Preservice Teachers' Questioning and Students' Responses During Algebra Tutoring

• In Event: Exploring Preservice Teachers in Mathematics Education

Abstract

Posing questions is a direct way for teachers to push students to verbalize justifications and make connections among ideas, but this skill is difficult to learn. We recruited four pre-service special education teachers to participate in a semester-long professional development focused on developing mathematics knowledge and asking questions, while concurrently providing 1-1 tutoring to students with learning disabilities. The pre-service teachers increased their frequency of questions overall and of questions that probed students’ thinking or explored mathematical relationships. The pre-service teachers also developed strategies for shifting among different types of questions when students struggled. The findings of this study illustrate the potential for pre-service teachers to develop questioning routines that challenge students while scaffolding their progress towards new understanding.

Authors

• Anna Fricano DeJarnette, University of Cincinnati

• Casey Hord, University of Cincinnati