In classroom teaching, questioning is a commonly used teaching method. Research on it can be traced back to Confucius’s “heuristic” questioning and Socrates’ “midwife-style” questioning more than 2,000 years ago. They used Questioning successfully guided students to learn and is still praised today.
In recent years, teaching issues have focused on real classrooms, focusing on how teachers teach and how students learn①. Classroom questioning is one of the most important parts of teaching and one of the most frequently used forms of classroom interaction, so it has attracted the attention of many researchers. This article aims to summarize and analyze domestic and foreign research on teacher questioning, hoping to be of some help to teachers.
1. Theoretical research on teachers’ questioning
(1) The function and role of questioning
Many researchers at home and abroad have put forward their own opinions on the function and role of questioning. suggestions. Representative examples include: In 1967, psychologist Pat et al. investigated 190 primary school teachers and summarized the five effects of questioning. In 1973, Turner listed 12 functions of questioning. American teaching theory experts L.H. Clark and Ls. Starr believe that classroom questioning has 19 functions. Scholars such as William Wilen, Margaret Ishler, and Richard Kindsvater summarized the five functions of questioning. Rigg consulted the materials provided by 36 teachers and summarized 12 functions of questions. Domestic scholar Yao Andi pointed out: There are seven functions of questioning. Song Zhenshao and others pointed out that questions have 10 functions. The conclusions of the above persons are quite extensive and inclusive. It can be seen that the function and role of questioning are mainly reflected in two aspects.
For teachers, questioning can guide teaching and highlight the focus of learning; check teaching, check the content that students at different levels have mastered and have not mastered, the degree of skills, and check students’ abilities, attitudes and tendencies , revealing students’ psychological processes; remedial teaching, helping teachers use it as a reference for improving teaching, changing the content, methods, progress, etc. of teaching; diagnostic teaching, diagnosing special difficulties that hinder students’ learning; managing teaching, managing student learning and classroom order, and forming Suitable learning environment; evaluate teaching, understand teaching effects, and provide guidance for subsequent teaching.
For students, asking questions can arouse students' interest in learning, attract students' attention, arouse learning motivation, stimulate students' interest and curiosity; enable students to recall existing knowledge, evaluate, correct and strengthen Current learning perspectives; enable students to pay attention to changes in the teaching process, promote understanding of knowledge and skills, and promote memory; enable students to more actively participate in classroom interactions, such as: expressing opinions, discussions, etc., strengthening communication between teachers and students; promoting thinking .
(2) The technology and art of teacher questioning
Domestic scholars pay more attention to the technology and art of questioning, such as Li Rumi, Liu Xianguo, Jin Chuanbao, Yao Andi, Zhang Donghong, Zhang Li, etc. , summarizing the research results of the above-mentioned scholars, it was found that the technology and art of questioning are mainly reflected in the following five aspects: In designing issues, key questions should be set in important places according to teaching needs; questions of various levels should be raised; questions should be made Suitable for the students' ability level; state the questions clearly, detailedly and accurately; form a concise and reasonable question structure; the difficulty and slope of the questions should be reasonable; be good at asking probing questions. When asking questions, we should seize the opportunity to ask questions when students are focused and active in thinking; the questioners should be oriented to all, and individual differences of students should be treated differently; students should have equal opportunities to answer questions, and all students should be encouraged to participate; the difficulty of the questions should be from easy to difficult, From easy to difficult, step by step; the way of asking questions is flexible and diverse. In terms of waiting for answers, students need to be given a certain amount of time to think and answer.
In terms of answering questions, teachers should pay attention to listening and show respect to students; when students cannot answer knowledge questions, teachers should give answers directly; when dealing with low-level single-answer questions, teachers should directly comment on individual students' answers; when dealing with high-level questions, teachers should directly comment on individual students' answers. Comments on high-level questions should be delayed until students express their opinions before summarizing the answers. When dealing with high-level questions, be tolerant of differences. Provide positive reinforcement for students' answers and continue to ask questions following students' answers. In terms of feedback, effective teacher feedback must be given.
2. Empirical research on teachers’ questions
(1) Quantitative analysis of questions
When studying the quantity of questions, the simplest among the questions , which is to count the total number of classroom questions and various types of questions, thus attracting a large number of researchers. In terms of the total number of questions asked, the earliest research by psychologist Stevens in 1912 pointed out: Teachers ask about 395 questions every day, about 2 to 4 questions per minute, and teachers’ questioning time accounts for 80% of the teaching time. ②. After that, research on the number of questions became a hot topic. Many domestic and foreign materials showed that teachers asked too many questions. Especially in China, teachers almost completely dominated the classroom. For example: A survey in Shanghai's Jing'an District found that in primary schools and junior high schools, regardless of Chinese or mathematics, the average number of questions asked by teachers in each class is more than 30 times (except for a Chinese class in ninth grade). The number of classroom questions in junior high schools is less than that in primary schools. Although a large number of questions can stimulate students to think actively, the number of questions is too many. Based on a 45-minute class, there is one question every 12 minutes on average. Some classes ask forty or fifty questions in just 45 minutes. The largest class asked 98 questions. Shen Jiliang's investigation also found that in 12 Chinese reading classes, there were an average of 34 questions per class, with the most being 50 times, taking up 23 minutes of class time, and the least being 21 times.
