A Case Study Of Mathematics Teachers' Classroom Questioning Behavior In The Tibetan Junior High School In The Mainland

This article,focusing on the performances of the Tibetan students studying in well-developed provinces A and B,selects six recorded lessons as the research sample.These six classes type are new presentations,among which 3 falls on algebra and the rest geometry.The goal of this research is to analyses the problems,such as raising questions all the time and too many "yes or no" questions,and characteristics of "raising questions" for students in class,and then give correspond tips on improvement for teachers.The process of the research is as follows.Documents research comes first.On the base of studying previous files with the similar topics,it is clearer what have been explored and what my concentration should be on,and that,most importantly,my research methods---video analysis,text analysis and quantitative research all arise.Secondly,a research outline is figured out.That is to transform the speeches for asking and answering in the video into text.Then I will put these question types into different categories.A coding framework is used to analyses the transformed questions and answers.Generally,the questions in middle school math class are divided into "unconscious,verifying,memorizing,repeating,hinting,comprehending,and assessing" categories.Among these seven types,unconscious questions are meaningless;memorizing,verifying,repeating and hinting questions are simple ones,while the comprehending and assessing questions are sophisticated.Students can answer questions singly,in a group or are appointed.Sometimes,the teacher asks and answers by himself,or answer his own question with students together.If the students are appointed to answer questions,the asking and answering activity is controlled.Answering together is regarded as a free activity.Generally,the questions from students,based on their efficiency of understanding,are divided into nonsense,repeating,recalling,comprehending and creative answers.The first three answer types are the lowest.Comprehending and creative answers stand for better acquirement.Thirdly,all these recorded questions and answers will be encoded into a framework.Then quantitative analysis will be carried out within the coding framework.Finally,I draw some conclusions and put forward some suggestions,basing on the problems arising during the research.What I find in the process of research are that the six teachers' questions are almost simple(unconscious,verifying,memorizing,repeating,hinting questions).Raising questions with many hints are the mostly used technique in the six classes.For different teaching steps,class 1,2,3,and 5 ask the most questions.Class 4 and 6 presents more questions in the consolidation step.Sadly,the answers from students with poor cognition are far more than the ones with good understanding.For example,in class 1,2,3,4,and 6,repeating others answers are quite a lot.Answers with creation and comprehension are quite rare.All these above are quite the same as traditional class teaching style.However,the answers are mostly from groups or students appointed by teachers,and that indicates better interaction between teachers and students.It is obvious that skills for raising questions in class,such as sophisticated ones,have great influence on students' cognition level.Thus our teachers should attach great importance to designing better questions for students to clearly instruct their thinking and understanding.