What is Biology? or What is economics?
These questions, although they may seem reasonable when introducing new contento to students, I think they have little perceived value in the eyes of students.
It seems to me that students, by habit, already know that the teacher really isn´t looking for answers...
Students know that the question has an answer, an answer that will be given to them by the teacher at some point...
Students know, with almost complete certainty, that any answer they offer up, won´t be exactly what the theacher is going to write on the board, or put on the screen...
Students know, that if they stay quiet long enough, the teacher is going to have to give them the answer to move onto the next point, which is why many don´t even bother to try answering the question... ( a situation totally contradictory of how the real world works, where people won´t hang around to give you answers, before quickly finding someone else to solve their problems)
In that instant, students switch into "sponge mode", ready to consume any type of information without really questioning any of it...
In that instant, they are transformed from individual thinkers into some kind of automaton, which will make getting them to answer future question even that much more difficult after having established that there is a limit to which they can influence the course of their learning...
Without knowing it perhaps, the teacher has hacked away at the student´s desire to learn, which many, or many, had in abundance at the begining of the class or semester...
If first impresions really are important, then students look forward to a long and unmotivating semester, motivated only by the acquisition of the necessary grade to get over the class and forget what the hours, minutes and seconds they suffered through...
Although posing these kinds of questions is 1 way of getting students to participate, asking questions that have little relevance to their daily lives is probably not a recomendable strategy...
Maybe asking questions such as, What do you know about Biology, or Have they ever come into contact with any content relating to this topic? be it a movie, a book, an article or documentary could help in relating the subject to the students, demonstrating how the subject is directly related to their "big picture" of how the world works...
In a world characterized by life styles that are increasingly more active, noone has the time or interest in responding to questions when they know that the person asking the them already has the answer they´re looking for.
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