Beth A. Herbel-Eisenmann

Teachers pose a variety of questions to their students every day. As teachers, we recognize that some questions promote deeper mathematical thinking than others (for more information about levels of questions, see Martens 1999, Rowan and Robles 1998, and Vacc 1993). For example, when asking, “Is there another way to represent or explain what you are saying?” students are given the chance to justify their thinking in multiple ways. The question “What did you do next?” focuses only on the procedures that students followed to obtain an answer. Thinking about the questions we ask is important, but equally important is thinking about the patterns of questions that are asked.

When viewing videotaped examples of his classroom teaching, Anthony, a veteran ninth-grade teacher, was surprised that he focused more on the students' responses than on the students' thinking. For example, he realized that he was not asking questions to understand what or how the students were thinking but rather to test their knowledge.