Answer-oriented education2
How does the Enlightenment idea that knowledge is power present itself within contemporary education? My claim is that we find it in the pervasive answer-orientation of the education system.
Broadly speaking, an answer-oriented education system is one in which the emphasis is placed on student answers. Students are taught to answer questions from their earliest schooling until the point at which they exit formal education.As such, much like in the PlayStation game, students ‘win’ at the game of being educated in an answer-oriented education system by providing correct answers to the questions they are asked. In other words, they succeed or not on the basis of what they know, understand, or remember, in the form of answers. Hence, knowledge is power in an answer-oriented education system, insofar as succeeding in one’s formal education is empowering (which it often, if not typically, is).What reasons do we have for thinking that the education system is answer-oriented. I have identified four basic aspects of any education system that can be examined in order to reveal (or not) its answer-orientation. First and foremost, this orientation can be seen in the aims of the education system and in particular, in the assessment practices used to measure those aims. Secondly, in common teaching practices and approaches to curriculum design. Thirdly, in the theory that informs teaching practices and curriculum design. Lastly, in the behaviours and roles that students adopt within the classroom. In order to form a more comprehensive picture of answer- orientated education, I will look at each of these aspects in more detail. Note that, from hereon, when I refer to ‘the education system’ I am referring to the education system, or systems, operating at present in the UK and the US.These are the contexts in which the data discussed below has been collected and in which I am most confident in my understanding of educational theory and practice.The extent to which education systems elsewhere in the world, particularly non-Western education systems, are answer-oriented remains an open question, although I suspect that a similar case can be made.
37.3.1 Assessment practices
The answer-orientation of the education system reveals itself, perhaps most conspicuously, in the assessment practices used to evaluate students and, ultimately, to measure the success of the system through student results. In this regard, the system is noticeably answer-oriented: students are predominantly assessed throughout their formal education on their ability to answer questions. Exams, tests, assessments, both formative and summative, from primary school right through to university finals, are presented in the format of question—answer. Students are presented with questions and given a set amount of time in which to answer them. Indeed, this format is surprisingly uniform when one considers the diverse educational stages and subject areas that comprise 10—15 years of education.3 Moreover, this question-answer format has not changed significantly in at least four decades of research into the use of questions in education. In an extensive 1970 review of empirical studies, Meredith Gall notes that “students are exposed to many questions in their textbooks and on examinations” (p.707).This conclusion is reiterated 36 years later by Barbara Gayle, Raymond Preiss, and Mike Allen (2006) in their review of empirical studies in which they observe “the pervasive use of educational questions... Written questions are common in handouts, assignments, projections,Web content, and study guides” (p.279).
These observations highlight the use of the question-answer format even in non-exam based forms of assessment, such as essays and project-work. In these cases, students are typically presented with a question or problem and assessed on their ability to answer or respond to it. At times, students may be permitted or actively encouraged to generate their own questions.
However, even on these occasions, students are usually still assessed on their ability to answer their questions, not on the questions themselves. Students may also be assessed through measures such as attendance or participation, particularly in higher education.
However, these are typically not summative measures, or else make up a marginal proportion of a student's final grade. Contemporary formal assessment practices in education are heavily weighted towards evaluating student answers, revealing one significant aspect of the answer-orientated education system.37.3.2 Teaching practices
A second aspect of the answer-oriented education system reveals itself in teaching practices. In particular, this manifests in the prevalence of teacher questioning in the classroom. Research on teacher questioning gained attention in education theory in the 1970s and has continued to be a subject of interest for both education theorists and practitioners to the present day (Dillon 1981,1982; Gall 1970, 1984; Dantanio and Paradise 1988; Grow-Maienza, Hahn, and Joo 2001). This research focuses on several dimensions of teacher questioning, including the numbers of questions asked by teachers, the types of questions asked, and the cognitive level of teachers' questions, this latter measure informed in part by the development of Bloom's taxonomy in the 1950s (Kleinman 1965;Wright and Nuthall 1970; Riley 1981; Miller and Pressley 1989; Martin and Pressley 1991).
From this research one can derive the conclusion that teacher questioning is a common form of pedagogy in the classroom. James Dillon (1982), for example, draws precisely this conclusion in his survey of a number of empirical studies measuring teacher questioning, including his own, from the 1970s and 1980s. He writes,“It is a well-documented fact that teachers traditionally ask a lot of questions” (p.127). Over two decades later, in their 2006 survey of the updated literature on teacher questioning, Gayle, Preiss, and Allen (2006) once again echo this conclusion, noting that “teachers frequently ask questions in their classrooms” (p.281).There is consensus among researchers writing and studying questions in education across several decades that teachers ask a lot of questions in their classrooms.This reveals a second significant dimension of the answer- orientated education system.The focus on student answers is not only present in the questionanswer format of assessments but, perhaps unsurprisingly, is mirrored in the teaching practices that teachers adopt in their classrooms on a daily basis.
