| T: | OK, when you came in last time, you did a bit of a writing sample here that I was gonna get you to read what you’d written. | |
| L: | Mm, alright, I’m gonna know how to read my one. | |
| T: | You don’t! | |
| L: | No, I do! | |
| T: | Oh, you do know how, well that’s good, that’s good. |
Another teacher explained what she had been doing to reassure a learner in a class where she had been working with learners individually:
| T: | Yeah, that was the one doing NCEA Level 1 Science and she needed just a little bit of help with her wording. She had it all there, but she just needed … sometimes it’s just actually sitting beside the person and reassuring them that what they’ve got is correct and that tends to happen in a subject I’m interested in and I know about. But I mean, if she was doing something like physics or something like that, then I’d probably won’t be able to help her that much and I’d probably just rely on what’s in her book can help her to go back. So it’s really just a facilitation sort of thing. But because that’s the topic I know a wee bit about, I know I can talk to her a bit more about it and you just get stuck on a word here or a phrase here, yeah helping her to get a flow with what she’s doing ‘cause she has got it all there, but she needs that confidence. |
Some of the teachers were quite demonstrative in their affirmation of their learners (such as positive comments given when handing back completed work), while others were more restrained and also more subtle in how it was phrased and offered. In some cases, there was a barely audible “Ka pai, so we have no problem with that,” “Really good thinking [name], you’ve come up with some really good points there,” or just “excellent” that were an integral part of the dialogue between the teacher and learner.
As in Scogins & Knell’s (2001) study, we did not hear any substantial negative feedback or evaluative statements, although there were instances of teachers correcting incorrect replies.
Questioning is the ‘bread and butter’ of educational dialogue and underpins most interaction between learners and teachers, irrespective of the level or context involved. Apps (1991, p. 67) says that “being able to ask probing questions is one of the most powerful teaching tools” and was identified as a key attribute of effective teaching by the Adult Learning Inspectorate report (2003) reviewed earlier in this report.
Pratt (1998, p. 144) lists a range of functions for teachers’ questions, including: