Questions asked by primary student teachers about observations of a science demonstration

Maija Ahtee, Kalle Juuti, Jari Lavonen, Liisa Suomela

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Teacher questioning has a central role in guiding pupils to learn to make scientific observations and inferences. We asked 110 primary student teachers to write down what kind of questions they would ask their pupils about a demonstration. Almost half of the student teachers posed questions that were either inappropriate or presupposed that the pupils would know the answer. For example, they directly asked for an explanation of the phenomenon instead of asking what inferences the pupils could make on the basis of their observations. There was a lack of questions that would draw the pupils' attention to the variables that may cause the phenomenon to happen. Only about 15% of the student teachers formed questions such as 'What is happening?' or 'How is it happening? All in all, primary student teachers seem to need extra practice in forming questions based on scientific observation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)347-361
Number of pages15
JournalEuropean Journal of Teacher Education
Volume34
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2011
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Density
  • Primary student teachers
  • Scientific observation
  • Teacher questioning

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Education

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