Exploring relationship between students’ questioning behaviors and inquiry tasks in an online forum through analysis of ideational function of questions

Abstract

In this study we explored questioning behaviors among elementary students engaging in inquiry science using the Knowledge Forum, a computer-supported collaborative learning tool. Adapting the theory of systemic functional linguistics, we developed the Ideational Function of Question (IFQ) analytical framework by means of inductive analysis of the questions found in 10 online forums contributed by three classes of Year 4 elementary school students and their teachers. We found 25 categories of questions which we grouped into three main kinds: Scientific, Epistemological, and Meta-discoursal. We then narrowed our analysis to three forums involving digestive systems. Using the IFQ framework, we explored the relationship between nature of inquiry task and students’ questioning behaviors. Our analysis shows that for close-ended task that sought scientific facts from authoritative sources, students tended to ask only scientific questions. For open-ended problem-solving task that demanded epistemic justification from the students, there was more even distribution in all three kinds of questions.

Introduction

This study is situated at the nexus of recent developments in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) and science education, or more specifically, computer-supported collaborative knowledge construction (Cobos and Pifarre’, 2008, Scardamalia and Bereiter, 2006) and research on students’ questions as a discourse move in inquiry science (Chin and Osborne, 2008, Penick et al., 1996). Several studies focusing on collaborative knowledge construction supported by network computers have appeared in recent issues of Computers and Education (see Cobos and Pifarre’, 2008, Schellens and Valcke, 2006, Suthers et al., 2008). In this study, we adopted knowledge building pedagogy (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006), which focuses on engaging students in investigating problems of a scientific nature by means of collaborative effort. The aim of such collaboration is to engage students in continually improving their ideas. This collaborative process among students is facilitated by an asynchronous online discussion forum called the Knowledge Forum. One issue that intrigued us was the strategies used to encourage and engage student discussion that would lead to improvement in students’ ideas (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006) in the asynchronous online environment. That led us to the investigation on discourse moves, in particular, the roles of questions in online discussion. The ability to ask questions, which we termed questioning literacy, is also an important component of scientific literacy (Hofstein, Navon, Kipnis, & Mamlok-Naaman, 2005). This need for students to acquire the skill of scientific questioning is heightened in the 21st century where the impact of science and technology is felt practically in every aspect of our lives. From this perspective, questioning constitutes an essential skill for one to make well-informed personal and social decisions in a modern technological world (Millar, Osborne, & Nott, 1998).

However, there is a paucity of research investigating questioning behaviors in online asynchronous learning environments and focusing on the roles of students’ questions for idea improvement in a knowledge building environment. This study aims to contribute to these areas of research by investigating the ideational functions of students’ questions posed in the Knowledge Forum so as to provide an empirical measure of the diversity of scientific ideas that are being sought as part of the knowledge building approach.