Pre-Service Teachers' Use of Dynamic Discourse Variables during Classroom Teaching

The aim of this study is to examine the nature of questioning in primary classrooms taught by teacher candidates. The participants were 39 teacher candidates enrolled in the Department of Primary Education at a large university in Western Turkey as well as 3rd and 4th-grade students in four schools located in the area. Each teacher candidate has taught a course she or he selected from Mathematics, Science, Turkish or Social Sciences subjects for about 35-40 minutes and these courses have been recorded by a video camera. Classroom discourse has been transcribed into MS Word file. Questions of teachers and students and evaluation of student answers have been analyzed by the researcher using discourse analysis techniques. Descriptive statistics on number and types of questions and types and frequency of evaluation was determined using SPSS 18. It has been observed that while teacher candidates used numerous low-level questions in the classroom, they did not use high-level questions and task-related questions sufficiently. This may be due to not utilizing activities frequently or time management issues. It has been found that teacher candidates use significantly more lower-level evaluations in classrooms. Higher order teacher and student questions were observed in Science more compared to other subjects. This may stem from the fact that science classes cater to the curiosity of students and are directly related to their daily life. Findings indicate that teacher candidates are open to development in asking higher-level questions, high-level evaluation and promoting students to ask higher level questions. It is recommended to emphasize the importance of question and evaluation types, high-level questions and evaluations and student questions during teaching courses in education programs.