This week I have done a few different work-related projects. I am involved in my town’s superintendent search and we had finalist interviews this past week. This past week I worked on a briefing with EarthJustice on a toxic exposure (DecaBDE) declaration to make sure that children’s toys are safe so that appropriate neurodevelopment can take place—this is a part of the Learning Disabilities Association’s Healthy Children’s Project Initiative. I also have been writing a literature review regarding academic questioning in classrooms. My post this week will focus on this literature review as I prepare to code 220 teacher preparation programs qualitative data on academic questioning.
The quantitative data completed by Teacher Preparation Inspection-United States (TPI-US) on preparing teacher candidates with effective academic questioning techniques shows that 67 % of teacher preparation programs receive a need improvement or inadequate rating; the teacher preparation programs need to strengthen how they teach this skill. The research that I am doing is looking at the qualitative data that TPI-US has and indicate patterns and trends that lead to certain ratings (there rating framework includes the categories: strong, good, needs improvement, and inadequate). In doing this, I am also looking at the fidelity of team inspector scoring. To ground myself in preparing to do this research, however, I first need to start with the literature on academic questioning. Questioning is the most common communicative behavior used in teaching. Teachers ask as many as 300 to 400 questions in a day, which can be one-sixth to one-tenth of all classroom interactions (Levin & Long, 1981; Dunkin & Biddle, 1974). Questioning can be used for varied purposes including: checking learning, probing thought processes, posing problems, challenging thinking, and eliciting varied viewpoints and solutions. Some researchers argue it is the most important aspect of teaching that promotes learning in students. I then paired different teaching philosophies with the types of questions that are asked. For example, with a behaviorist teaching philosophy, questioning is used as a way to check the transfer of knowledge from the teacher to the student. This puts the teacher as the giver of knowledge and the student as a passive learner. In the cognitivist model, the focus of questioning changes from a transfer of knowledge at a recall level to helping the students process learning and make meaning of new information and make sense of the world. While in a social constructivist’s model, questioning is used to help students build on prior learning and therefore requires teachers to know each individual student’s current developmental level to ask appropriate questions. In just this abbreviated version of the literature review I started, I began to question if the questions I am asking in my university courses match my philosophy of teaching and leading. Since I am an over-planner, I could go back and look at all the PowerPoints that I created and see what types of questions I have embedded in them. To do this question justice, however, I would also want to have my class recorded to see how many questions I had to rephrase, how I rephrased them, and what types of questions that I ask to supplement my already planned material. This analysis of teaching would let me see how many questions I am asking of my students and how many are simple recall question vs. more convergent or divergent questions. I know, as an instructor, I currently do not step outside of my teaching to call attention to the question types I am asking and why I am asking them. I need to do this to draw attention to the importance and purpose of questioning. This simple act would begin to improve pre-service teacher’s understanding of questioning. One easy way I know that I could do this is at the beginning of each class when I ask students prior knowledge questions. Instead of just asking these questions, I could explicitly state that I am asking these recall questions because these types of questions are a way to review material, assess comprehension, and determine if students are prepared to learn new content. Being explicit about the purpose of questioning and question types asked by instructors at the university level is the foundation needed to then help pre-service teacher build this skill. I will have another post on how to scaffold this skill (academic questioning) into the K-12 classroom in a meaningful way—so we, as a teaching profession in the United States, can move beyond asking procedural or recall questions (which 80% of questions in the U.S. are) to questions at different processing levels to help all learners advance their knowledge and get excited about learning. Dunkin, M. J. & Biddle, B. J. (1974). The study of teaching. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston Levin, T. & Long, R. (1981). Effective instruction. Washington, D. C.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
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February 2023
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