ine seucnng rroyessor Research Focus Professors Part of the Problem? Barnes, Carol P. "Questioning in the College Classrooms," in Studies of College Teaching by Carolyn L. Ellner and Carol P. Barnes. Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1983, pp. 61-81. Faculty often blame students for a lack of participation and for passivity in class. Certainly students deserve some of that criticism, But research findings don't let faculty off the hook quite that easily. In fact, the research referenced above tends to support a much more difficult view. Barnes found that faculty them- selves contribute significantly to problems of non-participation. Would you like to venture a guess as to the percentage of class time faculty devote to questioning? Did you guess something close to 3.65%? That's the mean percentage reported in this research based on observations in 40 college classrooms. And no insti- tutional type gets credit for a significantly higher percentage -- not large or small public institutions, large private universities or small private colleges, But, you say, the percentage must vary by discipline. Some fields rely much more extensively on questioning. One would think so, but that's not what this study found. The researcher compared faculty in humanities/social sciences/arts with faculty in science/engineering and the percentage of time spent questioning by each group failed to generate a statistically significant difference between the means. Well, you argue, certainly the percentage of questioning time must change with the course level. After all, students first learn basic content and then they discuss, apply, synthesize and evaluate in their more advanced courses. Sorry, but this study didn't find that. Actually, more questioning occurred in the beginning courses: 3.99% compared to 3.30% in advanced courses. Professors contribute to the problem of little participation by not spending any significant amount of time asking students ques- | tions. Is there a legitimate reason for that? Maybe professors have given up asking questions because students never bother to answer. We now have a chicken-egg dilemma on our hands. Who started it can't be determined, and maybe it doesn't matter. The cause-effect relationship as it now functions intensifies the problem. Students don't answer, so professors don't ask. But students can't answer if professors don't ask. However, the power of the teacher's position definitely puts him in a better place to do something about the problem than the students. Unfortunately, the problem gets complicated further by the kinds of questions faculty ask. Barnes' research used a eategory System that classifies the questions into five types: @ cognitive memory for recapitulative, clarifying and factual questions; @ convergent thinking for questions of translation, association, explanation and conclusion; e divergent thinking where questions asked students for responses that do things like elaborate, implicate and synthesize; e evaluative thinking in which answers must rate, judge and qualify, among other things; and e a catch-all category labeled routine for questions pertaining to classroom management, and rhetorical and humorous questions. sesseesnssnssaressssssssneemeemnneesmeenenees