Types of questions
There are various types of questions that may be utilized depending on whether or not you want a convergent or divergent response, lower cognitive level or higher and depending on what your learning objectives are.
Convergent questions
are used when there is an expected or correct answer based on what has been taught or what is in a textbook. For example, according to our textbook, what are the benefits of clarifying your personal philosophy on teaching? Convergent questions may expect the student to repeat some conventional wisdom.
Divergent questions
will lend themselves to having a variety of answers. Therefore it has more than one acceptable answer. For instance, what are your thoughts on tailoring your teaching to different learning styles? Divergent questions often require new, creative insights” (Cashin, 1995, p.6).
Educators tend to ask a lot knowledge questions, however in order to utilize the full power of questions, there are higher cognitive level questions to tap into.
In selecting questions to meet learning objectives, one way to develop questions is using Bloom’s taxonomy, which examines questioning at six levels of cognitive processing.