Reading literacy is considered a key competence in the current information society, and the need for high levels of textual understanding is even more important as the concept of text continues to develop rapidly. According to the 2018 PISA framework, reading literacy is defined as “understanding, using, evaluating, reflecting on and engaging with texts in order to achieve one’s goals, to develop one’s knowledge and potential and to participate in society” (OECD 2018, p. 8). In line with the increasingly high demands for such complex text comprehension, there are high expectations on the school system to develop this competence.
In classroom teaching, questioning is regarded an essential element in the design of instruction and facilitation of learning (Lee & Kinzie, 2011), and it is well known from classroom research that teachers ask a large number of questions to students during whole class teaching (Dillon, 1990; Myhill, 2006). What kinds of questions they ask have been the focus of many studies (Lee & Kinzie, 2011; Nystrand, Gamoran, Kachur & Prendergast, 1997; Wu, 1993), which have exhibited the complexity of teacher questions and the myriad of functions, both cognitive and social, that these questions perform (Farrar, 1986). However, limited knowledge exists about what types of questions teachers use as part of their reading instruction in L1 lessons, as most of the studies of teacher questions are concerned with the form and functions of questions related to whole class teaching in general, and not reading specifically. Questioning can be used to prompt different ways of reading by providing different kinds of questions (e.g. questions that either require recall of specific facts, interpretations, reflection, creativity, or encourage critical thinking).
By comparing video observations from 178 recorded language arts lessons across 47 secondary classrooms from 45 schools (13-14 years old students) in Norway, this study identifies how teachers use questions as part of their whole class reading instruction. The main aim of this study is to analyze the types of questions applied by the teachers, and to investigate how different categories of questions are connected to informational and narrative texts respectively. These aspects can contribute to accumulating knowledge of how teachers target reading literacy development when employing the prominent teaching format of whole class questioning.
As a theoretical framework for categorizing types of teacher questions, this study applies the PISA literacy framework. The PISA reading literacy assessment aims at “measuring students master of reading processes (…) by varying the dimensions of text (…) and scenarios (…) with one or more thematically related texts” (OECD 2018, p. 12). The PISA framework is thus not only a tool for assessment, but provides essential guidelines for developing test questions that reflect different levels and components of reading comprehension. One of the main constructs measured by the PISA reading test is text processing, subsuming the three main categories Locate information, Understand and Evaluate and reflect. These categories are not only central to the measurement of students’ reading comprehension, they are also highly applicable and most useful for analyzing what types of questions teachers ask – and thereby also what kind of reading teachers emphasize and give priority to when reading and discussing texts in classrooms – which for many students involve the foundation for acquiring adequate reading literacy.