Abstract  Introduction  Discourse  Interventions   - Approaches   - Leading Q's   - Non-leading Q's   - Paraphrasing   - Summarizing   - Listening  Decisions  Cylinder Problem  Lesson Reflections  Student Predictions  Project Reflections  Conclusion  References  Acknowledgments  Teacher Resources Authors' Biographies Table of Contents VIDEO CLIPS: Internet access via modem may mean very long download times for video clips. If you are not on a fast line, you may want to read this paper without viewing the clips. share your thoughts, ideas, questions, and experiences; read what others have to say.		On direct examination, a lawyer is not allowed ask a witness a leading question because the court wants testimony to come directly from the witness, not from a lawyer through his questions. Likewise, in the classroom the goal is for the student to do the thinking. Non-leading questions leave the field completely open and invite student participation in the conversation. They put the responsibility for thinking clearly in the hands of the students. We think that context determines whether a question is non-leading. Our emphasis is on facilitating student thinking, rather than simply extracting information. When John McKinstry's students bring up the concept of circumference, John follows up with what, in this context, is a non-leading question: "Why is circumference important?"   [view clip] More typically, non-leading questions look like these: "How did you get it?" "What are you thinking?" "Why are you asking that question?" "Can you explain why you did it this way?" "Why does this work?"

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