How to guide effective student questioning: a review of teacher guidance in primary education

Although the educational potential of student questions is widely acknowledged, primary school teachers need support to guide them to become effective for learning the curriculum. The aim of this review is to identify which teacher guidance supports effective student questioning. Thirty‐six empirical studies on guiding student questioning in primary education were analysed. Four emergent themes for teacher guidance of effective student questioning were identified in the data: first, guiding effective student questioning requires confident teachers, who create a supportive classroom culture for question generation and acknowledge the potential in students’ initial questions; second, defining a conceptual focus supports teachers in aligning student questions to curricular goals; third, organising collective responsibility for the question process in the classroom fosters effective student questioning; and fourth, teacher guidance is supported when the process of questioning is visualised on a collective platform.