A Comparison of Different Teaching Applications Based on Questioning in Terms of Their Effects upon Pre-Service Teachers' Good Questioning Skills

This study's main problem is to compare the effects of different teaching applications based on questioning upon pre-service teachers' learning/improvement of their good questioning skills. The research is a qualitative study using an experimental design. The study group consists of a total of 71 students studying three different classrooms the department of Social Studies Teacher Training of the Faculty of Education at Ahi Evran University, who took the course Assessment and Evaluation. One group was taught by the teaching method based on students' questions, while another received teaching based on teacher's questions, and the third group was taught by a blended method which both types of questions were used. Students' written questions received prior to (pretest) and following (posttest) the teaching applications were comparatively analyzed. As a result of the study, it was determined that the teaching application based on student questions contributed more to the pre-service teachers' skills to ask quality questions, when compared to the application based on teachers' questions and blended teaching application. Keywords: Quality question, questioning skill, teaching Introduction Asking questions is a natural outcome of being a human as a thinking creature. Questions make up of an important part of daily communications between people. On the other hand, they also constitute one of the key elements of the education process. They are one of the fundamental instruments that have been used throughout history and are still used today to serve different educational purposes (Acikgoz, 2004; Miller, 2007). As a result of their educational importance, questions have been studied a great deal of research (Miller, 2007; Thacker, 2007; Berci & Griffith 2005) Questioning is an ability that can be acquired and improved through education, rather than an innate quality (Mucher, 2007; Acikgoz, 2004). Therefore, one of the objectives of education general and education activities particular is to improve individuals' questioning abilities. Teachers carry the greatest responsibility helping students acquire questioning skills. Rousmaniere (2001) argues that the universal and social image of school and teacher is associated with questioning. Yet, it should be noted that it is not simply the question skill that teachers should possess and thus teach their students. Arguably, an ability that teachers should possess is the ability to ask quality questions. Acikgoz's (2004, p. 263) statement that asking questions is not a simple task should be interpreted this context. What is not simple is high quality questions, rather than simply questions. Berci & Griffith (2005) suggest that in large measure good teaching is good question asking. This is an art every teacher should master (p. 407). On the other hand, just to ask is regarded as one of the greatest barriers to effective use of questions (Miller, 2007; Profetto-McGrath, Smith, Day & Yonge, 2004). High quality questions should have certain characteristics, including the following; (1) clarity, (2) purposefulness, (3) usefulness, (4) level customization, (5) sequence, (6) orientation to thinking (7) flexibility, and (8) well-constructedness (Good & Brophy, 2000; Kauchak & Eggen, 1998). Two basic ways to learn questions are arguably seeing/listening to favorable examples and performing studies to formulate questions for observation and repetition are of considerable importance to learn these skills (Senemoglu, 1997). In this context, instruction should be designed to allow students encounter high quality questions and study on formulating questions (Drake & Brown 2003; Hover, Hicks & Irwin 2007). Students' questioning skills can be improved by teaching applications that reflect different approaches about the use of questions. These different teaching applications can be designated as (1) teaching based on teacher's questions, (2) teaching based on student questions, and (3) blended method. …