(2) Question classification method
The study of questions must have a clear question classification method, so the classification of questions is a hot topic for many researchers.
The simplest is to divide the questions into: closed questions and open questions. Some researchers also call them “convergence” problems and “divergence” problems③.
The second classification method with great influence is to divide the problem according to the cognitive level: the most famous is based on Bloom's six levels of cognitive domain: remember, understand, apply, analyze , comprehensive, evaluation. Some researchers have carried out a two-dimensional classification method on this basis, classifying memory and comprehension questions as low-level questions, and classifying application, analysis, comprehensiveness, and evaluation questions as high-level questions④.
The third more famous classification is based on Guilford's three-dimensional intelligence structure. He divided questions into five categories: cognition, memory, diffuse thinking, convergent thinking, and evaluation. Afterwards, Sandus divided the questions into seven categories: memory, conversion, explanation, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Ge and Yaer also divided the problems into four categories: cognitive-memory, convergence, diffusion and evaluation.
As for other classifications, there are many, and some divide questions into two categories, such as: Keith A. Acheson and Meredith Damien Call, etc. There are those who divide questions into three categories, such as David Hopkins, Morgan, Saxton and Fraser, Chen Yao, Cheng Xiaoqiao, Shen Guipeng. There are those who divide questions into four categories, such as Lage, Ashner and others, and Asner. Some people divide the questions into five categories, such as Brophy-Goode, American Charles C. Denovan, Zhang Yucheng, and Zhang Kongyi. Some people divide questions into six categories, such as Zhang Xiaoqi. Some people even divide it into 7 categories, such as Gesjak.
A survey on the types of classroom questions found that teachers tended to ask lower-level questions. In the early years of overseas research, Stevens found that the vast majority of questions asked by teachers only required students to directly recall the information presented in the text. Later, other research results also showed that among the questions asked by teachers, about 60% required students to remember information from the article, and 20% Require students to think, 20 belongs to promoting the development of teaching process⑤.
Quan Lijuan studied high school classroom teaching and found that 90% of the questions were closed questions, while only about 10% were open questions. Using Bloom's cognitive classification, we found that the first and second levels together accounted for 80% of all cognitive questions, and the questions requiring students to recall facts accounted for 80% of the 80%. In contrast, the first and second levels accounted for 80% of the 80%. Five! The sixth category of problems is trivial. A survey report from Shanghai’s Jing’an District found that: Judging from the types of questions, factual memory and comprehension questions accounted for about 80%. Shen Jiliang found that in terms of the types of classroom questions, 93.63 of the teacher questions only tested low-level cognitive activities, such as recalling facts, simple judgments of right and wrong, etc. Comprehension questions accounted for more than 95%.
(3) Teachers’ waiting methods
Research on teachers’ waiting time focuses on teachers’ waiting time.
Waiting time is divided into two types: the first waiting time (when the teacher first asks a question, the teacher asks the students to consider the answer time), the second waiting time (after a student answers until the teacher or other students affirm or deny the answer, and then the teacher continues, the interval in between) ⑥.
The study found that: Many teachers do not give students enough time to think before asking questions. In fact, response time is very important to both students and teachers. After comparative experiments, psychologists increased the waiting time for the questioning process by 3 seconds or more, and concluded that a slightly longer waiting time has a great effect on students' language behavior. For example, students will give longer and more answers to questions. In addition, research shows that waiting for answers for more than 3 seconds will also have a positive impact on teachers' behavior and attitude: teachers' questioning strategies are more varied, teachers reduce the number of questions but improve the quality and enrich the types of questions. Some students asked questions that required complex information processing and high-level thinking.
(4) Teacher’s response method
After students answer, teachers need to respond to them. This response can provide students with feedback information, which is important for students’ learning and behavior. role.
The simplest teacher responses are divided into two categories: direct feedback and indirect feedback. In addition, many researchers classify this based on their own research: for example, Hussen proposed 6 categories, Wright and Nattole classified it into 7 categories, Zahorik, Miller, and Hughes classified it into 14 categories, and Bro Fei and Goode were classified into 8 categories, Flanders was classified into 3 categories, Zhang Yu was classified into 4 categories, Cheng Xiaoqiao was classified into 2 categories, and Shen Guipeng was classified into 3 categories.
What is more representative is that Sternberg from the United States divided the level of teachers' responses to children's questions into 7 levels, which is of great reference value for guiding teachers to answer students' questions. Level 1: Reject the question. Level 2: Repeat questions. Level 3: Admit that you don’t know the answer either. Level 4: Encourage the search for relevant information to solve the problem, and then solve the problem. There are two situations in which teachers encourage the search for relevant information to solve problems: one is that teachers search for it themselves, and the other is that teachers encourage students to search for it. Level 5: Provide possible solutions to the problem. Level 6: Encourage students to evaluate possible answers. Level 7: Encourage students to verify possible answers ⑦.
