e-Pedagogium 2017, 17(3):53-64 | DOI: 10.5507/epd.2017.036

Primary School Teachers' View of Pupils' Questions

Marie Pavelková

Mgr. Marie Pavelková, Fakulta humanitních studií Univerzity Tomáše Bati ve Zlíně, Mostní 5139, 760 01 Zlín, E-mail: mpavelkova@fhs.utb.cz

The paper presents primary school teachers' authentic views on the occurrence of pupils' questions in mathematics lessons. The paper introduces the theoretical definition of dialogic teaching and the form of interaction between teachers and pupils. There are communication sequences between the teacher and pupils going on during the lessons, which are mobilized by questions and the potential of which is to activate the pupils' thinking. Communication is the basis for dialogic teaching, so the study also highlights the status of pupils' questions in the dialogic teaching at elementary school. In the second part, the paper presents conclusions of semi-structured interviews with elementary school teachers who present their views on the status of pupils' questions in lessons. The interviews showed that 1) the teachers supported pupils in asking questions; 2) the teachers put open questions to their pupils; 3) it was only after our interviews when the teachers realized that pupils asked few questions and that questions are primarily asked by the teachers in lessons. We created categories based on the teachers' testimonies, and subsequently evaluated the conclusions of this pre-research step.

Keywords: dialogic teaching; interaction; pupils' questions; interview; teachers' attitude towards pupils' questions

Published: September 1, 2017  Show citation