Can undergraduate biology students learn to ask higher level questions?

Our goals in this study were to explore the type of written questions students ask after reading one or more chapters from their textbook, and to investigate the ability of students to improve their questions during the course of a single semester. In order to classify student's questions we used a taxonomy that we have developed specifically for this purpose. Two comparable populations were examined: Undergraduate students in a large, introductory biology class who were taught in traditional lecture format, and students in a similar class who were taught in cooperative/active learning style. After the taxonomy was presented to the active learning class, more students were able to pose better, written questions. Their questions became more insightful, thoughtful, and content-related, and were not easily answered by consulting the textbook or another readily available source. The best questions could be recast as scientific research questions (i.e., hypotheses). In contrast, when the taxonomy was presented to students in the traditionally taught class, the quality of student-posed questions was largely unchanged. Various explanations for the difference in outcomes are discussed, and methods are suggested about how generally to encourage students' questions and to improve their question-asking skills regardless of overall teaching style. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 854–870, 2000