Questioning as Thinking: A Metacognitive Framework

Metacognition, or "thinking about thinking," is the process of monitoring and regulating cognition. In classroom settings, monitoring and regulating both require students to be active learners as they engage in challenging tasks. When students engaged in metacognition monitor, they are checking their understanding; when they regulate, they choose appropriate strategies for improving understanding (Schraw, 2002). In other words, students monitor comprehension by assessing their progress toward learning goals, and they regulate by making decisions about strategies to help them achieve performance tasks. As students become aware of their own thinking, or metacognition, they are better able to determine how to locate the information they need to craft a response or determine whether their responses make sense. Helping students understand their own thinking enables them to become better learners (Costa, 1991). As they engage in metacognition, students are focused on active learning and performance. Focusing on performance is a key to successfully motivating and teaching middle grades students. Performance goals help students develop a stronger sense of self-efficacy, a construct strongly related to academic achievement (Midgley, Anderman, & Hicks, 1995). The purpose of this article is to present Questioning as Thinking (QAT), a metacognitive framework that helps teachers and students focus on performance. QAT combines components of three widely-used strategies: Think-Alouds, Question Answer Relationships (QAR) (Raphael, 1986), and Self-Questioning. Together, these three strategies give students and teachers the language and processes for explicitly monitoring and regulating cognition. In addition, students and teachers engage in active learning when they implement these strategies, which may lead to improved student performance and achievement. The article describes QAT and its benefits, using vignettes from two middle grades teachers, Jennifer and Barbara (pseudonyms are used for all names), who implemented the framework in their classrooms. Introducing Questioning as Thinking (QAT) Barbara, a seventh and eighth grade science teacher, and Jennifer, a seventh and eighth grade language arts teacher, team-teach in a rural Midwestern middle school. They are also members of the school leadership team and have worked together to improve literacy across the content areas at their school. Barbara and Jennifer see learning as something that requires reasoning, flexible thinking, problem solving, and reflection (Rice & Dolgin, 2005), and they understand that early adolescence is a time of great intellectual growth during which students benefit from active learning experiences (Kellough & Kellough, 2008). Barbara and Jennifer had wanted to find a metacognitive framework that would guide their students in becoming active learners who think about text, and they found Questioning as Thinking (QAT). QAT is a metacognitive framework that allows teachers and students to actively incorporate strategies for asking and answering questions. In the first vignette, Jennifer is modeling active reading for her students using QAT (Figure 1). She has created a learning environment in which students are encouraged to take on challenging tasks, process deeply, and focus on performance so that they can feel good about themselves as students as they become independent thinkers and learners; her students are engaging in metacognition (Midgley, Anderman & Hicks, 1995). Notice how Jennifer shares her thinking about the text with students as she asks questions that monitor and regulate her thinking. Questioning is an effective place to begin metacognition instruction because it is a daily part of the school experience (Neufeld, 2005). Teachers ask students questions to assess comprehension of text, lecture, and hands-on experience. The application of different types of questions leads to the implementation of different metacognitive strategies. …