The meaning of student inquiry questions: A teacher's beliefs and responses

Abstract

This research explores an American high school chemistry teacher's perspective on the meaning of student questions that originate from curiosity and engagement with subject matter. Ethnographic analysis of a teacher's reflective processes and decision-making approach suggests that questions hold contradictory meanings as powerful, conflicting pressures come to play in the everyday patterns of classroom discourse. Although thoughtful intellectual questions are valued as indicators of student attitudes and understandings, they nonetheless create an interruption to the normal flow of things. To the teacher, such interruptions pose threats to his control of classroom events and his ability to cover the content of his course. Although science educators might enthusiastically endorse the idea that classrooms should be characterized by a spirit of inquiry in which student questions are encouraged and respected, findings suggest that it can be difficult for this to happen in actual schools where particular teachers face specific institutional curricular pressures.