Scaffolding Science Talk: The role of teachers' questions in the inquiry classroom

Abstract

Teachers' questions in the inquiry classroom not only explore and make student thinking explicit in the class but also serve to guide and scaffold it. Several studies analysing teachers' questions and their categories have been reported; however the need for a fine-grained analysis has been felt, especially in the inquiry setting. This study attempts a fine-grained analysis of the rich variety of teachers' questions and their roles in an inquiry science classroom, which are illustrated with vignettes from our classes. We present a sequential typology of teachers' questions that emerged from this empirical study, one that brings out their progression in an inquiry class. We juxtapose them with the ones asked during traditional teaching. We also examine, through teachers' self-reports, their motivations for questioning. This work leads towards a characterisation of the complex process of teaching science as an inquiry that teachers interested in moving towards more constructivist teaching practices in their classrooms may find helpful.

Keywords:

• Inquiry teaching
• Teachers' questions
• Scaffolding
• Science talk

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the teachers and students who participated in our project. We thank Jyoti Kumbhare, Anuja Farkade and Pooja Konde who provided extensive research support and valuable discussion on the draft of this paper. We thank Priya Nambiar and Manjiri Mahadadalkar for proof-reading and their inputs on the final draft. Our sincere thanks to the reviewer of this paper for useful comments.