The Effect Of Explanation And Reward On Children’s Questioning Quality

Preschoolers are naturally curious and inquisitive,always eager to explore new things.With the development of language and cognitive skills,children use questioning as one of the tools for independent exploration and active learning.Through questioning,children can increase their initiative and motivation,develop cognition,consolidate knowledge and experience,and enhance creative and divergent thinking.However,current research has found that preschoolers generally ask fewer and lower-quality questions.Domestic and international research on young children’s questioning is more of a status quo survey and lacks exploration of how to improve the quality of young children’s questions.In addition,it is still unclear what educational approaches,based on teachers,children,and physical materials,can be used to more effectively improve the quality of children’s questioning.To this end,this study made use of explanations and rewards commonly used in education and teaching,combined teachers,children and material materials,and studied the questioning quality of 180 children aged 5-6 in senior class.A completely randomized experiment design of 3(no explanation,children’s explanation,teachers’ help to children)×2(no reward,with reward)was adopted to explore the influence of different types of explanations and rewards on the quality of children’s questioning.The results are shown as follows:(1)Explanations were more helpful than rewards for older children to ask higher quality questions.(2)Both child explanations and teacher-assisted explanations facilitated higher-quality questioning in older children compared to no explanations.However,there was no significant difference in the quality of children’s questions between children’s explanations and teacher-assisted explanations.(3)There was no significant effect of reward on the quality of children’s questions.Based on the above findings,a series of discussions were conducted to examine the differences in the effects of explanations and rewards and the reasons for them,and the following educational recommendations were made:(1)establish a correct view of children’s questioning and enhance children’s awareness and experience of questioning;(2)grasp the time to improve the quality of questions and give children the opportunity to explain on their own;(3)strengthen the help for children’s explanation during the whole process of children’s questioning;(4)correctly view the influence of rewards on children’s questioning and reduce the use of material rewards;and(5)carry out a variety of teaching and learning activities to improve children’s cognitive ability.