A Study On The Correlation Between Types Of Teacher Questions And English Teachers' Critical Thinking Disposition In Senior High English Reading Classes

We are living in an ever-changing world,which brings urgent challenges for the national development.In order to excel in the fierce competition,the cultivation of critical thinking has been listed as an important goal of national education recently.Critical thinking consists of two aspects,namely skill and disposition.The disposition is the significant foundation to stimulate the use of critical thinking skill.Teachers are the individuals who play important roles in developing students' critical thinking.In order to integrate critical thinking into specific teaching pedagogy,teachers first need to possess the disposition toward critical thinking.As one of the important teaching techniques,teacher questioning contributes to the development of students' critical thinking.Previous studies mainly focus on the influence of types of teacher questions on the development of students' critical thinking.However,this present study aims at identifying the correlation between teachers' level of critical thinking disposition and types of questions they use in English reading classes,which can offer some suggestions for teachers to design questions and improve their critical thinking.To this end,this study employs quantitative and qualitative method to collect and analyze data,namely classroom observation,questionnaire and interview.A total of 20 subjects,who are English teachers from senior high schools in Hebei province are involved in this study.The reading classes of the twenty teachers are observed and recorded by the researcher to explore what types of questions are often asked in reading classes.Bloom's taxonomy revised by Anderson and his colleague(2001)is employed to classify teacher questions.The definition of critical thinking disposition established by Facione(1990)is used to analyze teachers' critical thinking disposition.Additionally,6 subjects are interviewed by the researcher to further explore what factors influence their level of disposition toward critical thinking and ability to design questions.The outcomes reveal that(1)English teachers are inclined to use remembering and understanding questions at low cognitive level in reading classes.Yet,high cognitive questions are not frequently used.(2)As a whole,English teachers in senior high schools have moderate critical thinking disposition.In terms of seven subscales of teachers' criticalthinking disposition,open-mindedness is categorized as weak and the other subscales are all categorized as moderate.(3)The total amount of teacher questions and low cognitive questions are not related to teachers' critical thinking disposition.However,high cognitive questions are positively correlated with teachers' disposition toward critical thinking.In terms of seven subscales of the disposition,maturity is related to none of three categories of high cognitive questions.Truth-seeking,analyticity and inquisitiveness are correlated with analyzing question.Other than self-confidence and maturity,the other five subscales of disposition have a positive correlation with evaluating question.Apart from open-mindedness and maturity,the other five subscales of disposition are related to creating question.It is hoped that the findings of this study can help teacher trainers realize that teachers' critical thinking disposition and ability to design questions according to cognitive level should be as essential aspects of teacher training program.Besides,the findings will provide a way for teachers to improve their own disposition toward critical thinking and their awareness of using different cognitive questions to stimulate students' thinking.