Knowledge and question asking / Conocimiento y formulación de preguntas

The ability and the motivation for question asking are, or should be, some of the most important aims of education. Unfortunately, students neither ask many questions, nor good ones. The present paper is about the capacity of secondary school pupils for asking questions and how this activity depends on prior knowledge. To examine this, we use texts containing different levels of information about a specific topic: biodiversity. We found a positive relationship between the amount of information provided and the number of questions asked about the texts, supporting the idea that more knowledgeable people ask more questions. Some students were warned that there would be an exam after the reading, and this led to a diminishing number of questions asked, and yet this still did not significantly improve their exam scores. In such a case, it seems that reading was more concerned with immediacy, hindering critical thinking and the dialog between their previous ideas and the new information. Thus, question asking seems to be influenced not only by the amount of knowledge, but also by the reader’s attitude towards the information (AU)

La capacidad y la motivación para preguntar son, o deberían ser, algunas de las metas más importantes de la educación. Por desgracia, los estudiantes no suelen hacer muchas ni buenas preguntas. El presente trabajo analiza la capacidad para preguntar en alumnos y alumnas de Educación Secundaria y su dependencia del conocimiento previo, utilizando para ello textos con diferentes niveles de información sobre un tema específico: la biodiversidad. Hemos encontrado una relación positiva entre la cantidad de información proporcionada y el número de preguntas realizado sobre los textos, apoyando este resultado la idea de que las personas con más conocimiento preguntan más. Algunos estudiantes fueron advertidos de que habría un examen después de la lectura de los textos, y esto llevó a una disminución del número de preguntas que hicieron, aunque no tuvo influencia en su desempeño en ese examen. Parece que la lectura en ese caso estuvo más orientada a lo inmediato, dificultando el pensamiento crítico y el diálogo entre sus ideas previas y la nueva información. Por tanto, la formulación de preguntas parece estar influenciada, tanto por la cantidad de conocimiento, como por la actitud del lector hacia la información (AU)

Knowledge and question asking.

The ability and the motivation for question asking are, or should be, some of the most important aims of education. Unfortunately, students neither ask many questions, nor good ones. The present paper is about the capacity of secondary school pupils for asking questions and how this activity depends on prior knowledge. To examine this, we use texts containing different levels of information about a specific topic: biodiversity. We found a positive relationship between the amount of information provided and the number of questions asked about the texts, supporting the idea that more knowledgeable people ask more questions. Some students were warned that there would be an exam after the reading, and this led to a diminishing number of questions asked, and yet this still did not significantly improve their exam scores. In such a case, it seems that reading was more concerned with immediacy, hindering critical thinking and the dialog between their previous ideas and the new information. Thus, question asking seems to be influenced not only by the amount of knowledge, but also by the reader's attitude towards the information.