Relationship Between a Teacher Educator's Questions and the Development of Prospective Teachers' Critical Thinking

Purpose:This study explores the relationships between the cognitive demands of the questions asked by a teacher educator(TE)and prospective teachers'(PT)capacity for critical thinking(CT).Design/Approach/Methods:Participants comprised a TE and 32 PTs.The cognitive demands of the TE's questions and PTs'CT were analyzed using a systematic observation approach.Findings:Results indicate that there are tangible connections between the increasing mental demand of TE questions and PTs'higher-order cognitive processing.The PTs achieved higherorder CT when the TE asked more cognitively demanding questions.For instance,when the TE's questions were pitched at the cognitive demand levels-namely,the analyze,evaluate,and/or create levels—the PTanswers were longer and reflected higher CT,such as inductive reasoning,suggesting new ways of thinking,or legitimating the arguments of others.Accordingly,results suggest that intentionally subjecting PTs to sustained higher cognitive demands via questions may help them reach their optimal CT capacity.Originality/Value:Although proposed teaching strategies have been invaluable in proposing content-specific interventions for fostering the CT of university students,how lecturers should use their questions to conduct such interventions has been overlooked.This study addresses this gap.

Global Competence of Normal Undergraduates

Global competence refers to individual’s attitudes towards other cultures,basic knowledge level about the world,the competence to survive in a culturalcrossing environment and the role of citizens of the world.It has been increasingly significant nowadays,especially for children representing the future.Therefore,the global thinking patterns of perspective teachers who will teach future children should be valued.However,the current situation of normal undergraduates’global competence is worrying.Hence,the global competence of prospective teachers should be enhanced without hesitation.Several ways have been put forward while some disadvantages still exist.

Exploring Prospective Classroom Teacher Question Types for Productive Classroom Dialogue

Purpose:This study explores prospective classroom teacher(PCT)question types and their role in initiating productive student-led talk.Design/Approach/Methods:This study is a naturalistic inquiry focusing on the structure,nature,and productivity of PCT questions using data collected from 24 fourth-grade(exit-level)PCTs.Video-based data were analyzed via systematic observation.Findings:This study identified nine types of teacher questions.Of these,six types—namely,com-municating,monitoring-framing,critiquing,legitimating,evidencing,and modelingwere explicitly related to productive classroom talk indicators.While the remaining three question types-observe-compare-predict,concluding and naming,and maintainingcontributed to the variation in PCT questions,they were not directly linked to the indicators of talk productivity.Moreover,the critiquing,legitimating,and modeling questions expected to foster talk productivity were sel-dom asked,with classroom discourse dominated by communicating questions.Originality/Value:The literature has yet to observe and systematically analyze the productivity of PCTs'in-class questions.In addressing this gap,this study presents a wide-ranging and qualita-tively oriented coding catalogue to identify several aspects of academically productive classroom discourse that can be triggered and maintained by PCTs'questioning behaviors.