37.3.3 Education theory
A third dimension of the answer-orientation of education in the UK and the US is evident when one surveys the education theory that supports teaching and learning in these settings.
Alongside empirical studies on teacher questioning in the classroom, a significant body of literature has emerged over the course of several decades dedicated to offering practical guidance for teachers on how to incorporate questions into their teaching (Aschner 1961; Hunkins 1972; Hollingsworth 1982; Farrar 1983; Guthrie 1983; Brualdi 1998; Sachen 1999). This literature indicates that educational theorists in general regard teacher questioning in the classroom as good pedagogy. An early comment by the theorist Mary Jane Aschner (1961) reflects this when she writes that questions are “one of the basic ways by which the teacher stimulates student thinking and learning” (p.44). Similarly, the theorist Paul Hollingsworth (1982) commented in an article in the 1980s that “The use of appropriate questions can enhance classroom learning for every child” (p.352).More compelling than these comments in isolation, however, is the extensive and growing production of instructional resources for teachers providing guidance on how to use questions in the classroom. A selective representation of such resources produced in the last six years alone includes Esther Fusco's (2012) Effective Questioning Strategies in the Classroom:A Step- by-Step Approach to Engaged Thinking and Learning, Gordon Pope's (2013) Questioning Technique Pocketbook, Mike Gershon's (2013) How to use Questioning in the Classroom:The Complete Guide, and Robert Marzano and Julia Simms' (2014) Questioning Sequences in the Classroom.This focus on teacher questioning in training and pedagogy illustrates, once again, the pervasive answerorientation of the education system. This focus, moreover, has the potential to disguise the answer-orientation of the system in a problematic way by indicating a central role for questioning in educational theory and practice. Importantly, however, this role is restricted to teacher, not student, questioning. This has a direct impact on the answer-orientation of the education system.
We can observe this by examining educational research that focuses on student, rather than teacher questioning in the classroom.37.3.4 Student behaviour
Dillon is one of a small number of education researchers whose work focuses on student questioning in the classroom. Dillon's research throughout the 1980s looks at numbers and types of student questions and their relationship to teacher questions (1978, 1981, 1982, 1988). He presents his own empirical studies as well as reviewing a selection of other studies which also focus on student questioning, beginning as early as 1938 (Houston 1938; Corey 1940; Fahey 1942; Johns 1968; Susskind 1969, 1979;Tizard et al. 1983).The results of these studies are as conclusive as those of the studies on teacher questioning, finding across the board that students ask very few questions in the classroom. Dillon summarises his findings unambiguously: “No one has ever gone into a sample of classrooms and found a lot of student questions... investigators can scarcely find any student questions” (1988, p.199). In his own study (1988), involving recordings of 27 discussion classes in six schools, Dillon reports an average of 2 questions per hour from all the students in each class, compared with 84 questions per hour from the teacher. Earlier research conducted by Edwin Susskind (1969) found approximately the same average in a study of primary school classes and reports even starker results in a study, 10 years later, involving 32 social studies classes. Summarising these later findings, Susskind states unequivocally “our data indicate that children do not ask questions in school (1979, p.103).
The empirical findings reveal that students adopt the role of answerers in the classroom. The studies, moreover, indicate a negative correlation between teacher and student questions: a higher rate of teacher questions correlates with a lower rate of student questions. On the basis of this correlation, Susskind (1979) comments, “Clearly, the teacher is the primary initiator, while the student adopts a responsive role: the teacher questions, the student replies” (p.103).
Likewise, Tizard et al. (1983) comment, “children seem to learn very quickly that their role at school is to answer, not to ask questions” (p.279). Dillon also picks this up, referring to “classroom discourse as a series of three-part exchanges, principally a teacher question, a pupil response, and a teacher comment—plus a further question” (1982, p.128). Dillon (1982) cites socio-linguistic research that refers to this dynamic as “‘an exponential law of successive questioning', whereby the chances at any point are two to one that a teacher will ask a question” (p.128).A study by the psychologist Elliott Mishler (1975), for example, based on recordings of 4 primary classrooms across the course of a school year found that in 85% of the exchanges between teachers and students, teachers were heard to ask a further question after a student had responded to an initial question and in 67% of exchanges teachers were heard to respond to student questions by asking another question. Simply put, teachers ask questions and students answer them.4This conclusion, and the results of the studies above are not surprising when one considers the answer-orientation of the education system. Students are continually assessed on their ability to answer questions, teachers ask numerous questions of their students throughout the day, and educational theorising endorses teacher questioning as pedagogical practice through a cottage industry of instructional resources.As a result, students are consistently placed in the position of answerers in their daily classroom interactions. Their success within the system depends, in no small part, on their ability to adapt to this role: students win, in an answer-oriented education system, by knowing the answers.We can now return to the question posed in Section 37.1: how does this affect students' willingness and ability to be intellectually humble.
37.4