Interthinking Through Questions

The strategy, as published

Exactly as it appears on the card

Part of Student-Generated Questions in 04 Questioning & Discussion, where it sits alongside its neighbouring strategies, the infographic and the thinking for the whole area.

Why you might use it

The problem it may help with

Interthinking is Mercer's word for something classrooms can be unusually good at: cognition genuinely shared, built between people through language. Student questions are what keep that joint enquiry moving.

The card's distinction is the one to hold onto: the goal is thinking in common, not performance for the teacher.

What it might look like

One version of it, in a classroom

A group is working out why their bridge design failed under load. The questions that move the work along pass between pupils: was it the joints or the span? how do we test that without breaking the second one? Nothing routes through the teacher, and the enquiry belongs to the group.

Try it

A way to begin

Sit near one group during a task and count how many of the questions asked are pupil-to-pupil rather than pupil-to-you.

What to notice

Reading what happens

• Whether questions route through you or across the group.
• Whether a pupil's question ever changes the group's direction; that is joint enquiry doing its work.
• How the talk changes when you approach. A group performing for the teacher sounds different from a group thinking.

Things to think about

Before and while you use it

• Exploratory talk is the ground this grows in; groups that have not learned its norms will find it hard to interthink, whatever the task.

Related strategies

Where this connects

• 🗣 Exploratory Talk Mercer distinguishes disputational, cumulative and exploratory talk. Only exploratory talk, where students challenge ideas with evidence and build on each thinking, improves outcomes. 04 Questioning & Discussion · Dialogic Teaching & Discussion
• 👥 Reciprocal Peer Questioning 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. 04 Questioning & Discussion · Student-Generated Questions
• 📚 Ground Rules for Talk 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. 04 Questioning & Discussion · Dialogic Teaching & Discussion
• 📄 Questions That Drive Enquiry 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. 04 Questioning & Discussion · Student-Generated Questions

The wider thinking

Where the evidence sits

Interthinking is where Mercer's work on classroom talk arrives: language not just expressing thought but doing the thinking, jointly. The card’s attribution stands as published: Mercer.

The fuller picture, sources included, is in further reading and evidence for Questioning & Discussion.