Students generating questions, rather than simply answering teacher-provided questions, significantly promotes higher-order thinking within Bloom's levels of thinking. This practice moves students beyond basic recall and comprehension, engaging students in more complex cognitive processes essential for deeper learning and critical thinking.

Student-generated questions align with higher-order Bloom's levels:

Analysis Thinking

• To formulate a question, students must first analyze the course material. This involves breaking down concepts or ideas into their constituent parts and understanding the relationships among those parts. 

• To accomplish this, a student must differentiate between relevant and irrelevant information to pinpoint what needs further inquiry., examine the content to identify underlying themes, problems, or connections that warrant questioning and infer what might be implied but not explicitly stated, leading to questions that probe deeper meaning.

• The very act of formulating a novel question is an act of creation. Students are bringing together parts of knowledge to form a new whole or building relationships for new situations. This involves: Generating new ideas or lines of inquiry that weren't explicitly provided, devising a way to approach a topic through an original question, and formulating a new query that integrates their understanding and analysis of the content.

Moving toward Analysis Thinking

• Students engaging in question generation may evaluate existing information or the validity of certain ideas to construct a meaningful question. This requires making judgments based on criteria and standards.  Students might: Assess what information is most important or what gaps exist in their understanding, Critique the completeness or clarity of a topic, leading them to ask clarifying or challenging questions, or Prioritize which aspects of a topic are most critical to question, based on what would enhance their understanding or address a problem.

While teachers traditionally ask most classroom questions (80-90% of the time, focusing on lower-order recall initially, later reduced to about 70%), research indicates that asking too many lower-order questions can actually impede learning. To encourage higher-level learning, higher-order questions are necessary, especially those based on real-world experiences, which prompt critical thinking and make learners more likely to apply what they've learned.

When students engage in the process of generating complex questions themselves, they are actively practicing and developing the cognitive skills of Application, Analysis, and Evaluation, which are crucial for deeper understanding and problem-solving.

Processes that naturally lead to students asking analytical questions:

• Ask students to break down a concept or idea into its constituent parts to understand the relationships among them. 

• Provide opportunities for students to examine concepts and ideas, requiring them to explain their reasoning. This process naturally leads students to formulate their own questions, such as:

  • How can I classify these different parts?

  • What explanation do I have for this phenomenon?

  • How is this idea connected to that one?

  • What is the underlying problem here?

• Provide opportunities for students to assemble knowledge using creative thinking and problem-solving, requiring them to combine concepts to build new ideas, leading to student questions such as:

  • How can I design a solution to this problem?

  • What would happen if I combined these different ideas?

  • How would I devise my own way to deal with this situation?

  • What new uses can I create for this concept?

• Encourage students to invent a new product, design a robot to perform a task, develop a menu for a new restaurant, or write a TV show/play/song about a topic, requiring them to generate questions as they conceptualize and plan.

• Have students use Venn Diagrams to compare and contrast topics

• Students can design questionnaires to gather information, to survey classmates and analyze the results

• Students may conduct investigations to produce information to support a view

• Students may evaluate an issue, event, or text by generating evaluative questions to make informed judgments about the value of ideas or materials, using standards and criteria to support their opinions and views

• Students can prepare and conduct debates

• Students can write persuasive speeches arguing for or against a topic, 

• Create a list of criteria to evaluate something

• Prepare a case or argument to present their viewpoint

• Encourage students to invent a new product, design a robot to perform a task, develop a menu for a new restaurant, or write a TV show/play/song about a topic are all activities that require them to generate questions as they conceptualize and plan.

By engaging students in activities that demand these higher-order cognitive processes, teachers naturally prompt them to generate their own questions. This approach moves students beyond mere content recall and into the "Master Level" of thinking, which involves high application and analysis. The emphasis on higher-order questions, especially those based on real-world experience, helps students apply what they've learned and fosters critical thinking.