EPSE teaching resources

Diagnostic questions - and how you might use them

What is a diagnostic question?
A diagnostic question (or task) is one which provides evidence of a learner's understanding of a specific idea. The pupil's response gives us reasonably clear evidence about whether he or she understands, or does not understand, this idea. Sometimes the question can also help us to diagnose what a pupil's difficulty is - why he or she is not giving the correct answer. If so, this may make it easier to respond effectively and help pupils move their understanding on.

1. You can use them for small group discussion activities. The idea is to get small groups to work together on a question, or several questions, and be prepared to explain and defend their answers in a whole class discussion afterwards.

   One approach is to get pupils first to write their own individual answer to a question. Then put them into small groups of and give each group a fresh copy of the question, perhaps enlarged to an A3 mini-poster size. The group has to review their individual answers and arrive at a group answer, which they write on this new copy. These can then be pinned up for the whole class to see, and you can have a class discussion about the groups' answers to the question - leading, hopefully, to agreement about the right answer.

   Another fruitful approach is to use several questions as a 'group quiz' - where each pupil group has to jointly decide on their answers, which are then compared with those of the other groups. This can be followed by class discussion of any questions where groups' answers differ - with the ones who got the answer right acting as 'explainers'.

2. Some diagnostic questions, such as those on electric circuits, can be used as the basis of practical exercises. A good way to design these is as Predict-Observe-Explain (POE) tasks. In a POE task, pupils are first asked to make a prediction, and then to try it out and see if they were right, and finally to explain what they have observed.

   POE tasks can be used as a 'normal' class practical (all groups doing the same one at the same time), or as a 'circus' of stations (with several set out around the classroom for groups to move round).

3. You could use one diagnostic question at the beginning of a lesson to get pupils thinking. For some topics, it may be possible to follow this up with a practical exercise to check out what the right answer is.

4. You could use one or two diagnostic questions at the end of a lesson, to help pupils identify the key points they should understand, and to let you check individual pupils' understanding of these.

5. At the start of a new topic, you might choose a few diagnostic questions on ideas the pupils should have learned when they last studied the topic, or on which the new topic builds - and check how well they remember these. This will help you to work out 'where they are' before you begin the new unit.

Diagnostic Question Sets

Electric circuits

• Electric Circuits: basic ideas
• Electric current
• Circuit behaviour
• Potential difference

Force and motion

• Identifying forces
• Forces and motion

Matter and chemical change

• Matter and change
• Particle model of matter

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