An Examination of Fifth- and Eighth-Grade Children's Question-Answering Behavior: An Instructional Study in Metacognition

Abstract

While it may be obvious that one's ability to answer a question is dependent upon the knowledge one possesses relative to the question's topic, less obvious, but equally important, is one's ability to access appropriate information sources in search of a correct answer. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a ten-week program designed to heighten fifth- and eighth-grade students' awareness of information explicitly stated in text, information implied by text, and information found only in the individual's knowledge base. In addition, the relative usefulness of prompting students to think of these three relationships between questions and sources of information was examined. Results indicated that while the training program was effective at both the fifth and eighth grades, the eighth-grade students benefitted as much from a 10-minute orientation to the concepts. Prompting students to use their knowledge of question-answer relationships was helpful in the fifth grade, but disruptive in the eighth.