A critique of the methodology to identify question types and question strategies used in primary and secondary classrooms.

This paper examines a methodology used identify question types and questioning techniques teachers use in primary and secondary classrooms during both expositional lessons (teacher explains learning material to students) and practical lessons (students learn through doing; teacher guides students’ actions), and why these are used. To draw out this information, a mixed methods approach of survey, observation and interview, conducted in 2018 and 2019 in Australian schools was adopted. The three gathering approaches combined to provide a complementary triangulation of data through Stage 1 Survey (broadening the knowledge about question types); Stage 2 Observation (confirmation of the survey data in classrooms) and Stage 3 Interview (understand why teachers use certain questions in expositional and practical lessons). There are many examples in the literature that supported using data collection elements of survey, observation, and interview to understand what questioning teacher use in their classroom, but few examples of prior studies triangulating the data with all three data sources. The mixed method allowed rich data collection about types of questions that teachers use and deepened understanding to why teachers used certain questioning in expositional and practical lessons. However, the scope of the method could be expanded to more observations and interviews which would confirm the new question types found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]