their review period. The results were
striking. Students who’d been taught
to use self-questioning techniques
answered an average of 88. 7 percent
questions correctly if they reviewed
in a group and 81. 7 percent if they
reviewed independently. This compared with average scores of 72. 8 and
64. 2, respectively, for untrained students who had reviewed in groups or
independently.
King’s positive findings have
been replicated with many other
groups of students. Pate and Miller
(2011), for example, applied King’s
ideas with high school vocational
students and found training in self-questioning boosted student scores
on a test about electrical circuits by,
on average, 10 percentage points. A
synthesis of 20 years of research on
strategies for teaching 4th and 5th
graders with learning disabilities found
that teaching self-questioning was
one of the most effective techniques
(Wanzek, Wexler, Vaughn, & Ciullo,
2010).
One such approach, called TWA
(Think before reading, think While
reading, think After reading) had a
positive effect size of .99 on students’
abilities to assess main ideas, summarize, and retell narratives—an
almost unheard-of result in education
research (Mason, Snyder, Sukhram,
& Kedem, 2006). Similarly, in Spain,
an experiment that taught students
with learning disabilities to engage
in self-questioning to activate prior
knowledge, clarify new words, and
identify main ideas helped them outperform a control group by an effect
size of 3. 46 (Miranda, Villaescusa, &
Vidal-Abarca, 1997)—another tremendous effect size.
Of seven strategies that the National
Reading Panel’s 2000 review of studies
on reading comprehension identified
as effective, two reflected student self-
questioning—“comprehension moni-
toring, where readers learn how to be
aware of their understanding of the
material” and “question generation,
Health and Human Development,
2000, p. 15).
An Intervention That Sticks
One striking aspect of these studies
is the limited training time required
to produce large, lasting results.
In King’s study, for example, the
intervention lasted 90 minutes. In
Pate and Miller’s study, students
viewed a self-regulatory checklist,
learned how to use it, and practiced
using it with assistance from the
teacher—a small investment of time
to boost achievement by 10 percent
(a full letter grade). Self-questioning
techniques also appear to support
knowledge retention.
Even more striking, perhaps, the
technique itself seems to stick with
students. In a second round of King’s
experiment, a teacher delivered a
lecture with no prompts about self-questioning. Students who were
taught the self-questioning technique
demonstrated higher levels of comprehension on a test of this new material.
Similarly, the TWA and Spanish
studies found that the positive effects
persisted for three weeks and two
months, respectively, after the initial
intervention.
In short, once students learned how
to actively engage in self-questioning,
they appeared to internalize the
strategy—which might begin a vir-
tuous circle. As students become better
learners, they begin to see themselves
as better learners, which, in turn,
inspires greater confidence and
engagement. As they begin to focus the
voice in their heads, they replace self-
doubt, distraction, and anxiety with a
calm, reassuring voice that says, I can
do this. EL
References
Harris, D. (2014). 10% happier: How I
tamed the voice in my head, reduced stress
without losing my edge, and found self-help that actually works—A true story.
New York: HarperCollins.
King, A. (1991). Improving lecture comprehension: Effects of a meta-cognitive
strategy. Applied Cognitive Psychology,
5( 4), 331–346.
Mason, L. H., Snyder, K. H., Sukhram,
D. P., & Kedem, Y. (2006). TWA +
PLANS strategies for expository reading
and writing: Effects for nine fourth-grade students. Exceptional Children,
73( 1), 69–89.
Miranda, A., Villaescusa, M., & Vidal-Abarca, E. (1997). Is attribution
retraining necessary? Use of self-regulation procedures for enhancing
the reading comprehension strategies
of children with learning disabilities.
Journal of Learning Disabilities, 30( 5),
503–512.
National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development. (2000). Report
of the National Reading Panel: Teaching
children to read: An evidence-based
assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications
for reading instruction. Washington, DC:
Author.
Pate, M. L., & Miller, G. (2011). Effects
of regulatory self-questioning on
secondary-level students’ problem-solving performance. Journal of Agricultural Education, 52( 1), 72–84.
Wanzek, J., Wexler, J., Vaughn, S., &
Ciullo, S. (2010). Reading interventions
for struggling readers in the upper elementary grades: A synthesis of 20 years
of research. Reading and Writing, 23( 8),
889–912.
Bryan Goodwin ( bgoodwin@mcrel.org)
is president and CEO of McREL, Denver,
Colorado. He is the author of The 12
Touchstones of Good Teaching: A
Checklist for Staying Focused Every Day
(ASCD, 2013). Heather Hein (hhein@
mcrel.org) is a communications consultant at McREL.
A large body of
research suggests that
good questions are
most important within
the private world of
students’ minds.