En studie av vilka utgångsfrågor elever i skolår 3-6 ställer när de ska arbeta med ett samhällsorienterande eller naturorienterande ämne. Studien visar vilka frågetyper som är mest frekventa och också på skillnader mellan pojkars och flickors frågor. / This is an essay about questions, asked by pupils 9-12 years old when they started a work in science or history or when they were going to practise information literacy. It shows different kinds of questions and how they are connected with different aspects of knowledge. It also deals with the difference between questions asked by boys and questions asked by girls.

This study examines what kinds of questions teachers and students ask during science lessons in three primary schools in Sweden. The study is based on the following questions: What kinds of questions do the teachers ask? How do the teachers describe the question asking behavior they use in the lessons? How do the teachers follow up students' answers? What kinds of questions do the students ask and how do teachers handle these inclass? This is a qualitative study based on interviews of four primary school teachers and observations of their Science lessons, covering topics as the solar system, electricity and the lives of the magpie and the squirrel. The theoretical frame of the study is social constructivism, which focuses on how knowledge is constructed in the social context of the classroom through language and other semiotic means. The questions asked by teachers and students are classified into two levels (high-order and low-order questions) based on Bloom's taxonomy. The results of the study shows that teachers mostly ask low-order questions during these lessons and that they ask three times as many questions as the students. In lessons where more “abstract” topics were discussed, such as the solar system, the low-order questions were more frequently asked by the teachers. The students asked questions when they were “invited” to do so and they asked more high-order questions during lessons where “abstract” topics were discussed.