Search results for: Questioning strategies

A significant goal of teacher education is to support the development of reflective practitioners. This intention, however, is not easily achieved when after-the-fact recall and reporting are key features of pre-service teacher learning rather than critique and contemplation. This research reports on a small-scale pilot study evaluating a novel approach to help pre-service teachers develop reflective skills in order to both understand and address the requirements of the profession. The approach involved a set of Conversation Cards with a series of question-based prompts directly linked to the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APSTs) and designed to enhance reflective conversations. Focus group interview discussions unveiled the surprising ways in which the pre-service teachers used the question prompts, not only as tools for reflection but for planning lessons and preparing for professional discussions with mentors. This research provides insight into a creative and meaningful approach for integrating reflection, professional standards and classroom practice through professional experience.

In this study, the researchers chose to explore the kinds of questions prospective teachers plan when utilizing literature in mathematics lessons to scaffold children’s understanding of the mathematics concepts presented through the text. Results revealed that some of the prospective teachers possessed a limited recognition of or ability to incorporate questioning when planning lessons. Furthermore, the results presented a need to analyze the planned questions based upon their dependency and utilization of said literature. Based upon the results of this study, there are implications and recommendations for both classroom teachers and teacher educators alike to consider when making determinations relative to the mathematics classroom, course, and field experience.

This article argues for the value of using student ratings to measure quality of teaching. An international study to test the validity of the dynamic model of educational effectiveness was conducted. At classroom level, the model consists of eight factors relating to teacher behaviour: orientation, structuring, questioning, teaching modelling, application, management of time, teacher role in making classroom a learning environment and assessment. The analyses revealed that student ratings are reliable and valid for measuring the functioning of the teacher factors of the dynamic model.

This study examined the strategies that mentors adopted in giving actual feedback and the interns' perceptions of this feedback. Eleven participants in this study were five TESOL mentors, one Internship course instructor, and five MA student teaching interns. The mentors’ strategies included a number of strategies considered to be effective in giving intern-friendly or constructive feedback in teacher education contexts, such as the use of questions, the delivery of compliments before criticisms or specific suggestions. The findings reveal that the teaching interns’ comments seemed to indicate that they felt pleased with the feedback they received. The authors recommend that mentors pay special attention to affective factors when giving feedback to the interns to create the rapport with the latter and a favorable atmosphere for their learning.