BY Phil Jose
An important aspect of teaching in any profession, including the fire service, is student participation. Everyone has experienced the fire service instructor who keeps a classroom intellectually stimulating and every student engaged in the learning process. Conversely, you have also been in the “death by PowerPoint” class with the instructor reading from a seemingly never-ending list of bullets. One of the most effective ways to get, and keep, your students engaged is to ask questions.
There you are in the front of the room with all eyes on you as the “subject matter expert.” You want the students engaged and invested. You want them to be entertained and enlightened. You want the class to be successful in transmitting information so the students can use it in their lives. One of the best ways to accomplish all of these goals is to ask questions.
BENEFITS TO INSTRUCTORS
Asking questions benefits the instructor in many ways. Asking a question begins to build a relationship with each of the students. When you demonstrate that each student brings value to the classroom, the students are more likely to buy into your ideas and solutions. Recognize that the combined subject matter expertise in the room probably exceeds yours. Each student may have only a piece of the puzzle. You have a nearly complete picture. By asking the students to give up their piece so that others may see the picture more clearly, they demonstrate value to you, the other students, and themselves. When you provide this opportunity, a bond of trust begins to build. Students see by your action how you will treat them if they offer an opinion and, seeing the positive nature of the interaction, they are increasingly more likely to engage.
Asking questions gives you a sense of how engaged the students are in your presentation. It also lets you evaluate the degree to which they are grasping the concept you are presenting. If you are doing an effective job of getting your vision into the head of your students, they should be able to take that new information and relay it back to you in answer to your questions. If for some reason you are not getting your ideas across, you can adjust your techniques or approach to be more effective. When you ask questions, whether directed at the entire class or directly to an individual student, you can look at your audience and see if their eyes are “on” or if they have begun to drift. If the students are drifting, you need to re-engage them by asking questions.
Asking questions improves your understanding of the topic. As mentioned before, as the instructor, you probably have the most complete picture in the room. As an instructor, you should be actively discovering ways in which your picture is incomplete. For a great instructor, there is always one more approach, one more piece of information, one more idea that bears consideration. Pieces that fit neatly into your presentation add significant value to you and the class overall. Even pieces that do not fit, that are blurred, or that are otherwise faulty can be useful to an engaged instructor. Each idea offered from a student gives you the opportunity to see your picture more clearly or to make your vision crisper in the mind of the student.
Asking questions allows you to customize your lesson to the students’ abilities. When you begin a class by seeking to understand what your students already know, you can then adjust your presentation to meet the needs of the group. Within the lesson plan, you can tailor your talking points to meet the needs of the students right from the beginning of the class. As the class proceeds, you are consistently taking the pulse of the class to ensure that the pace of instruction is matching the pace of student understanding. A dynamic instructor can use such information to skip over material students already understand or to review material that has not quite reached the audience. This is the reason it is important for the instructor to have a significant grasp of the curriculum and a high level of subject matter expertise.
BENEFITS TO STUDENTS
So far, we have been considering the advantages provided to the instructor through the practice of asking questions. The other side of the discussion is to consider the advantages provided to the student when the instructor takes a questions-based approach to teaching. The most important advantage is that a questions-based approach leads to improved comprehension. An old adage states, “Tell me and I forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I understand.” The instructor who asks questions involves the student in the learning process.
Asking questions keeps the students mind “in the game” of learning. Several approaches to questioning make this statement work. When you ask a question of the group, each person begins to formulate his own response. Given enough wait time, each student will think through the material and develop an answer. When you call on a student to give an answer or when a student volunteers an answer, you have one possible answer for group consideration. Each student now has an opportunity to evaluate the answer provided. Is it the same as their answer? Where is it similar? What are the differences? What parts of the lesson support or contradict the answer given? Students will automatically begin to evaluate the provided answer immediately. This evaluation deepens their understanding of the topic at hand as well as provides more discussion opportunity within the class.
Asking questions gives students an opportunity to participate. People like to be part of a group. They like to demonstrate expertise and knowledge. They like to provide value and to be valued. The process of asking and answering questions helps meet all of these students’ needs and objectives. The important part of this benefit to the students is that you, the instructor, foster an environment where people feel safe to contribute and understand that their ideas will be valued and given proper consideration. Even an idea that is flawed can add value to the group. Your task is to make sure that every student has an opportunity to be a valued part of the process.
Asking questions helps the student understand that they are responsible to be a part of the learning process, the class, the group. When an instructor questions the student body, includes their ideas, and increases the group’s expertise, students buy in to being involved in their own learning. A regular practice of questioning your own assumptions and valuing the approach of others improves a student’s ability to learn. This applies not only in the classroom today, but this approach can improve that student’s ability to learn in other endeavors as well.
Asking questions begins to build bridges between tidbits of information. When students actively entertain your questions, they are required to examine the information you provided. They also access their entire databank of other ideas and beliefs. They begin to weigh the relative value of this information to develop a response to your question. Through this process, they are building shortcuts to information that will make it easier to access the information in the future. These shortcuts grow clearer, or are destroyed, based on the foundation established in the information given. Ideas based on sound information that tie into the student’s established belief system develop quickly. Conversely, ideas that challenge previous assumptions may exist on a narrow and unstable mental bridge unless they can be reinforced quickly. Classroom dialogue sparked with a question can help the instructor identify who has strong agreement with the subject and who may disagree. Often, the biggest value for the group is to explore the parts of an idea where there is disagreement.
The modern fire service instructor is a leader at the front of the room. Understanding why you should ask questions while teaching will improve your overall performance as an instructor. More importantly, learning to ask a better question helps your students learn more effectively.
BIO
PHIL JOSE is a battalion chief with the Seattle (WA) Fire Department. He is a nationally recognized instructor for air management and tactical decision-making, the author of the Air Management chapter for Fire Engineering Handbook for Firefighter 1 and 2, and coauthor of Bread and Butter Operations–SCBA. He is a co-recipient of the FDIC Tom Brennan Training Achievement Award.
