Teacher Level of Questioning and Problem Solving in Young Children

Abstract

Middle‐ and upper‐class three‐ and four‐year‐old children were exposed to three consecutive five‐week treatment conditions during the naturalistic setting in a half‐day laboratory nursery school program. During the first treatment condition, the teacher emphasized low‐level cognitive questions; during the second, high‐level cognitive questions; and during third, low‐ level cognitive questions. The children significantly increased their scores on two verbal problem‐solving tasks following exposure to high‐level cognitive questioning and significantly decreased their scores on the same tasks following exposure to low‐level cognitive questioning.