Improving Teacher Questioning in Science

Oliveira, A. (2010). Improving Teacher Questioning in Science Inquiry Discussions through Professional Development. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 47(4), 422-453. doi 10.1002/tea.20345

Background

There is growing evidence in the science education literature that school teachers commonly have difficulties interacting with students in inquiry-based instructional settings. Such interactional difficulties indicate that many science teachers are unprepared to effectively cope with the social and cognitive demands of inquiry teaching.

Aims

The study investigated what social understandings elementary teachers develop as a result of being introduced to scholarly descriptions of inquiry-based teacher questioning and how the introduction influenced the teachers’ classroom oral practices during a two-week summer institute.

Sample

The participants included 15 K-6 teachers who taught all subjects, including science, in eight different public schools from one district in Indiana.

Method

Descriptive data were systematically collected through classroom observations and video-recordings of professional development activities, and then analysed inductively to build a naturalistic account of teachers’ social understandings and inquiry-based questioning practices.

Findings

Examination of video-recordings led to the identification of four main themes in teachers’ social understandings. The findings were presented under the following categories:

• The Functions of Teacher Questions
  Participants identified several cognitive functions typically served by teachers’ questions, including assessing students’ prior knowledge and emergent understandings as well as guiding and focusing students’ thinking. However, participants proposed only one social function for teachers’ questions: to encourage student participation in classroom interactions.

• Teachers’ Intentions
  Questions asked by most teachers tended to serve beneficial cognitive purposes such as to make students aware of their science misconceptions, help students recognize limitations in their understandings, encourage them to rethink and re-evaluate their conceptions, and take intellectual risks.

• Teachers’ Sincerity
  Having become aware of students’ default interpretation of teacher queries as display questions, teachers can change their epistemic questioning practices in ways that encourage students to interpret their oral queries as referential questions.

• Student Engagement
  Teacher questioning can in fact have a negative interactional effect on some students, inhibiting their participation and discouraging them from sharing their thoughts. However, teachers’ queries can have a positive social effect if students are provided with a more supportive and less threatening classroom context in which to come up with answers (e.g., small groups).

Implications

The researchers state that as a result of being introduced to scholarly descriptions of inquiry-based teacher questioning, teachers developed an increased awareness of the authoritative functions of display questions, intentionality conveyed by teacher questions, sincerity conditions of questioning, and the potential effects of teacher questions on student engagement.

Original article retrieved from Wiley Online Library.