PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE 4

PIP Findings

Adele Stramare
11017
PIP Findings – Adele Stramare

Focus
The focus of my Professional Inquiry Project was developing effective questioning techniques to engage
students in their learning. This area was selected to further develop open questioning strategies - simply
moving beyond closed questioning as a fourth year pre-service teacher. The curriculum area focus which
all the evidence and data was gathered from was English. Considering the importance of English within the
curriculum, I believe questioning can be used to strengthen the classroom environment and can extend the
learning in the classroom to create new possibilities to the content being taught.

Context & curriculum area

The school in which I undertook placement was at a co-ed Catholic primary school located in the north-
eastern suburbs of Adelaide, with approximately 413 students. The school is multicultural with a range of
different backgrounds and learning needs. Within the ratio of students, 31% of the students speak another
language other than English. The year 5 classroom which I was teaching in consisted of 24 students – 8
boys and 16 girls. The classroom had one EAL/D student, and three students which need explicit
scaffolding and support in the area of English. Within this range, some students were exceeding and at a
meeting level which made the planning process diverse.

Justification of teaching behaviour & curriculum area focus

The Australian Teaching Standards for Teachers (AITSL) self-review helped me to identify areas that can
be improved and further developed to assist in my evolving pedagogy. Standard 3: Professional Practice
was the focus, and mainly developing my professional understanding in 3.3, to use teaching strategies to
create engaging and inquiry based learning. Scholars describe questioning in the classroom as a useful
tool as it expands the educator’s range of teaching strategies, and also creates high levels of engagement
with the content focus (Hayes, 2017).

With considering this as my focus, I was able to research more into the engagement questioning can bring
into the English classroom, as well as the increased enjoyment displayed by students. It was important in
my planning that I considered questioning within the lessons, and became aware of the various purposes
the questions may serve (Hayes, 2017). Depka (2017) has found the different questioning in the classroom
proves to be purposeful, dependent on the scenarios and how they are used. The most important part of
my planning and use of teaching strategies to benefit the teaching behaviour was to understand, and be
clear on the different types of questioning and the purpose they serve (Depka, 2017). I was able to plan in
advance and create ‘open’ questions prior to the lessons, which leads to even more questioning once
students start to respond to these. Having a focus on open questioning during the development of my
pedagogy is effective as students are able explain their responses and ideas towards the content focus
(Depka, 2017) – this makes the atmosphere enjoyable for students (Lombard & Schneider, 2013).

An important part of developing effective questioning is when the educator understands the process of
questioning (Stokhof et al., 2017, p. 126). The three elements that make for an effective process within the
questioning domain is generating, formulating and answering. Formulating is viewed as an important
PIP Findings – Adele Stramare
aspect for teachers to build upon to create rich questioning in the class. The way the educator poses
questions and the way they are asked, impacts students the most (Stokhof et al., 2017, p. 126). This is a
pivotal tool within questioning as it creates the classroom climate and the ability for the teacher to engage
in the content thoroughly (Stokhof et al., 2017, p. 126).

A common strategy used to promote questioning that is engaging in the classroom is when students are
able to respond with more than just a single answer response developed by the teacher (Depka, 2017, p.
118). Structuring the questions in a way where students can feel successful is an important teaching
strategy to use when developed questioning in the classroom (Depka, 2017, p. 118). The strategies used
are also worthwhile when students are able to share their ideas with peers, and discuss their thoughts and
ideas about the question before responding (Depka, 2017). The use of peer relationships makes the
processes less frightening for students.

The focus of the action research, was to use open-questions and effective questioning strategies to
generate higher response of engagement in students. Engagement strategies such as conversations and
peer involvement, is a focus that was implemented to enhance responses. The planning is inclusive of
these open-questions, and peer collaboration time to provide countless responses and possibilities to the
questions for students (Depka, 2017).

Design & data collection techniques

At the conclusion of the English lessons, all 24 students would provide feedback through an exit slip. The
exit slips were used as a form of evaluation, and with all 24 students participating, it provided a wider scope
into the effectiveness of the questioning used. It was important to gather student evidence as they were the
focus on developing my questioning. I wanted students to show if they had been challenged, or whether the
questions had a range of difficulties for all learners. With the yes and no response on the exit slips, it was
simple for students to understand and respond to. The results were collated through quantitative data in a
frequency chart to highlight different trends, and to view whether they were successful and engaging for all
students (Almalki, 2016, p. 289).

The second part of my design and data collection was gathering mentor feedback during my lesson. It was
important that my mentor teacher critically thought about the sequencing of my questioning and the
purpose it was providing students. This was originally planned as quantitative data, but due to the response
and detail, they have been annotated to engage in the rich wondering to further develop my pedagogy and
teaching strategies. A journal reflection at the conclusion of each lesson was gathered to see my thoughts,
feelings and emotions about the lesson. It encourages me to critically reflect on my teaching strategies and
is useful to compare patterns found within my mentor teachers and mine. Highlighting the patterns within
words helps to find the reoccurring practices to help further develop my pedagogy (Killen, 2015, p. 105).
PIP Findings – Adele Stramare

Data results & analysis

Observing the data collected has enabled me to consider my pedagogical approaches and teaching
strategies within questioning. From gathering qualitative data from my mentor teacher’s feedback and my
own personal reflections, I was able to extract key words. It is clear that there was always a strong
connection of student engagement with the questions used (Appendix E, Appendix I). The engagement
was an important part to my questioning process as it created high engagement in the content area
(Depka, 2017). It can be seen (Appendix D, E, G) that I not only used open questions, but I also used
closed questions. This was not part of my questioning process as it did not prove to be purposeful within
the learning theory – though they worked at certain times when asking for clarification, or prior knowledge. I
found myself leading to closed questions, and I was aware after I posed the question to students. This was
a gradual improvement over the duration of the PIP learning, although would still occur in every lesson.
Observing the word choices from this data, Appendix I and G highlighted that the higher-level thinking and
useful open-questioning was clear when words such as ‘what’, or ‘how’ were used. This gave an
opportunity for students to respond in any way, without the fear of being wrong - they were comfortable to
share in their environment. This data shows that ‘what’ and ‘how’ are good opening questions in the
classroom. The evidence shows that I still need to formulate my questions more effectively to eliminate
closed questions, as my mentor said at times, it made the questioning less enriched.

