and on tests.  
Her conceptual questions might be ones that are convergent, divergent, or
evaluative in construction -- ones that delve deeper and require more
sophisticated levels of cognitive processing and thinking. 

Her provocative ones are ones that entice and ones cannot be answered with
easy answers. They are questions can be used to motivate and frame content
or are essential questions. In the initial categorization above they would be
either complex divergent questions or more sophisticated combination
questions like divergent/evaluative ones. 

Erickson, H. L. (2007) Concept-based curriculum and instruction for the thinking


classroom. Thousand Oaks, Corwin Press.

Links to other sites on questioning

On-line questions - Based on Bloom's Taxonomy

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