Procedures to Influence Levels of Questions Asked by Students

A study was conducted on the possibility of altering the levels of questions asked by students and the effects such an alteration would have on standardized measures of students' creative abilities. Twenty-four fifth-grade parochial students (Lorge-Thorndike IQs 108 to 134, X = 120.4) were administered Torrance's Thinking Creatively with Words (form b) prior to and after the experimental manipulation. Following baseline, the regular classroom instructor employed descriptive praise for higher-order questions in a morning discussion session, while baseline continued in an afternoon discussion session. One week was devoted to each of the following forms of questions: application, analysis, and synthesis. The afternoon session received the same treatments, one week subsequent to implementation in the morning session. The results indicated that each form of question increased as a result of descriptive praise. A multivariate repeated measures analysis of variance showed significant increases in students' fluency, flexibility, and originality scores on the Torrance test. Results would seem to support the possibility of enhancing students' creative abilities through fairly straightforward alterations of teacher behaviors.