What is the most up-to-date research by Steven Pan and Shana Carpenter has to say about the use of prequestioning and pretesting

Prequestioning is the act of posing questions to students before delivering the lesson content.

For example, before reading a chapter together, you could provide students with several questions about characters and plot. Or, you could pose a few factual questions prior to watching a video.

Prequestioning, also known as pretesting, offers clear Formative Assessment benefits. Asking questions before instruction allows us to adapt that instruction to better focus on potential areas of challenge for students.

However, just as retrieval practice after learning has strong memory benefits, there is also evidence (from as far back as 1966 to the present day) that asking questions before learning can also aid memory.

A recent review of pre-questioning by Pan and Carpenter brings together the research on pre-questioning and offers some helpful recommendations.

Where can prequestioning work?

Firstly, it’s useful for us to see a few of the specific ways in which pre-questioning has been successful in real classrooms for a range of content, and a range of year levels. Here are some examples:

  • Word Recall in Elementary Reading: Lima and Jaeger (2020) conducted an experiment with upper primary students. Students were given a reading passage with missing words which they had to guess. After a week, prequestioned students could recall the words they had guessed more effectively than the control group.
  • Practical Procedure in Medical Training: Willis et al. (2020) explored the idea of “struggling first” in medical training. Medical students attempted a medical procedure before watching a tutorial video or vice versa. Those who tried the procedure before watching the video performed it more efficiently and with fewer errors in a post-test.
  • Aerospace Studies in an Undergraduate Course: Beckman (2008) tested the impact of prequestions in an undergraduate aerospace course. One group of students took pretests before each unit, while the other group did not. The students who took pretests outperformed their peers, scoring 9-12% higher on high-stakes tests at the end of each unit.
  • Climate Change in Online Courses (interesting outcome!): In a study by Janelli and Lipnevich (2021), students in an online climate change course were given prequestinos before each module. Interestingly, the results were mixed. Those who completed the prequestions were more likely to drop out of the course. However, among those who remained, those who did the prequestions performed better in the final exams than their counterparts who weren't prequestioned. This suggests that while prequestions in a longer course might demotivate some (perhaps they see their pre-test scores and think there’s just too much to learn?), they can also benefit those who stay engaged.

Further, both field and lab studies have found that prequestioning can work in a large variety of formats, from cued recall (a memory test with hints to aid retrieval), to short answer, fill-in-the-blank, and multiple choice.

Benefits might be understated

It's worth noting that the benefits of prequestioning, as described in existing literature, might be understated. This is suggested by the fact that the only research study to date that looked at different retention intervals for prequestioning, work by Kliegl et al. (2022), found that the benefits of prequestioning were greatest after a 1 week delay test, compared to when participatns were tested after 1, or 30 minutes.

A challenge: Student attitude towards mistakes

One challenge of pre-questioning is that students may resist it because they generally like to avoid learning strategies the involve them making errors (Pan et al., 2020). What really surprised me was that in one experiment by Huesler & Metcalfe (2012, Experiment 2), even when students were prompted to reflect on their results from prequestioned and non-prequestioned word pairs and could see they performed better with the prequestioned pairs, they still ranked prequestioning as less effective than pre-reading!

Sometimes we just need to spell it out for our students.

That is, in fact, what the evidence suggests.

Two studies emphasized the importance of explaining the advantages of prequestioning to students. In Yang et al. (2017), after being introduced to the concept of “errorful generation,” participants showed increased appreciation for prequestioning, but weren't entirely persuaded. Conversely, Pan and Rivers (2023) found that giving students feedback on their initial results led them to favor pretesting more in later rounds. The main insight: Clearly explaining the benfits of prequestioning, and providing feedback can significantly steer learners towards an appreciation of the benefits of pretesting.

Summary

In sum, prequestioning has been successfully used in a variety of contexts, from primary school students filling in blanks in a reading passage to medical students learning procedures and even aerospace courses. The aforementioned research indicates that prequestioning can enhance memory retention. Moreover, the benefits of prequestioning might be even more pronounced over longer timescales, such as with more delayed testing. As long as we supplement our prequestioning with an explanation to students of the why, prequestioning is a promising strategy to try out in the classroom!

Announcements and Opportunities

Instructional Coaching Intensives with Ollie Lovell and Josh Goodrich

Some real edu movers and shakers are now booked in to come to our Steplab Instructional Coaching Intensives. In Perth we have crews from Serpentine PS, Challis Community Primary School, and Hammond Park Secondary College! In Melbourne, David Morkunas is going to be coming along, and both Brendan Lee and Simon Breakspear are now confirmed for Sydney!

Book in now for a one day masterclass in how to be a world class instructional coach. Find out more, and book, via the following links:

P.S.: Use the code ‘edthreads10' to get a 10% discount. This offer is valid until September 1st and is exclusive for EdThreads subscribers. 🙂

Science of learning, reading, and writing masterclass

In August and September I’ll be teaming up with Peps Mccrea and Daisy Christoulou to present a science of learning, reading, and writing masterclass coordinated by Lyn Stone. This is a rare opportunity to hear from myself, Daisy, and Peps all in one go over six weeks.

Peps will be talking about, ‘The science of motivation: how can we boost attention and effort in school’

Daisy is covering, ‘The science of writing: what does research & assessment tell us about teaching writing?’

And, for the first time, I'll be delivering a live presentation on some key insights from Tools for Teachers, focusing on explicit instruction as well as reading and evaluating educational research.

Find out more and book here.

Other threads to pull on…

Quote

Success has been defined as the ability to go from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

David Guy Powers

Related