Questioning and Teaching: A Manual of Practice

Questions and questioning play a major role in both formal and informal educative processes. They are the means by which a child expresses the desire to understand the world outside and they subsequently become the means by which a teacher assesses whether or not a child has satisfactorily assimilated something. The teacher can also use questions to direct and control the course of students’ studies. The ability and desire to question might be considered one of the aims of education.

First published in 1988, Questioning and Teaching is a thorough examination of the place of questioning in education. It considers questions from the point of view of the questioner and that of the person getting questioned and it considers pupil and teacher in both roles. It is grounded in theory, research, and practice, and it is informed by the theory of, and research into questions in other fields including psychotherapy, criminal interrogation and computer science.

J.T. Dillon is Professor Emeritus in the School of Education at the University of California, Riverside. His research interests include conceptions of teaching, questioning and discussion processes, and philosophy of education.