The Skillful Teacher

The Critical Incident Questionnaire
In this section I want to describe in detail one particular instrument
for finding out how students are experiencing their learning and your
teaching. This instrument—the Critical Incident Questionnaire—
is the one that has most helped me see my practice through students’
eyes. The Critical Incident Questionnaire helps us embed our teach-
ing in accurate information about students’ learning that is regularly
solicited and anonymously given. It is a quick and revealing way to
discover the effects your actions are having on students and to find
out the emotional highs and lows of their learning. Using the 
Critical Incident Questionnaire gives you a running commentary on
the emotional tenor of each class you deal with.
The Critical Incident Questionnaire (referred to from this point
on as the CIQ) is a single-page form that is handed out to students
once a week at the end of the last class you have with them that
week. It comprises five questions, each of which asks students to
write down some details about events or actions that happened in
the class that week. Its purpose is not to ask students what they
liked or didn’t like about the class, though that information
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inevitably emerges. Instead students are requested to focus on spe-
cific events and actions that are engaging, distancing, confusing, or
helpful. Having this highly concrete information about particular
events and actions is much more useful than reading general state-
ments of preferences.
The form that students receive has a top sheet and a bottom sheet
divided by a piece of carbon paper. This allows the student to keep a
carbon copy of whatever she has written. The reason I ask them to
keep a copy is because at the end of the semester they are expected,
as part of their assigned course work, to hand in a summary of their
responses. This summary is part of the end-of-course participant learn-
ing portfolio that documents what and how students have learned
during the semester. The portfolio item dealing with the CIQ asks for
a content analysis of major themes that emerged in students’
responses over the semester. It also asks for a discussion of the direc-
tions for future learning that these responses suggested. Consequently,
students know it’s in their own best interests to complete these ques-
tionnaires as fully as possible each week because they will gain credit
for an analysis of them later in the term.
The CIQ takes about five minutes to complete, and students are
told not to put their name on the form. If nothing comes to mind
as a response to a particular question, they are told to leave the
space blank. They are also told that at the next class I will share
the group’s responses with them.
The questions are:
At what moment in class this week did you feel most engaged
with what was happening?
At what moment in class this week were you most distanced
from what was happening?
What action that anyone (teacher or student) took this week did
you find most affirming or helpful?
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What action that anyone took this week did you find most puz-
zling or confusing?
What about the class this week surprised you the most? (This
could be about your own reactions to what went on, something
that someone did, or anything else that occurs.)
As they leave the room, I ask students to leave the top sheet of
the critical incident form on a chair or table by the door, face down-
wards, and to take the bottom carbon copy with them. After I have
collected the CIQ responses at the end of the last class each week,
I read through them looking for common themes. For a class size of
thirty to thirty-five students, this usually takes about twenty min-
utes. I look for comments that indicate problems or confusions,