they should be able to collect and
interpret all the student responses
in 30 seconds or less. This can be
achieved through using finger voting;
ABCD cards; dry-erase boards; or
digital technologies, such as electronic
voting systems or smartphones. The
technology used is far less important
than the quality of the question.
PRINCIPLE 3. On the basis of
student responses, decide
whether to go forward or back.
Having to make such a quick decision
about student understanding seems
challenging at first, but that’s largely
because we educators are used to a
process called data-driven decision
making. We collect the data and then
figure out what we’re going to do with
the information—and that can take
time.
With a hinge question, the process
is more like decision-driven data collection. The teacher doesn’t need a lot
of time to decide what to do with the
data collected because the decision has
already been identified. It’s simple—
either to go on or go back. The teacher
collects just enough just-in-time data
to make that decision.
If the responses indicate that most
students have understood well enough
the matter at hand, the teacher may go
on, although he or she may arrange to
talk to some students individually at
a later point. If the responses indicate
that few students have understood, the
teacher is likely to review the material,
perhaps dealing specifically with misconceptions revealed by the student
responses.
When there are similar numbers of
correct and incorrect responses, the
teacher may either arrange for students
to discuss their responses with their
neighbors or conduct a whole-class
discussion. Because the teacher knows
who has answered correctly and
incorrectly, he or she can draw certain
students into the discussion at certain
times, leading to better organized and
more coherent classroom discussions.
For example, the teacher might first
ask a few of the students who thought
A was the correct response for the
reason for their choice, and then ask
some of those who chose B for their
reasons, and so on.
Some people point out that you can’t
conclude much from a single question.
Those who construct tests note that
you typically need at least 30 questions
to get a reasonably reliable score for a
student. This is true, and it would be
a valid criticism of the idea of a single
hinge question—if teachers were going
to make high-stakes decisions on the
basis of students’ responses.
But the decision here is not high-
stakes. More important, the teacher
is trying to make a decision about
the needs of the whole group, not of
individual students. If the response
of a student to a 30-item test pro-
vides a reasonable basis for drawing
conclusions about that student, then
the responses of 30 students to a
single question probably provide a rea-
sonable basis for drawing conclusions
about that class.
PRINCIPLE 4. Design hinge
questions that elicit the right
response for the right reason.
Hinge Questions with Distractors
When teachers make a judgment about
whether students have understood
something, they can make either of
two mistakes: They can conclude
that students haven’t understood
something when, in fact, they have,
or they can conclude that students
have understood something when, in
fact, they haven’t. These two kinds of
mistakes differ greatly in their ramifications. Assuming students do know
something when they actually don’t (a
false positive in researchers’ jargon) is
far more serious than assuming they
don’t know something when, in fact,
they do (a false negative).
We have to take great care in
designing hinge questions so students
don’t get the correct answer for the
wrong reason. This is perhaps the
most important property of a good
question. After all, if students with
Assuming students do know something
when they actually don’t is far more
serious than assuming they don’t know
something when, in fact, they do.
