A Study On Teachers' Questioning From Three Open Mathematics Classes

Asking questions in class is a common act of teaching for mathematics teachers as well as the primary means of active classroom atmosphere to obtain feedback, inspire students to think and enhance exchanges between students and teachers. Through the study for teachers'questions, we not only understand the problems existing in the class itself, but also can acquire the impact of students'learning. More generally, we can also understand teachers'beliefs on mathematics, mathematics learning, and teachers'teaching effects on students'learning. Therefore, study on questioning is helpful for improving teachers'professional quality and aiming at effective classroom teaching.Open class is one of teaching research activities followed by China's primary and secondary schools for many years. It is not only a form of teaching research, but also a "rigid target" for the evaluation of teacher's professional level. The open classes having been elected tend to be advanced and exemplary. Therefore the study of the open classes is convenient for us to understand the current teaching-oriented and accreditation of teaching behaviors. This study focused on three videotaped classes and hoped to investigate high school mathematics teachers questioning from various perspectives.This study is conducted through the literature review, classroom video study, and questionnaires, to collect data on the high school mathematics teachers'asking questions in class. Specifically, the following two research questions count:What characters of questioning are observed in 3 open high school mathematics classes? Especially what impacts do they have on students'learning in 4 aspects:the purpose of the questioning; the detailed contents of questions (including quality of questions, questions expectations and the overall effect); the means of questioning (including the question types, response selections); feedbacks to students'answers. (2) what views are the students holding when the mathematics teachers are questioning? The results show that the three teachers asking questions in class behave well in the following aspects:(1) clear questions; (2)questions for all the classes so that the students can participate in classroom activities; (3) the timely evaluation of students'answers and attention to inspire students to learn and promote their thinking.But there are the following problems:(1) The main form of the questioning is that only teachers ask the students, no students to ask questions actively, and almost no teachers encourage students to ask questions. The number of questions that one of the three teachers asked is twice bigger than other teachers'; (2) The questions are mainly in identifying and inspiring but not creative types; (3)Teacher-led approach of the questions is dominant. It limits the free space for the students. What's worse, the students'answers are within the teachers' expectation; (4). perhaps limited by the teaching topic, the teachers seldom expect the students to give various solutions and expressions; (5)the ways of questioning and giving feedback are dull and the handling ways are relatively simple.According to these findings, this paper presents six recommendations: (1) to encourage and guide students to ask questions actively; (2) to reduce the number of questions; (3) to ask more complicated questions to improve students'thinking; (4) to let the students be active in their learning; (5) to organize various kinds of exercises; (6) to design various kinds of question types and ways of evaluations.