Classroom Questioning in the First-Year of University: An Examination of Teacher’s and Students’ Practices

Author(s):

Luísa Ribeiro Trigo(presenting / submitting)Pedro Rosário

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 13 A, Teaching, Learning and Assessment in Higher Education

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-05

11:00-12:30

Room:

B020 Anfiteatro

Chair:

Mariana Gaio Alves

Contribution

Higher education institutions are being challenged to move to a student-centered approach that promotes students’ agency and autonomy, as well as high levels of thinking skills (Pedrosa-de-Jesus, Lopes, Moreira, & Watts, 2012). Classroom questioning can be identified as a key factor in the response to this demand, transforming students in active learners rather than passive receivers of information (Whittaker, 2012). Questioning represents a noteworthy part of teaching and interaction (Chin, 2006) with significant impact in students’ cognitive engagement, depending on questioning patterns (e.g., questioning level and complexity of the questions) (Smart, & Marshall, 2013). Thus, questioning skills of teachers and students are of most relevance.

In different levels of schooling, almost all the studies emphasize the lack of higher-order questions and the predominance of factual or recall-type questions, as well as procedural questions. The concern lies on the weak stimulation of the higher cognitive processes of the students and of their critical reasoning skills.

Literature in this domain has highlighted the importance of teachers’ and students’ questioning, although the majority of the studies have been focused on teachers’ questioning, to the detriment of students-generated questions (Whittaker, 2012). Furthermore, the joint analysis of questioning practices of both the actors in the teaching and learning process has received limited attention, especially at university.

The current study tries to expand upon existing literature, examining simultaneously the use of questioning by the teacher and their students, analysing the match between teacher’s and students’ practices. Plus, there is a vast literature about questioning in specific domains such as science teaching, EFL teaching or nursing education, but less attention has been given to human and social sciences area, such as law. This paper analyses the ways a university teacher and their first-year students use questions during lectures and practical lessons, in a law undergraduate degree.

Method

One male university teacher and forty-seven first-year students (23 women, 24 men) enrolled in a law programme in a private university in the north of Portugal participated voluntarily in this study. Data were collected in a particular academic subject (AS) that belonged to the scientific area of the law programme. Four lectures and four practical lessons were observed and audio recorded. Students made a written test between the second lecture/practical lesson and the third lecture/practical lesson. The duration of the classes ranged between 60 and 71 minutes (M = 65.63, SD = 4.14). The number of students attending the classes ranged between 24 and 39 (M = 33.38, SD = 4.60).

Expected Outcomes

All the content related questions posed by the teacher correspond to lower-order questions, namely remembering and understanding, which correspond to the first two categories of revised Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al, 2001). Questions posed by the students are also lower-order questions, showing consistency between the types of questions posed by the teacher and by the students. The existing literature points what we could denominate a “mirror effect”, highlighting the role of modelling that teachers exert on their students. Examining the total number of questions asked by the teacher and by the students, we can conclude that in this study the teacher is still the real protagonist in the use of classroom questioning, being responsible for 86.9% of the questions. These findings are congruent with earlier studies developed in this area (e.g., Albergaria-Almeida, 2010) pointing to the paucity of students’ questions and to the centrality of the teacher in the teaching and learning process in the first year of university, in the Bologna era. These findings, while limited, can lead us to some implications. There is a need for experiences that promote meta-teaching processes in university teachers, allowing them to explore their perceptions about student-centered learning, student classroom participation and questioning functions and practices. Higher education institutions will benefit from efforts that promote a high quality level questioning in the classroom, both by the teacher and by the students, promoting complex cognitive processes in the construction of knowledge (Smart, & Marshall, 2013). Teachers need to have in mind which cognitive processes they want to elicit in their students (Chin, 2006) and learners must learn to ask their own questions (Albergaria-Almeida, 2010). Thus, more research is needed about how to promote good question-asking skills in both teachers and students.

References

Albergaria-Almeida, P. (2010). Questioning patterns and teaching strategies in secondary education. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2, 751–756. Anderson, L.W. (Ed.), Krathwohl, D.R. (Ed.), Airasian, P.W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.E., Pintrich, P.R., Raths, J., & Wittrock, M.C. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Complete edition). New York: Longman. Chin, C. (2006). Classroom interaction in science: Teacher questioning and feedback to students' responses. International Journal of Science Education, 28(11), 1315-1346. Pedrosa-de-Jesus, H., Lopes, B. S., Moreira, A., & Watts, M. (2012). Contexts for questioning: Two zones of teaching and learning in undergraduate science. Higher Education, 64, 557–571. DOI 10.1007/s10734-012-9512-9 Smart, J. B., & Marshall, J. C. (2013). Interactions between classroom discourse, teacher questioning, and student cognitive engagement in middle school science. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 24, 249–267. DOI 10.1007/s10972-012-9297-9 Whittaker, A. (2012). Should we be encouraging pupils to ask more questions?. Educational Studies, 38(5), 587-591.

Author Information

Luísa Ribeiro Trigo (presenting / submitting)

Catholic University of Portugal

Faculty of Education and Psychology

Porto

Pedro Rosário

School of Psychology, University of Minho, Portugal

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.