The Magic and Dangers of Prequestions.
education exchange
Paul Kirschner is a world-renowned Professor of Educational Psychology. In this blog, Paul brilliantly dissects a recent article in 5 short paragraphs. Despite the brevity, he manages to extract a multitude of meaning from one bit of research. I could not hope to do his work justice, so if you have a few minutes spare, do read his blog. However, I have tried to summarise his points below:
- Pre-questions are questions given to pupils before an activity that relate to what they are about to study
- Giving pupils pre-questions before watching a video increases outcomes compared to watching the video by itself.
Why do prequestions work?
- There was no evidence that prequestions increased pupil focus (it actually went down for some pupils).
- The authors argue that the prequestions activate an existing mental model to which the pupils attach the new information.
What are the dangers of prequestions?
- Paul points out that the danger of prequestions is that it benefits those who already have a large amount of prior knowledge that they can attach the new information to.
- This is a strong argument for pursuing the knowledge-rich curriculum, where we want to develop a depth of knowledge in all our pupils. Like we do at Doha College.
As Paul puts it, “learning doesn’t float free from the curriculum. It lives or dies by what students already know” (Kirschner, 2026).
References
- Kirschner, P. (2026) ‘Back to the Future – Adjunct Pre-Questions’, Paul Kirschner’s Substack, 28 March. Available at: https://paulkirschner173727.substack.com/p/back-to-the-future-adjunct-pre-questions (Accessed: 19 May 2026).
- Motz, B.A., Chinni, A., de Leeuw, J.R. et al. (2026) ‘ManyClasses 2: The effects of prequestions on media interactions and learning’, Journal of Educational Psychology, 118(2), pp. 153–175. doi: 10.1037/edu0000978.
