Teaching Approaches/Questioning: Difference between revisions

A teacher's professional development (and, indeed, the development of members of any profession) should involve the gaining of critical insights into professional practice – to learn to see behind the ordinary, the taken for granted, and to question the effectiveness of what is normally done. Recognizing the inherent structure of teacher-pupil talk is a valuable step in that direction. Student teachers need to see how they almost inevitably converge on other teachers' style and generate the conventional patterns of classroom talk. By noting this, they can begin to consider what effects this has on pupil participation in class. There is nothing wrong with the use of IRFs by teachers, but question-and-answer routines can be used both productively and unproductively. By understanding and questioning what generally happens, students can begin to construct the kind of dialogues that they can feel confident have most educational value.}}

Research evidence suggests that effective teachers use a greater number of open questions than less effective teachers. The mix of open and closed questions will, of course, depend on what is being taught and the objectives of the lesson. However, teachers who ask no open questions in a lesson may be providing insufficient cognitive challenges for pupils.