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| Questioning and Understanding to Improve Learning and Thinking (QUILT). A program designed to increase and sustain teacher use of classroom questioning techniques and procedures that produce higher levels of student learning and thinking. |
Audience All teachers, K-12, in all content areas.
Description The QUILT program helps teachers improve the quality of questions they pose to students in order to create a more reflective classroom environment. QUILT incorporates research that links effective questioning to student learning and thinking. From deciding what's worth asking to providing appropriate feedback, QUILT represents a comprehensive approach to enhancing student engagement in learning through questioning. QUILT challenges teachers to rethink the standard approach to teaching and learning, in which students are passive learners. Through the QUILT program, teachers help students understand how questioning and answering can help them learn, teach students effective questioning strategies and techniques, and help students become active learners. The program, implemented over the course of an entire school year, is led by a school team (ideally composed of teachers and at least one administrator) trained to facilitate the QUILT program. The program promotes collaborative working patterns in the school and classroom as participating teachers learn through interactive instruction, discussion with colleagues, reflection on current practice, demonstrations, practice with feedback from a colleague, and classroom application. QUILT addresses National Educational Goal 3.
Evidence of Effectiveness Results showed that after one year of participation, teachers significantly increased their knowledge and understanding of effective questioning practices, and significantly increased their use of discrete questioning behaviors in a classroom setting. Students responded significantly more often at higher cognitive levels.
Requirements Teachers: Participate in the three-day Induction Training; implement QUILT behaviors in the classroom, which includes teaching effective questioning behaviors to students; attend seven collegiums, during which teachers review, plan for classroom application, share, and solve problems; and observe and receive feedback from a QUILT partner after each collegium.
Local school trainers: Attend a one-week training and a two-day "booster," plan and conduct the three-day Induction Training for school faculty, lead seven collegiums, and facilitate teacher efforts to partner and implement QUILT in the classroom.
Costs Teacher materials: ($25/teacher); School materials: ($250 includes eight videotapes, 149 overhead transparencies, and other materials); Trainers: ($625/person covers registration costs, including materials, for a weeklong training plus a two-day booster; additional costs are necessary to support the travel, room and board of local school trainers). Optional costs may include off-campus training facility, substitute teachers for partnering, stipends to school trainers, etc.
Services Awareness materials available at no cost. In addition to complete training and materials, program staff offers monitoring of program effectiveness and a newsletter for adopters. Technical assistance is available from staff (toll-free telephone). One national training for local teams is held in Lexington, KY the third week of June; additional trainings can be negotiated.
Developmental Funding: U.S. ED Regional Educational Laboratory Program
PEP No. 94-14 (5/1/94)
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