Comparing my personal reflection to the mentor feedback, ‘challenging’ was a word that was appearing.
The questions proved to be challenging for students, therefore, creating higher-order thinking. From the
final results collated within a frequency chart (Appendix D), it can be seen that students felt as though they
were challenged within the lesson. It was interesting to view that although students felt challenged, there
was a higher rate of students stating that the questions were easy (Appendix D). This may have been a
limitation to my exit slips as students may have thought this question was in response to the learning tasks
they were participating in during the lesson. The data gathered by the students showed that they agreed
that the questioning used was meaningful and helped their learning within the English unit (Appendix D).
Others may have differed due to the use of closed questions at times throughout the lessons.

Appendix E illustrates that my first lesson was limited to peer questioning and sharing time. Over the
lessons, the reflection and mentor feedback showed that there was an incline in sharing time after a
question was posed. Appendix I and J displays that this allowed everyone to feel successful within the
question responses. It was also observed during these lessons that more students wanted to respond and
displayed engagement in the topic. From Appendix D, a majority of students believed that the lessons
provided opportunities for them to share with their peers. Students would have felt less frightened as they
were able to collaborate and share all ideas to the question (Depka, 2017). My data gathered displays an
effective approach to questioning, especially with the use of peer collaboration to support all learners. With
the use of peer collaboration the data did not change immensely, though, I was able to interpret Appendix F
that the sharing time created success for students. This created a classroom climate of positivity for
students and is a strategy that is highly effective to create success.
PIP Findings – Adele Stramare
Conclusion & Reflection
The open-questioning used, especially the use of peer engagement, promoted levels of engagement and
were helpful to students learning. Over the duration of the placement, I was able to develop standard 3.3,
teaching strategies, to create a learning environment which was engaging. My effectiveness of open-
questioning still needs to be constantly planned and evaluated for, as there are still gaps with posing open
questions. The use of closed questions was a limitation within my teaching strategy that can improve with
more thorough planning. The use of peer collaborations was positive and is a strategy that is worthwhile in
the questioning process to make everyone feel successful. The use of peer collaboration is a teaching
strategy that will support my pedagogy and future classroom climate.
Word Count: 1,688
PIP Findings – Adele Stramare
Reference List
Almalki, S 2016, ‘Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Data in Mixed Methods Research – Challenges
and Benefits’ Journal of Education and Learning, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 288-296.

Depka, E 2017, ‘Raising the Rigor: Effective questioning strategies and techniques for the classroom’,
Solution Tree, Australia.

Hayes, T 2017, ‘Increasing Teacher Proficiency in Effective Questioning Techniques for the Elementary
Classroom’, ProQuest LLC, Trevecca Nazarene University.

Killen, R 2015, ‘Effective Teaching Strategies: Lessons from Research and Practice’, Cengage, Australia.

Lombard, F, Schneider, D 2013, ‘Good Student Questions in Inquiry Learning’, Journal of Biological
Education, vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 166-174.

McNiff, J, Whitehead, J 2005, ‘All You Need to Know About Action Research’, Sage Publications Ltd.

Raymond, S 2018, Data Analysis, EDUC 4206, University of South Australia, Adelaide, June 2018

Stokhof, H, De Vries B, Martens, R, Bastiaens, T 2017, ‘How to guide effective student questioning: A
review of teacher guidance in primary education’, Review of Education, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 123-165.
PIP Findings – Adele Stramare
Appendices
Appendix A

Lesson 1
25

20

15

10

0
Did you enjoy the lesson? Were you challenged? Did you respond with Did the questions help
classmates? your learning?

Yes Content No

Were the questions too hard or too easy?

14

12

10

0
Hard In the Middle Easy
PIP Findings – Adele Stramare
Appendix B

Lesson 2
25

20

15

10

0
Did you enjoy the lesson? Were you challenged? Did you respond with Did the questions help your
classmates? learning?

Yes Content No

Were the questions too hard or too easy?

12

10

0
Hard In the Middle Easy
PIP Findings – Adele Stramare

Appendix C

Lesson 3
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Did you enjoy the lesson? Were you challenged? Did you respond with Did the questions help your
classmates? learning?

Yes Content No

Were the questions too hard or too easy?

12

10

0
Hard In the Middle Easy
PIP Findings – Adele Stramare

Appendix D

Final Results Collated

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
Did you enjoy the lesson? Were you challenged? Did you respond with Did the questions help your
classmates? learning?

Yes Content No

Were the questions too hard or too easy?

35

30

25

20

15

10

0
Hard In the Middle Easy
PIP Findings – Adele Stramare
Appendix E
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Appendix F
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Appendix G
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Appendix H
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Appendix I

Appendix J
PIP Findings – Adele Stramare