Promoting Higher-Order Thinking through Teacher Questioning: A Case Study of a Singapore Science Classroom.

IntroductionHelping students develop lifelong learning skills is an important educational outcome for the 21st century classroom (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2006). Lifelong learners are able to take charge of one's own learning and actively engage in the learning process to generate questions, brainstorm ideas, solve problems, and construct meaning and knowledge (Little, 2007). Lifelong learning demands self-regulation skills but also critical thinking competencies such as higher-order thinking skills. When students exhibit higher-order thinking, they are able to apply their knowledge, synthesize different information and evaluate science ideas and hypotheses (Hurd, 1999). In Singapore, major educational initiatives emphasize the teaching of self-regulated learning and higher-order thinking skills for grade K to 12 curriculum (e.g. Thinking Schools, Learning Nation, MOE, 2005). Therefore, schools and teachers are urged to provide more opportunities for learner engagement and deep thinking processes in their local classroom practices.Teacher questioning can be a useful and practical means for teachers to work towards the goal of developing lifelong learning skills among students. Over the last decade or so, research has shown that students' conceptual understandings in science are developed within social contexts in the classroom, and that students' understandings and thinking about science can be enhanced when teachers facilitate an interactive discourse through classroom questioning (e.g. Chin, 2006, 2007; Mortimer & Scott, 2003; Scott, Mortimer, & Aguiar, 2006; van Zee, Iwasyk, Kurose, Simpson, & Wild, 2001; Wells & Arauz, 2006). While research on teacher questioning has been widely studied, the application of existing questioning frameworks to examine science instruction for ways in which teacher follow-up discourse moves shape students' higher-order thinking in science has been less extensive. Moreover, teacher-student classroom talk interactions are complex and teacher questioning strategies may differ considerably across classroom contexts. Arguably, teacher questioning strategies or approaches that might facilitate students' deep cognitive processes in science learning remain under-explored.We seek to address this gap by exploring the actual practice of an experienced science teacher based on an existing analytical framework (Chin, 2006) and illuminating questioning strategies or discourse moves that promote students' higher order thinking in science. We hope that our findings can contribute to the growing literature on effective classroom conversations in science, particularly on how teacher questioning can support students' learning in Singapore. The implications from this study may also lead to a broader understanding of classroom discourse and the expansion of ways of speaking such as the teacher discourse moves that provide opportunities for supporting students' learning and developing their skills for critical thinking, so as to achieve the curriculum goal of lifelong learning.Teacher QuestioningTeacher questioning plays an important role in instruction. Teachers pose questions frequently, often for reasons such as to stimulate interest or curiosity, to generate students' knowledge claims, and to check students' knowledge comprehension (Dillon, 1984). It is also widely established that instructional questions promote students' cognitive processes at different levels and complexity (Bloom, 1956; Blosser, 1991; Costa & Khallick, 2000; Wragg & Brown, 2001). According to Bloom (1956), questions can elicit six levels of cognitive processes: recalling, understanding, applying, analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating. Questions pitched at the cognitive level of recalling and understanding scientific information are called lower-order thinking questions. Higher-order thinking questions, in contrast, are questions pitched at a cognitive level of applying, analyzing, synthesizing or evaluating scientific knowledge. …