November 16, 2025 | Updated November 15, 2025
What is the definition of a “good question”?
We often say to each other: “That’s a good question”, which usually means “I don’t know the answer” or “I haven’t thought about asking this question, but it seems worth asking”.
We can begin to define a good problem by looking at its opposite. A problem can go “bad” for a number of reasons. A question is just a strategy (For Inquiry) Therefore, there must be a purpose or intention if we want to assess its quality.
(I want to know purpose of question Until then I incorporate it into our Classroom Questioning Guide).
it must have some kind of Target.
So, from the broadest perspective, if a problem doesn’t Purpose or intention or fails to achieve that goal or intention (and also fails to cause some other unexpected but still positive effect).
A question is a bad one if it’s irrelevant, imprecise, or uses unclear language.
A bad question obscures rather than reveals what students know Now.
Furthermore, a bad question can prevent rather than encourage—or allow and facilitate—students to create new Knowledge.
A question may be considered poor if it is used for formative assessment but does not produce usable (formal or informal) data that teachers can use to modify planned instruction.
Asked this way, a bad question can leave both teachers and students feeling cold and without a clear and practical path forward.
A bad question can frighten, confuse (although not all confusion is bad), or elicit a dissonant emotion in a way that allows students to use their cerebral cortex as effectively as they would in a calm state.
It may be based on false premises and may be filled with cognitive biases, logical fallacies, or other irrational thought patterns.
It may be outside the zone of proximal development (i.e. too easy or too difficult) for the person being asked.
It may not be too difficult (in terms of content knowledge), but its language or grammar may be unnecessarily complex. The result is that students get the question “wrong” despite “knowing the content.”
As we have clarified, questions are just a learning strategy. a tool. Well, you might think that a “bad problem” is like a “bad tool”: it simply doesn’t have the desired effect.
In education, this usually means that it fails to promote/facilitate student learning in the short and/or long term.
Of course, a good question is different. Although the conceptual nuances are (mostly) ignored qualitythere are some things we might think that generally define a problem as good (note the intentionally vague language –some things…may consider…Generally eligible).
A good question (for example, in a test) will be efficient and precise relative to its purpose. If a teacher wants to assess a student’s mastery of a particular academic standard, the questions must be written in a way that does exactly that: assess their mastery of that standard.
As we discussed, it won’t have “fat” – unnecessary words, overly complex vocabulary, or requiring other (unnecessary, irrelevant, or yet to be learned) knowledge or skills. Of course, a question can have such language and require knowledge or skills that are unrelated to the specific standard being assessed, provided the teacher understands this, and therefore understands that students may answer the question “wrongly” while still potentially mastering the standard.
look? it’s complicated.
Traditional education has long held that we should help students learn, and that they can best demonstrate that they are learning by answering questions accurately. But answering questions accurately cannot be the goal of education, but merely a strategy in itself in pursuit of a larger goal.
The simplest criterion for assessing question quality, then, might be this: A good question helps students learn and learn how to learn in a sustainable, inquiry-based, student-led way. In the best carnations, a bad question presents itself as an academic hurdle for students to jump over to prove themselves.
At its worst, a poorly written question can completely halt the learning process through confusion, imprecision, and frustration, misleading both teachers and students about their performance in the learning process. (see What is cognitive load theory?)
