What Are Costa’s Ranges Of Questioning?


Costa’s Ranges of Questioning — designed by academic researcher Artwork Costa — characteristic three tiers of questioning designed to advertise higher-level pondering and inquiry.
Much like Bloom’s taxonomy, Costa’s decrease stage prompts college students to make use of extra fundamental schools; as college students transfer up in ranges, the questions immediate them to make use of extra complicated pondering expertise. By means of a long time of analysis on human resilience, Dr. Costa additionally recognized the 16 Habits of Thoughts, a set of behaviors that help college students in navigating the challenges that usually happen at school and life, normally. A number of of Dr. Costa’s 16 habits — pondering interdependently, innovating, gathering information, and making use of previous data to new conditions — each require and reinforce greater ranges of questioning.
There’s a substantive quantity of analysis that helps Dr. Costa’s schema. Newmann (1993) discovered that higher-order pondering compels college students to “manipulate data and concepts in ways in which remodel their which means,” and “expects college students to unravel issues and develop which means for themselves,” which aligns with a constructivist view of schooling.
Costa’s Ranges of Questioning are sometimes illustrated utilizing the metaphor of a home with three flooring:


Degree 1: Gathering
Degree 1 questions primarily require college students to work with data ‘on the web page.’ Solutions to stage 1 questions are sometimes literal; which means, a pupil can actually level to the reply on a web page.
We’ve beforehand written about Bloom’s Taxonomy energy verbs, so you possibly can predict that Costa’s ranges have their very own set of energy verbs, as nicely. Listed below are a couple of that you simply may discover at first of Degree 1 questions:
- Outline
- Describe
- Memorize
- Label
- Determine
- Record
- Observe
- Restate
- Rewrite
- Repeat
- Identify
- State
- Recall
- Recite
- Find
- Choose
- Match
- Present
Degree 1 questions by content material space may appear like these examples:
- Science: Label the components of an animal cell.
- Math: Recite the components for locating the quantity of a cylinder.
- Social Research: Match the title of the monarch to their respective nation.
- English Language Arts: Find the place within the plot the place the climax happens.
You possibly can see how most of those Degree 1 energy verbs require college students to recall data, which is a crucial talent in its personal proper. Nonetheless, lecturers ought to try for almost all of their inquiries to fall in Degree 2 or 3, which problem college students to make use of higher-order pondering expertise.
Degree 2: Processing
Degree 2 questions go a step additional than Degree 1, prompting college students to course of data by ‘studying between the traces.’ Whereas college students might have to make use of literal data to formulate their responses, Degree 2 requires them to course of that data with what they already know with a view to make new connections.
Listed below are some examples of Degree 2 energy verbs:
- Evaluate
- Distinction
- Classify
- Kind
- Distinguish
- Infer
- Analyze
- Separate
- Discriminate
- Mix
- Assemble
- Arrange
- Suppose
Degree 2 questions by content material space may present up within the following methods:
- Science: Evaluate the processes of mitosis and meiosis.
- Math: Classify the geometric shapes in keeping with their variety of sides and angles.
- Social Research: Assemble the next historic occasions within the order of significance, from most to least.
- English Language Arts: Analyze the affect that the writer’s tone has on the general which means of the textual content.
Are you able to see how Degree 2 questions go a step additional than Degree 1? Greater than merely regurgitating data, learners take it and ‘do one thing’ with it. They categorize, make distinctions, and examine/distinction it towards one other half to see the way it impacts the entire. These sorts of expertise can stimulate curiosity and construct a bridge to the questions that actually generate creativity and higher-level pondering.
Degree 3: Making use of
Whereas Degree 1 questions immediate college students to work with enter, and Degree 2 questions problem them to course of that enter with a view to make new connections. Right here, college students have interaction within the highest-level pondering expertise to create an output. This might outcome from making evaluations and analyses, testing options to varied issues, or making predictions.
We’ve included some examples of Degree 3 energy verbs under:
- Consider
- Generalize
- Assemble
- Think about
- Determine
- Create
- Choose
- Analyze
- Forecast
- If/then
- Predict
- Price
- Justify
- Speculate
- Synthesize
- Construct
- Hypothesize
Degree 3 questions by content material space may appear like the next:
- Science: Primarily based on information from the final decade of hurricane exercise within the southeast U.S., predict how the frequency of hurricane exercise will change within the subsequent ten years.
- Math: Price the chance of a presidential candidate successful the election primarily based on securing the electoral votes from the next U.S. states: Florida, California, Virginia, New York, Illinois.
- Social Research: Create a social compact that considers the consequences of globalization and technological development within the twenty first century.
- English Language Arts: Construct an argument that defends or refutes obligatory worker vaccination insurance policies in the US.
Whether or not planning for discussion-based actions, project-based studying, or impartial inquiry, lecturers ought to try to orient the vast majority of pupil pondering and engagement at Ranges 2 and three. Assessments that immediate college students to recall fundamental details (such because the date of a historic occasion, or the title of an writer, or the components for an equation) don’t actually assess college students’ capability to use new expertise or data to new contexts. A Degree 2 or 3 query would problem college students to make connections with fundamental data. For instance, as a substitute of recalling a mere date, a extra open-ended query would ask college students to foretell, primarily based on the time in historical past {that a} explicit occasion occurred, the chance of it recurring, given an identical sociopolitical ambiance. Alongside the identical traces, reasonably than recalling the names of well-known authors, a instructor may problem college students to make an argument for a way an writer would write a couple of explicit trendy difficulty.
In “A Discuss to Lecturers,” James Baldwin described the paradox of schooling: “As one begins to turn out to be acutely aware, one begins to look at the society by which [they] are educated.” Degree 2 (and primarily, stage 3) questions intention to foster this sort of response in college students, to trigger them to tilt their heads, do double-takes, level out discrepancies, disrupt the established order, establish flaws in present establishments, and create modern options for these flaws. These are the questions that encourage us to provide you with extra questions, to consider our pondering, and to evolve — each as people and societies.


