A Tango of Teachable Moments: How an Expert Teacher Uses Questioning to Assess and Develop Students' Writing

• In Event: 26.025 - Dialogic Perspectives on Classroom Assessment of Writing

Abstract

Purpose

This study explored how one expert high school English teacher used questioning strategies during student think-alouds to (1) assess his students’ challenges with writing literary fiction and (2) provide immediate instruction in response to these challenges.

Theoretical Framework

Conversations during and about writing can allow teachers to access the internal “dialogue of deliberation” that defines students’ composing processes (Sperling, 1991), and to target feedback to learners’ respective zones of proximal development (Ewert, 2009; Patthey-Chavez & Ferris, 1997; Vygotsky, 1978; Weissberg, 2006). Although teacher feedback is often viewed statically as a “consequence of performance” (Hattie & Timperley, 2007), instructional conversations provide a context for investigating how feedback can both respond to and support performance. One such line of research examining Dynamic Assessment (Luria, 1961) in the second language classroom has demonstrated how instructional conversations provide teachers with nuanced information about students’ strengths and challenges that translate to “teachable moments” (Meskill, 2010, p. 204; Poehner & Lantolf, 2010). Our research unites these bodies of literature to investigate one instantiation of dynamic assessment in a high school English classroom.

Methods and Data Sources

Participants included one high school English teacher locally recognized for his skilled teaching and 6 of his 11th and 12th grade students in a diverse urban high school. The main writing tasks for his class were a series of alternative endings to works of literary fiction. Data sources consist of (1) interviews with the teacher about his writing curriculum and goals for students; (2) think-aloud sessions in which the teacher responded to students as they verbalized their thoughts while composing their alternative endings; and (3) follow-up interviews in which the teacher reflected on each student’s performance and his own responses to it. Teacher interview data were transcribed and inductively coded for teacher goals and curriculum focus. Separately, the teacher’s interactions with students in their think-aloud sessions were transcribed and coded for (1) substantive focus of questions as related to goals, progress, or next steps (Hattie & Timperley, 2007), ( 2) function of questions, such as comprehension checks, confirmation checks, and clarification requests (Ewert, 2009) and (3) explicit or implicit (Poehner & Lantolf, 2010) mediation of performance.
Findings

Our findings characterize overall patterns in how this teacher adjusted his questioning according to his perceptions of students’ needs as writers. Analysis of selected interactions revealed that the teacher employed a sequence of open-ended and closed questions to elicit information regarding students’ proficiency in specific aspects of writing and to mediate their performance on these focal aspects. We consider such interactions “micro-teaching” episodes that create individualized contexts for each student’s writing performance and development.

Significance

Findings from this study carry practical and theoretical implications. Analysis of this teacher’s instructional conversations with students reveals how feedback can be both a “consequence of performance” (Hattie & Timperley, 2007) and a way of assisting it (Tharp & Gallimore, 1991). Given their utility in both assessing and assisting students’ development as writers, teachers’ questions play a central role in instructional conversations about writing.

Authors

• Alyssa Trzeszkowski-Giese, New York University

• Sarah W. Beck, New York University

• Kristin Black, New York University