What Questions Are We Asking in the Contemporary Childern's Literature Classroom?

Abstract

This case study of four B.Ed TESL Overseas Link Degree trainee teachers was undertaken with the intention of discovering what goes on in the classroom in terms of the trainee teachers’ classroom interactions in relation to their questioning techniques and responses. This is looked at how much of thinking is being encouraged and how much of the learners’ affective domain is being tapped through the teachers’ questionings and responses during the Contemporary Children’s Literature (CCL) lesson. Three methods of data collection; verbatim transcriptions of the video recorded observation of the respondents’ lessons, interviews with the respondents and the respondents’ reflections of the observed lesson were analysed and managed using NVivo 2.0, a qualitative data analysis software package. The findings show that the trainee teachers questions and responses in the CCL classroom falls under five categories closed/display, inferential. open/referential. affective and other non- related questions and responses.