ENGAGEMENT IN A SCIENCE CLASSROOM
66. WHY MANY CHEMISTRY TEACHERS FIND IT DIFFICULT TO ASK GOOD QUESTIONS
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66. WHY MANY CHEMISTRY TEACHERS FIND IT DIFFICULT TO ASK GOOD
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shown to short video sequences from a science classroom (taken from the 1999 TIMS-video study, www.timssvideo.com)). The first clip showed the review of the previous lesson, whereas the second clip showed the introduction of a new topic. The interviewees were asked to comment on the video
sequences with a focus on the questions asked. This technique was used to contextualise the interview questions and to trigger more concrete answers. Further, the interview contained questions about the teachers’ own questioning practice, types of questions they use, reactions to students’ answers, and what influenced the development of the teachers’ questioning practice.
The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. For the analysis, two researchers read the transcripts independently and formulated interpretations of the teachers’ answers. The interpretations were shared and alternative interpretations formulated. In case of differing views, we read the relevant material again and compared possible interpretations with other sequences of the interview until we agreed on the interpretations.
4 Results
The teachers in our sample talked mostly about whole-class situations. In these situations the teachers use mainly two types of questions: facts questions and thinking questions. Facts questions require students to reproduce knowledge which was addressed in previous lessons. Thinking questions on the other side require the use of knowledge, for example relating own experiences to a scientific concept or describing how a scientific phenomenon is imagined to function. Some teachers also mentioned
questions in group situations or with individual students focusing on students struggling with tasks. In these cases, teachers use heuristic questions (i.e. What is the problem? What do you know? How can that help you to solve the problem?) to help the students finding the solution on their own.
Teachers are aware of that they ask many facts questions. They wish to ask more thinking questions, but say that these are difficult to ask. The difficulty seems to be meeting the appropriate level of thinking challenge for the students. If the demand is too high and the students cannot answer, the classroom dialogue will no longer function.
Facts questions are easy to use (“they come naturally”). The most important reason is that teachers know which answers they expect, making it easy to ask exactly for that. Also students know that the teacher wants a specific answer which was given in previous instruction.
Our teachers mentioned mainly three reasons to ask questions to a whole class. One is to have a dialogue and involve the students in the lesson. This is to prevent students from becoming passive. The second is initiating thinking and by this moving forward the learning process. The last reason is assessing students’ knowledge.
The teachers mentioned different situations where it is useful to ask facts questions.
When starting a new topic, asking for what students already know helps the teacher to adjust the following instruction.
By asking for previously taught knowledge, teachers can establish what students have understood. This knowledge can be used to discuss issues requiring more thinking.
If a thinking question does not work, asking for the relevant facts actualises the factual knowledge that is supposed to be used to produce a new relation between the items.
4 Discussion and conclusion
The teachers in our study hold a two-type question category system that is simpler than most of the question category systems used in research. The system seems to be appropriate for an on-the-spot development of questions and for keeping a dialogue with the whole class going.
The described category system seems to be similar to the one developed by Nystrand (1997) which includes test and authentic questions. The test question seems to match with the facts question – both
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asking for known information – and the authentic question with the thinking question. However, Nystrand defines a test question to serve only one purpose, assessing knowledge, whereas facts
questions described in this paper can be used in different situations with varying purposes. An authentic question is defined by the answer a teacher is expecting, whereas our teachers’ thinking questions are characterized by the action that they are intended to trigger in the students. This shows that Nystrand’s system is more static, whereas our teachers conceptualise questions depending on their communicative function.
The current research found that teachers regard facts questions useful in different instructional situations. This indicates that a substantial change in the proportion of facts question cannot be expected to happen without a major change in instructional practices. Trying to promote student learning in whole-class situations requires teachers to ask questions for different and often conflicting reasons. Appropriate questions aim at recalling known facts and making rather obvious connections between experiences and topical scientific concepts. Hence, the communicative role limits the learning function of a question because more time demanding cognitive processes like developing ideas of how something functions or why certain phenomena are observed cannot take place. Such processes have to be initiated in a different instructional format and organizational form (i.e. group work to develop tentative explanations for a phenomenon). Instead of asking more thinking question in whole-class situations like it is recommended in the literature (Treagust & Tsui, 2014), the number of questions should be reduced in favor of exchanging the results and ideas from previous activities, discussing and evaluating the ideas, and planning further steps.
5 References
Carlsen, W. S. (1991). Questioning in classrooms: A sociolinguistic perspective. Review of Educational Research, 61(2), 157-178. doi:10.2307/1170533
Eshach, H., Dor-Ziderman, Y., & Yefroimsky. (2014). Question asking in the science classroom: Teacher attitudes and practices. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 23(1), 67-81.
Gall, M. D. (1970). The use of questions in teaching. Review of Educational Research, 40(5), 707-721.
doi:10.2307/1169463
Hannel, I. (2009). Insufficient questioning. Phi Delta Kappan, 91(3), 65-69.
Nystrand, M. (1997). Opening dialogue: Understanding the dynamics of language and learning in the English classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.
Stevens, R. (1912). The question as a measure of efficiency in instruction: a critical study of class-room practice. New York: Teachers college, Columbia University.
Treagust, D. F., & Tsui, C.-Y. (2014). General instructional methods and strategies. In N. G. Lederman & S.
K. Abell (Eds.), Handbook of research on science education (Vol. 2, pp. 303-320). New York:
Routledge.
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