Quarterly Teachers’ Use of Questions During Shared Book Reading: Relations to Child Responses

This study examined the extent to which preschool teachers used different types of questions during classroom-based shared book reading. Researchers goals were to describe the question wording teachers use to elicit child responses and to consider sequential relations between types of question wording and student responses. All the sessions were video-recorded, transcribed and then coded by trained coders. During reading, teacher total extra-textual utterances included 23.74% questions (n = 5207 questions). The wording of these questions mostly included Wh-question forms (who,what, when, where) or question forms that required only a yes/no response. Yet sequential analyses demonstrated that less frequently occurring question forms, such as Why-questions and How-procedural questions elicited longer, multi-word responses from students. Results further suggested that students readily answered most questions accurately; although, Why-questions produced more inaccurate student responses, this level of challenge is likely appropriate. Unfortunately, most teacher questions were easy for children to answer accurately or with a single word, thereby indicating teachers are not demonstrating Vygotskian principles (1978) of adjusting their questioning techniques to a level of challenge that is just above children’s overall level of mastery. Important implications of these findings are discussed for educators as well as curriculum developers.

CLI Faculty:

Tricia Zucker, Ph.D.

Principal Investigator:

Tricia Zucker, Ph.D., Richa S. Deshmukha, PhD, The Ohio State University

Co-Investigator:

Sherine Tambyraja, PhD, Ohio State University, Jill M. Pentimonti, PhD, Michigan State University

Participating Sites:

The study took place in preschool and kindergarten classrooms in South Central and Midwest states.