Chapter Four
The questions a teacher asks, and the talk they allow to follow, shape what thinking happens in a room.
Rooted in the work of Alexander, Rowe, Mercer and others
The infographic
The strategies
Each strategy below is written exactly as it appears on the card.
Anderson and Krathwohl map six levels: remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating, creating. These are not a hierarchy of worth. Recall is foundational, not inferior.
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Hattie and Zierer distinguish surface (what), deep (why) and transfer questions. Each serves a different stage. Reaching transfer before surface is secure sets students up to fail.
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Dillon found genuine open questions, where the teacher does not know the answer, produce the most extended student reasoning. Not every question needs a predetermined destination.
Improvised questions default to recall, not because recall is wrong but because planning stops there. Anderson and Krathwohl works as a planning tool: write questions at every level.
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Dillon found statements and silence elicit richer responses than questions. Try: Tell me more. I had not considered that. Not every probe needs to end with a question mark.
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Rowe found most teachers wait under one second before speaking. Extending to three seconds increases the length and complexity of responses. Silence is thinking, not a gap to fill.
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Rowe identified a second wait time: the pause after a student responds. Three seconds prompts elaboration and self-correction. Silence after an answer signals that more is expected.
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Ask students to write before any verbal response is taken. Writing prevents the quickest from foreclosing others’ thinking. The pen democratises the room before the voice takes over.
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Lyman’s think-pair-share gives every student thinking time before public exposure. Pairs test ideas with a peer first. The result is more considered and more substantive discussion.
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Wiliam shows hand-raising distorts who answers. A small group volunteers repeatedly; the rest disengage. Remove hands and direct to named students. Every student should be asked.
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Good and Brophy showed differential questioning reinforces attainment gaps. Direct questions are equitable only when the climate supports it. Norms: no wrong attempts, only thinking.
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Good and Brophy found teachers direct harder questions to higher-attaining students. Track participation across lessons. Patterns invisible in the moment become visible on paper.
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Wiliam’s PPPB: pose the question, pause, direct to one student, then bounce the answer to another. The bounce keeps all students alert and spreads thinking across the whole room.
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Alexander identifies five qualities of dialogic talk: collective, reciprocal, supportive, cumulative and purposeful. Most talk meets two or three of these. Audit and start with the gaps.
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IRE (Initiation, Response, Evaluation): ask, answer, judge. Alexander shows this pattern limits thinking. Replace evaluation with a follow-up question. What makes you say that?
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Mercer distinguishes disputational, cumulative and exploratory talk. Only exploratory talk, where students challenge ideas with evidence and build on each thinking, improves outcomes.
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Mercer found teaching norms of exploratory talk transforms discussion. Norms co-constructed with the class outperform those displayed or modelled. Make the ground rules together.
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Michaels, O’Connor and Resnick hold students to accurate knowledge and rigorous reasoning. Teach moves: I agree because..., The evidence is..., Say more.... Language shapes thinking.
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Alexander’s EEF programme showed gains when teachers extended rather than evaluated. Return an answer: Aisha says X. Does anyone want to add or challenge? Conductor, not judge.
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King found students trained to generate questions using stems produce richer discussion than those answering only teacher questions. Generating questions demands deeper processing.
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King’s reciprocal questioning has students generate and pose questions to each other, with neither knowing the answer. This produces genuine enquiry rather than rehearsal. Aim to think.
A student’s question reveals the depth of their understanding. Ask for one written question before leaving. Why does X cause Y? shows far more than What is X?. Questions are windows.
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Mercer’s interthinking describes shared cognition built through language. Student questions sustain joint enquiry. The goal is thinking in common, not performance for the teacher.
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King found connecting questions to prior knowledge produces the most powerful learning. Ask students to write what they know and want to know. Their questions become the entry point.
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The thinking
Robin Alexander’s work on dialogic teaching showed us that talk is not the decoration around learning, it is often the medium of it. The problem is that classroom talk can easily become too thin, too quick, and too dependent on the teacher.
Neil Mercer’s work on exploratory talk helps here, because it shows what better classroom discussion looks like when pupils reason together, build on each other’s ideas and make their thinking public. Mary Budd Rowe’s work on wait time adds another important reminder: a few seconds of silence after a question can change the quality of what follows.
The strategies in this section move from better questions to better talk to the routines that help every voice count.
Silence after a question is not dead air; it is where better thinking often begins.
In practice
Anonymous response tools, shared documents and structured digital discussion can bring in students who might never raise a hand. That matters. They also give the class something to come back to, so a useful conversation does not disappear the moment the lesson moves on.
The risk, especially with AI, is that the tool answers the question students should be wrestling with. A good question slows thinking down. It gives students something to try, explain, challenge, refine and improve. When the tool removes that struggle, it can remove the learning too.
Use technology to bring more voices into the room, not to take the thinking out of it.
Further reading and evidence
The wider evidence around this area, kept deliberately short. No single study validates all 24 strategies; these are the traditions the thinking comes from, and good places to read further. How this site uses evidence.
Use this for professional learning
Who does the thinking when you ask a question?. A 30 minute activity for a department, phase or professional learning group, using this guide as it stands.
The model behind this, and how to run it across a school or trust, is on the professional learning page.
