Characterization of questions in textbooks of Natural Science in Chilean Primary Education

Abstract

Asking questions is a frequent activity in the teaching and learning processes. Its promotion is an important task in classrooms both in oral and written contexts. In accordance with the above, this work reports the results obtained in an investigation of the dimensions of the cognitive process demanded by the questions formulated in Natural Science textbooks for Chilean Primary Education students. It was an investigation with a quantitative method, in which the types of questions were classified according to the dimension of the cognitive process the students were demanded. The taxonomy of Anderson and Krathwohl (2001) was used as a basis, in order to evaluate the questions in current textbooks, specifically, in content and in the proposed didactic activities. We worked with the total of questions corresponding to 1256. Among the findings, a highlight was that the questions contained in Natural Science textbooks promote the most elemental dimension of taxonomy, recalling information and, to a lesser extent, the higher cognitive dimensions: creating, evaluating and applying. It should be noted that there are no statistically significant differences among the demands of the questions asked in the texts in the different courses studied.