Examining the Background of Student Questions

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the questions generated by elementary and secondary school students during 2018-2019academic year. The study was conducted with 2,100 students from 2nd grade to 8th grade who live in different provincesof Turkey. They were asked to generate at least 1 and at most 4 questions about the Legend of Shahmaran in Anatoliaas Turkish class activity, and they generated a total of 7,174 questions. The questions were grouped according to thequestion classification of Paul and Elder (2016) as type 1, type 2, type 3, and false questions. The research was designedas a case study, which is one of the qualitative research methods, and the data were analyzed by content analysis method.The results indicated that the students asked more single-answer questions and they were knowledge questions; they didnot ask high-level questions that could be answered by reasoning. The most questions were produced by the 2nd, 3rd,and 4th grade students and the least questions were produced by the 8th grade students.