Exploring the Nature and Role of Students’ Peer-to-Peer Questions During an In-Class Collaborative Activity

During group activities, instructors expect that students will ask each other questions. Therefore, in this study, we looked at the nature and role of peer-to-peer questions during an in-class activity. During the activity, students worked collaboratively to respond to five prompts about an acid–base neutralization reaction. We examined the questioning behavior in groups and the nature and types of questions asked. We then looked specifically at the content questions, analyzing how they varied by prompt, as well as the level of those content questions using Bloom’s taxonomy. Finally, we looked at the role that the peer-to-peer questions played as the students completed the activity. The results revealed that the students broadly asked each other social questions, process questions, and content questions, with content questions being the most frequently posed. The prompts that required students to make a prediction, sketch a graph, and explain their reasoning elicited most of the content questions asked. Furthermore, most of the peer-to-peer content questions asked across the five prompts ranked at the two lowest levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. Finally, the posed peer-to-peer questions were found to play many roles in the discussion, including initiating and sustaining conversations, seeking consensus, challenging each other, and promoting social metacognition. The implications for instruction and research are discussed.