November 16, 2025 | Up to date November 15, 2025
What’s the definition of a ‘good query’?
We frequently say to at least one one other, ‘That’s a very good query,’ by which we normally imply, ‘I don’t know the reply’ or ‘I had not but thought to ask that but it surely appears price asking.’
We are able to start to outline a very good query by looking at its reverse. A query could be ‘unhealthy’ for quite a few causes. A query is just a technique (for inquiry) and should due to this fact have a objective or intention if we wish to consider its high quality.
(I’ve puzzled concerning the Purpose Of A Question earlier than which I included in our Guide To Questioning In The Classroom).
It should have some type of aim.
So most broadly, a query might be stated to be ‘unhealthy’ if it both doesn’t have a objective or intention or doesn’t accomplish that aim or intention (whereas additionally failing to trigger another impact that was unintended however nonetheless in some way constructive).
A nasty query could be stated to be so if it’s irrelevant, imprecise, or makes use of unclear language.
A nasty query will obscure relatively than reveal what a scholar is aware of now.
Additional, a foul query will deter relatively than encourage–or permit and promote–a scholar to create new data.
A query could be considered unhealthy if it, utilized in formative evaluation, yields no useable (formal or casual) information {that a} trainer can use to revise deliberate instruction.
Thus requested, a foul query stops each the trainer and scholar chilly with no clear and sensible path ahead.
A nasty query intimidates, confuses (although not all confusion is unhealthy), or in some way causes a jarring emotion that makes the scholars capability to make use of their cortex as successfully as they’d in a calmer state.
It might be based mostly on defective premises, it might be loaded with cognitive biases, logical fallacies, or different irrational patterns of pondering.
It might be outdoors of the Zone of Proximal Improvement for the individual it’s requested to (i.e., too simple or too troublesome).
It will not be too troublesome (by way of content material data) however its language or syntax might be unnecessarily advanced. The end result right here is that the coed will get the query ‘incorrect’ despite the fact that the ‘knew the content material.’
As we’ve clarified, a query is just a method for studying. A software. You may, then, consider a ‘unhealthy query’ like a ‘unhealthy software’: it merely doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do.
In schooling, this normally implies that it fails to facilitate/promote studying within the short-term and/or long-term for the coed.
A superb query, after all, is completely different. Whereas (principally) ignoring the nuance of the idea of high quality, there are some issues we’d think about usually qualify a query nearly as good (observe the purposely obscure language–some issues…may think about…usually qualify).
A superb query–on a check, for instance–will likely be environment friendly and exact relative to its objective. If a selected educational normal the trainer desires to evaluate the coed’s mastery of, the query must be written in a approach that does precisely that: assesses their mastery of precisely that normal.
As we’ve mentioned, it won’t have ‘fats’–pointless phrases, overly advanced vocabulary, or require different (pointless, unrelated, or nonetheless unlearned) data or abilities. Actually, a query can have such language and require data or abilities unrelated to the particular normal being assessed offered that the trainer understands this–and thus understands that the coed could get the query ‘incorrect’ whereas doubtlessly nonetheless mastering the usual.
See? It’s difficult.
Conventional schooling has lengthy held that we must always assist college students study and so they can finest show they’re studying by answering questions precisely. However answering questions precisely can’t probably be the aim of schooling, solely a method itself in pursuit of a bigger aim.
The only standards to guage the standard of a query, then, could be this: a very good query helps college students study and discover ways to study in a sustainable, inquiry-based, student-led approach. In its highest carnations, a foul query facilities itself as a type of educational bar for the coed to leap over to show themselves.
At its worst, a foul query halts the method of studying completely by way of confusion, imprecision, and discouragement, deceptive each the trainer and scholar as they make their approach by way of the educational course of. (See additionally What Is The Cognitive Load Theory?)
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