Pre-service teachers’ practices of asking questions in Chinese history classes: Patterns and difficulties

This study aimed to analyze how Chinese History pre-service teachers’ practices of asking questions during practicum. To be specific, this study explored a) types of teachers’ questioning and feedback; b) patterns of questioning analyzed by the model of IRF (initiation response feedback); c) the difficulties in asking questions to promote classroom interaction. Three pre-service Chinese teachers were observed in nine classes (three classes/per teacher) and individual interviewed. Content analysis method was used to analyze the collected data. The findings show that display questions and indirect feedback were majorly adopted and IRF mode were usually used in the classroom when pre-service teachers questioning students. Also, from the interview, three participants reported that they were confronted with the difficulties in asking questions to promote class interactions such as time constraints, students’ silence, quality of feedback used. The findings of the study have implications for cultivating pre-service teachers’ questioning and feedback skills.