Student questioning: What does questioning reveal about prior knowledge, historical reasoning and affect?

Students ask historical questions when they are engaged in historical reasoning and trying to understand a particular historical phenomenon. Student questioning can be regarded as the engine and a destination of historical reasoning. This study is aimed at deeper insight into thinking processes underlying students’ historical questions using a general model of questioning and a domain-specific model of historical reasoning. Thirty-three secondary school students were instructed to read a text and underline striking text segments. At the point of underlining, students were asked to verbalize their thoughts. In our protocol analysis we focused on the questions students spontaneously asked while verbalizing their prior knowledge, reasoning, and feelings. It appeared that in half of the 251 analyzed fragments (episodes) students verbalized an extent of historical reasoning and expressed feelings. Questions were mostly asked when students expressed a knowledge deficit, but spontaneous questions were also present in episodes with historical reasoning and episodes with affective responses. All components, activating prior knowledge, realizing a knowledge deficit, historical reasoning and experiencing affective thoughts, help students to ask their questions and help them to process the introduction into a historical topic.