OpenorClosed-ThatistheQuestion.docVIP

PAGE  PAGE 18 Open or Closed – That is the Question Diane Harris University of Manchester Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Warwick, 6-9 September 2006 Abstract This paper explores teachers’ use of questions with primary school children engaged in science activities. The research reports the profile of questioning strategies from a survey of 51 teachers in 102 lessons in Reception, Years 2 and 4: more ‘open’ questions are used with the older groups of children than the reception class children and in science activities rather than literacy; additionally slightly more person-centred questions are asked by teachers in science activities than in literacy. Received wisdom in primary ‘constructivist’ science teaching is that the teacher’s questioning role in science classes, at least in the elicitation phase, is to discover what the children already know relevant to the science to be learnt and hence, teachers should ask open and person-centred questions (e.g. SPACE Project, 1987 to 1990). In contrast, some educational psychologists, probably on the basis of experience, believe that four- to seven-year-old children are confused by open questions and prefer to offer the children choices. Consequently, some psychologists have argued that children’s cognitive potential can be seriously under-estimated by open questioning. Indeed, Donaldson (1978) argued that children as young as three-and-a-half understand the concept of choice and have no problem working with it. She argues that, by not giving children the clue that a problem involves certain choices, we are making things unnecessarily difficult for them. Inappropriate use of language and task rules, therefore, can create a barrier to finding out what children ‘really’ know. Thus in this research (part of a larger PhD research project funded by the ESRC) we ask: to what extent do teachers of children (at different ages from 3 to 11 years) use di