Asking Better Questions: Models, Techniques and Classroom Activities for Engaging Students in Learning

George G. Ambury is an associate professor of adult education at
Queen’s University.

Two teachers set out to provide the definitive text on the use of
questioning in the classroom. Based on the belief that questioning is at
the heart of effective teaching, this book supports their thesis and
examines questions and questioning from virtually every possible angle.
The book starts by looking at, and rejecting, the Bloom and Krathwohl
taxonomies as a basis for organizing concepts and then moves on to a
taxonomy that the authors had previously developed. As if this were not
enough, a general classification of questions is then developed with
three categories and a total of 16 functions. Subsequent chapters deal
with how teachers might ask fewer, but more effective, questions and how
we might help students become the questioners. The emphasis on the
student as questioner is refreshing. The authors say that “learning
does not occur until the learner needs to know and can formulate the
questions for himself [sic].”

Asking Better Questions does get a bit tedious in its exhaustive detail
and lists of lists, but it has its strengths. It is replete with sound
tips, quotable quotes, and useful ideas. Concepts are carefully
described and illustrated by detailed, if traditional, sample lessons.
Further, the work reflects the accumulated wisdom and scholarship of the
authors’ many years of teaching experience.