Our Research

Cambridge Assessment’s Senior Research Officers Martin Johnson and Simon Child explain that for questions to work, they must be rule-bound and that questions are a powerful resource, but have to be carefully designed in order to fulfil their rich potential.

Victoria Crisp Senior Research Officer, Cambridge Assessment gives a number of examples of questions that could confuse learners or elicit the wrong response, explaining that students build up expectations about how they should answer questions.

Evelina Galaczi, of Cambridge Assessment English, addressed the role of technology in questions, saying that there was a tension – technology was both expansive but also reductive. She said technology can do some things teachers can’t, but teachers can also do things technology can’t, including interaction and higher order thinking skills such as evaluating.