A survey of teachers’ responses found that: Teachers’ feedback responses are often positive rather than negative; they are simple rather than complex. In terms of quantity, according to statistics, praise occupies 6% of classroom teaching time, the maximum time occupied by accepting students' opinions is 8, and the maximum value occupied by criticism is 6⑧. The survey report of Jing'an District, Shanghai shows: The current response to students' answers remains at the level of repetition, restatement, and correction, with a lack of questioning, extension, and expansion of levels, and there are too few inspiring questions. Relative to the number of questions, teachers’ evaluation responses to students’ answers, whether in terms of language or facial expressions, are too few. The only responses were mainly encouragement and judgment, such as "very good", "right", "wrong", and the language was quite simple. When students cannot answer questions, different teachers have great differences in the extent to which they encourage students and the extent to which they are disappointed.
In addition, research on teachers’ questions also includes: the relationship between seating arrangements and questions, the relationship between teachers’ responses and students, and the influencing factors of teachers’ questions. In addition, many domestic researchers have studied teachers' questioning behavior from the perspective of teacher-student interaction in the classroom from the perspective of sociology. Representatives such as Wu Kangning, Cheng Xiaoqiao, Wu Yongjun, Shen Guipeng and others have included teacher questioning in the field of teacher-student interaction. Observations were made to study the gender characteristics of questions, the relationship between students' job status and questions, the subject characteristics of questions, the relationship between students' academic performance and questions, etc., and a large number of valuable conclusions were also drawn.
3. Research Reflection
As far as the functions and effects of classroom questioning are concerned, the respective conclusions are quite broad and inclusive. This also shows from another perspective that classroom questioning is not just a simple question-and-answer behavior of "asking a question" and answering "a question", but a complex teaching behavior with rich meanings. Questioning is closely connected with students, teachers, and classroom situations. Any question, including questions raised in class, can only be analyzed educationally and mathematically in the specific context in which that question occurs. Being separated from the specific classroom situation is a common shortcoming of most current classroom questioning research. "The effectiveness of questions depends not only on the words they are expressed, their effectiveness also depends on the sound effects, the emphasis and choice of words, and the situation in which the question is asked. Questions can be asked in many ways, each of which determines your Whether students accept the question and how to accept the question? ⑨
Domestic research on questioning in mathematics classrooms (including general questioning research) pays more attention to the research on questioning techniques, and it seems to have good results. Questioning skills will produce good questions. Asking questions, like other questions, requires skills, but "skills" are not a "cure" for "all problems" in asking questions. If we think about all classroom behaviors, they all have two sides, namely "artistic" and "scientific". Classroom questioning and research should get out of the misunderstanding of "techniques" and move towards the road of science and art.
In terms of the classification method of questions, it basically does not deviate from the classic model of Bloom and others, although it is of certain significance to study it. However, our analysis is "post hoc" and "an afterthought", which does not help to correct the teaching behavior at that time. When I switch to another class, everything has changed. "Yesterday's story" will not happen again today. Because teaching every day and every hour is unrepeatable.
From the perspective of research methods, there are two research methods: One is the quantitative method based on the question and answer checklist method. That is to say, a certain observation scale is used, focusing on: how many times questions are asked, how many times what type of questions are asked, how long and how long the teacher waits for answers, how the teacher responds, etc. It is undeniable that research in these areas can reflect the significance of classroom questioning from a certain perspective. However, it is difficult to reveal the historical significance of classroom questioning and the deeper significance of educational teaching compared with other teaching behaviors. The second qualitative approach. Some researchers recorded teachers' classroom questions verbatim and revealed the characteristics of the questions in terms of content, method, and student responses. Some researchers have also used in-depth interviews, field tracking and other methods to conduct qualitative research on individual teachers or groups' concepts of questioning, such as the purpose and role of questioning, understanding of students' questioning, questioning strategies and skills, etc., and have also concluded that Many valuable conclusions were drawn, which played a great role in revealing the underlying reasons for the questions. In recent years, with the rise of qualitative research methods, more and more people have begun to use qualitative research methods to research questions. But compared with the amount of research, the number is still small. In addition, in terms of quality, because some researchers do not have sufficient mastery of qualitative research methods, the credibility of the conclusions is not as reliable as quantitative research.
Generally speaking, in recent years, the research on classroom questioning has made great progress, which is mainly reflected in two aspects.
First, previous research on classroom questioning focused more on theoretical research. More researchers, including those who regard questioning as an art of education and teaching, all think in theory, but now there is a focus on practice. Conduct empirical research on classroom questioning at the level, especially in combination with subject teaching, such as mathematics teaching. Research on the empirical basis has recently produced more results. Second, in theoretical research, the perspective of theoretical thinking has undergone significant changes. In the past, the perspective of research on classroom questioning was only from a two-dimensional perspective, focusing mainly on the "questions" and "answers" between teachers and students. However, now the perspective of research on classroom questioning is focused on "subjectivity". From a philosophical perspective, the study is conducted from a three-dimensional perspective, focusing mainly on the "dialogue" between teachers and students, highlighting the "intersubjectivity" of teaching activities.