The levels of interrogation of the Costa-project by the educational researcher Art Costa-ran three levels of questions designed to promote the thinking and investigation at a higher level.
Like Bloom’s taxonomyThe lower level of Costa encourages students to use more basic abilities; As students move up, questions encourage them to use more complex thinking skills. For decades of study of human resistance to d, Costa also identified 16 Mind HabitsA set of behaviors that support students in navigating the challenges that are common in school and life as a whole. Several of the 16 habits of Dr. Costa -thinking interdependent, innovation, data collection and application of past knowledge in new situations -both require and enhance higher levels of interrogation.
There is a significant amount of research that supports the scheme of Dr. Costa. Newman (1993) find that thinking of a higher order forces students to “manipulate information and ideas in ways that transform their meaning” and “expect students to solve problems and to develop meaning for themselves” which is aligned with constructivist view of educationS
Costa interrogation levels are usually illustrated using the metaphor of a three -storey house:
Level 1: Gathering
Level 1 questions require mainly students to work with “page” information. The answers to level 1 questions are usually literal; Meaning, the student can literally indicate the answer on a page.
We have written about Bloom’s Power Gerbs’ taxonomySo you can predict that Costa levels also have their own set of verbs of power. Here are some you can find at the beginning of level 1 questions:
- Define
- Describe
- Remember
- Label
- Determine
- List
- Observe
- Restart
- Rewriting
- Repeat
- Name
- Condition
- Remember
- Recite
- Find
- Select
- Match
- Display
Level 1 questions in the content area may look like these examples:
- Science: Label The parts of the animal cell.
- Mathematics: Recite The formula for finding the volume of cylinder.
- Social research: Match The name of the monarch in their respective country.
- English Arts Arts: Find The place in the story where the climax appears.
You can see how most of these levels of level 1 require students to recall information, which is an important skill in themselves. Nevertheless, teachers should strive for most of their questions to fall into level 2 or 3 that cause students to use higher-order thinking skills.
Level 2: Processing
Level 2 questions go step further from Level 1, prompting students to process information by “reading between the lines”. Although students may need to use literal information to formulate their answers, Level 2 requires them to process this information with what they already know in order to make new connections.
Here are some examples of levels of level 2:
- Compare
- Contrast
- Classify
- Sorting
- Distinguish
- Conclusion
- Analyze
- Separately
- Discrimination
- Combine
- Assemble
- Organize
- Suppose
Level 2 questions along the content area may occur in the following ways:
- Science: Compare The processes of mitosis and meiosis.
- Mathematics: Classify Geometric shapes according to their number on sides and angles.
- Social research: Assemble The following historical events in the order of importance, from most to the less.
- English Arts Arts: AnalysisThe impact that the author’s tone has on the overall meaning of the text.
Can you see how the questions from Level 2 go step further than level 1? More than just regenerating information, students accept it and “do something” with it. They categorize, make differences and compare it with another part to see how it affects the whole. These types of skills can stimulate curiosity and build a bridge to questions that really generate creativity and thinking at a higher level.
Level 3: Implementation
While level 1 questions encourage students to work with the introduction, and questions at Level 2 cause them to process this entrance to make new connections. Here students participate in the highest level thinking skills to create production. This can be the result of making evaluations and analysis, testing solutions to various problems or predictions.
We have included a few examples of verbs from level 3 below:
- Evaluation
- Summarize
- Construction
- Imagine
- Decide
- Creation
- Judge
- Analyze
- Forecast
- If/then
- Predict
- Percentage
- Justify
- Speculate
- Synthesize
- Construction
- Hypothesis
Level 3 questions along the content area may look like the following:
- Science: Based on data from the last decade of hurricane activity in the southeastern US, predict How the frequency of hurricane activity will change over the next ten years.
- Mathematics: Percentage The likelihood of a presidential candidate for winning the election based on providing electoral votes from the following states in the United States: Florida, California, Virginia, New York, Illinois.
- Social research: Creation A social compact that takes into account the effects of globalization and technological progress in the 21st century.
- English Arts Arts: Construction An argument that defends or disproves mandatory vaccination policies for employees in the United States.
Whether planning a discussion activities, project-based training or independent study, teachers should strive to orient most of the thinking and engagement of students at levels 2 and 3. Estimates that encourage students to recall basic facts (such as the date of a historical event or the name of the author or the formula) does not actually assess the ability of the student’s ability. The question of level 2 or 3 would cause students to connect with basic information. For example, instead of recalling a simple date, a more open question would ask students to predict, based on time in history that a specific event happened, the likelihood of repeating such a socially political atmosphere. In the same way, instead of recalling the names of famous authors, the teacher can challenge students to argue for how the author will write about a particular modern question.
In Talking with Teachers, James Baldwin described the paradox of education: “As one begins to become conscious, one begins to explore the society in which (they) are trained.” Level 2 (and mainly 3) questions are intended to encourage this type of reaction to students, make them tilt their heads, make double uptakes, indicate inconsistencies, violate the status quo, identify shortcomings in current institutions and create innovative solutions for these shortcomings. These are the questions that inspire us to come up with more questions, think about our thinking and develop – as individuals and societies.
