Helping Children and Their Parents Ask Better Questions: An Intervention Study

Abstract

The article develops an argument about the role parents can play in teaching preschool children to generate their own questions. Informing parents about the importance of questions for learning, and giving them the chance to practice their use, has benefits for children and parents. Using shared reading between children and their parents as an intervention context, this study aimed to not only inform parents about questioning but also help them serve as models for children's questions. Data were collected through a questionnaire to parents, interviews with parents and children, and observation of children's questioning behavior in the classroom. The results suggest that parent questioning behavior can affect the frequency and the types of questions children ask by serving as a model for them. The intervention also provided parents with the opportunity to view for themselves the benefits of question asking for children's thinking and learning and to reflect on their questioning style.