Stimulating situational interest and student questioning through three types of historical introductory texts

This study investigates questions students ask related to an introductory text about a new topic in the history classroom. The effects of a narrative, problematizing, and expository introductory text on the situational interest of students and the number and type of student-generated questions, are compared. Participants are 174 students in higher secondary education (16 years old). Student-generated questions are categorized in higher -and lower-order questions, in descriptive, explanative, comparative and evaluative questions, and in emotive and non-emotive questions. The type of introductory text had a significant effect on the level of situational interest and type of questions but not on the number of generated questions. Narrative and problematizing texts provoked more situational interest and more emotive questions than the expository text. We found a significant positive correlation between prior topic knowledge, interest in History, situational interest, and number of questions