Question asking is one of the most common strategies used classroom instructions. Over the last decades, many attempts have been made to categorize teacher questions and to present teachers’ skilful questioning strategies, which highlights the context where the questions are asked, the appropriate use of different types of questions, the learning opportunities created in the sequences of teacher-student interactions and so on (Boaler & Brodie, 2004; Hiebert & Wearne, 1993; Kawanaka & Stigler, 1999).

Nonetheless, there is still a lack of investigation on teacher questioning strategies by taking full account of both the descriptions of the types of teacher questions and the analysis of the teacher’s strategies in terms of arranging these different types of questions together to fulfill pedagogical purposes. For one thing, some of the studies focused mainly on several particular types of teacher questions without providing a complete description of those mathematical questions asked by the teacher in the classroom practices (Stolk, 2013). For another, some studies mainly focused on the macro analysis of the sequences of teacher-student interactions, without a fine-grained exploration of what types of questions constitute these sequences (i.e., Franke et al, 2007). This is significant particularly when considering that a fine-grained analysis of teaching practices is necessary to reveal the complexity of mathematics teaching and to generate usable knowledge for teaching (Kazemi, 2008).

Besides, few studies have been done in mathematics classrooms to consider the distinctions between initiation questions which are those questions asked by teachers for initiating purposes (such as to start conversation or discussion), and follow-up questions which refer to those questions asked for following-up purposes (such as in response to students’ answers to teachers’ previous questions) (Oliveira, 2010). Classroom lessons could be interpreted as a process of alternations between verbal and nonverbal behavior that are jointly created by teachers and students and these alternations are characterized by interactional sequences of three interconnected parts: teacher initiation, student response and teacher follow up or IRF (Cazden, 2001).  While the IRF structure used to be criticized as limiting the potential of teacher-pupil dialogue in promoting pupils’ conceptual learning in mathematics classrooms (i.e., Kyriacou & Issitt, 2007), more and more researchers has pointed out the effects of the IRF structure depend on the way in which the teacher implements this structure in classrooms. That triadic dialogue could be employed to achieve the pedagogical purposes of inquiry-style instruction as well and facilitate students’ articulation of mathematical thinking and to engage students in sophisticated reasoning (Franke, et al., 2009).As a matter of fact, this distinction between initiation questions and follow-up questions has been reported to be significant for the researchers and practitioners with regard to reflecting on and improving mathematics teaching practices (Franke et al, 2009).  Thus, a fine-grained analysis of these two types of questions in mathematics classrooms is necessary.

With an attempt to bridge the gaps mentioned above, this study intends to develop a comprehensive framework with regard to teacher questioning. Through focusing on the IRF structures emerging in mathematics interactions, it attempts to analyse what kinds of verbal questions were initiated by the teachers and in what ways the teachers took students’ verbal contributions into consideration so as to facilitate students’ construction, acquisition and articulation of mathematical knowledge.

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