Zhang, Z. and Lamb, M. orcid.org/0000-0003-2899-6877 (2024) Teachers’ Questioning Practices in Chinese Secondary Biology Classrooms. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education. ISSN 1571-0068
Abstract
Across the curriculum, the questions that teachers ask in class direct learners’ attention to key subject matter, and shape what they learn. This paper examines the types of questions that Chinese school Biology teachers ask, and considers how and why they vary their questioning in the context of scientific practices. Six teachers from four schools in Xi’an City in mainland China took part. Three lessons were observed for each teacher, followed by interviews in which teachers were asked to focus on specific teaching episodes and explain their questioning. Findings reveal that teachers’ questions were mostly closed-ended, but in certain types of lessons their questions were more open and they used questions to manage class discussion. Teacher questioning is affected by personal beliefs, institutional working practices, and external policy shift, and teachers experienced tension in navigating between these factors. The results have important implications for policy and practice; for example, teacher educators need to recognize the complexity of teacher questioning and encourage teachers to discuss the challenges associated with asking more open questions, while policy-makers need to acknowledge the impact their decisions can have at the classroom level.
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Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Scientific Practices; Teacher Questioning; Teacher Tension |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Education (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 07 Nov 2024 10:50 |
Last Modified: | 07 Nov 2024 10:50 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Springer Nature |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10763-024-10500-3 |
Related URLs: | |
Sustainable Development Goals: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:219308 |
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