Questioning: Perception vs Practice

Teachers may spend up to 50% of their classroom time on questioning, with the average teacher potentially asking 300 to 400 questions per day and over 2 million during the course of their career. As such it is unsurprising that there is a wealth of research into what makes effective questioning should look, nor is it surprising that many teachers will identify their questioning as something that they both feel they are strong at but also an area they wish to continue developing.

At Durrington we have been focusing on questioning even more than normal in recent months as part of the school’s improvement plan, and it has been really interesting to meet with individual staff and department areas to discuss how and where they want to progress in relation to this. During some of these discussions I began to mull over teacher’s perceptions of their own questioning and how these actually related to reality or independent observations of their questioning. As said above I think most teachers would believe or hope that their questioning, considering what a fundamental part of their role it entails, would be strong, however it is also something that can become habitual and therefore runs the risk of becoming ineffective and resistant to change if being done poorly.

I started to conclude that if we really want to improve the quality of teacher questioning, we have to first consider if teachers are truly aware of the quality of their questioning. In doing some research into this question I came across a paper from 2010 outlining the findings of a small action research project examining “teachers’ perceptions and practices” in regards to questioning which served to solidify my initial thoughts, and also provide morsels of encouragement.

The paper written by Patrícia Albergaria-Almeida (2010) examined the impact of a professional development programme targeted at developing the questioning practice of three secondary Biology teachers. It is important to note that these findings must be therefore considered in the context of being an action research project and therefore we must accept that these findings may be context specific, however they are promising.

The research around questioning suggests that even when teachers ask a range of questions they are commonly all of the same kind, primarily focusing on low level factual recall questions, requiring mainly memory. Kerry (2002) suggests that up to 60% of questions asked by teachers are recall questions and up to 30% of questions may be asked as a form of classroom management, leaving only 10% of questions to be used for exploring/extending student thinking, arousing their interest or developing student reflections.

The action research of Albergaria-Almeida (2010) participating teacher audio-recorded and then transcribed a 45-minute lesson prior to and after a 2‑month CPD training course. Results from analysis of the lesson and teacher interview transcripts prior to the training found the following:

A high rate of teacher questioning – 2 questions per minute on average
In interviews teachers displayed surprise at the number of questions they asked versus the number their students asked.
The cognitive level of questions was low with the majority of pre-CPD questioning being categorised as closed (91%).
Wait time was low with only 13% of question posed being given a wait time of 2 seconds or more.

Following the 2‑month long CPD, in which staff were guided to reflect on their initial audio recordings, given training on the importance of greater wait time and encouraged to plan out the questions they would ask in the lessons as part of the lesson plan, the findings found that:

The number of questions asked by staff per minute decreased and students were granted more time to ask their own questions.
The number of closed questions had decreased to 75% of all questions asked.
The number of questions with a wait time of 2 seconds or more had increased to 38%.
In their interviews teachers reflected on the importance of higher-level questioning, the need to change their questioning practice and the significance of provide sufficient wait time. Participants also agreed that audio-recording their questioning and being able to review this had been effective in increasing their self-awareness of their own questioning.

The results of this study, as previously discussed, must be taken in the context of a small-scale action research and we must be careful when scaling such findings up to different and larger settings. However, the results do indicate a mismatch between teacher perceptions and practice in regards to questioning, and that improvement to practice requires teachers to have a more accurate awareness of the current status-quo in regards to their questioning. Promisingly the results show that when teachers are made aware of their questioning styles and techniques (and any deficiencies in these), then that awareness lays the foundations for practice change.

Ben Crockett (@BenCrockett1)

Assistant Director of Durrington Research School.

References:

1. Patrícia Albergaria-Almeida, Classroom questioning: teachers’ perceptions and practices, Procedia – Social and Behavioural Sciences, Volume 2, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 305 – 309, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042810000558

2. Kerry, 2002, Explaining and questioning. London: Nelson Thornes.

4 November, 2022 —