How can teachers' questioning techniques enhance students' mathematical understanding in a classroom

Date of Award

8-1-2000

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Master of Education (M. Ed.)

Department

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

Abstract

The teaching of mathematics especially in most of the Government Schools in Pakistan is done in a traditional way. This kind of teaching helps students to memorize the rules and formulae transmitted by the teacher without understanding the rationales for them. In consequence the students develop the skills to do the mathematics but lack reasoning, and thinking in mathematics. This study was designed to explore how teachers questioning skills help small sample of Government Secondary School students to develop a conceptual understanding of the concept of fraction in class seven. Using an action research approach these students were engaged in mathematical thinking by posing activities of problem-solving questions. Probing and prompting questions which provided the researcher to assess the students understanding. Data collection in this study occurred in three steps. At the pre-intervention stage semi-structured interviews and classroom observations were conducted to ascertain how students learned and were taught mathematics in their school context. During the intervention stage the researcher posed different types of questions such as Problem-solving, Open-ended, Probing and Prompting questions to develop students understanding about fraction. At the post intervention stage, an oral test was conducted in which above mentioned question types were asked to develop their thinking skills and mathematical understanding. Post interviews with the six students were conducted to get both helping and constraining factors that emerged were specific types of questioning and purposes of asking these questions helped the students to understand the concept.

This document is available in the relevant AKU library

Share

COinS