An Examination of Teacher Questioning and Student Responses Within the Context of an Integrated STEM Project

As teachers incorporate more science and engineering practices into their science instruction, it is important for teachers to support students as they engage with these practices. Talking science is one way for students to engage in authentic science practices as part of classroom instruction. However, students are often newcomers to engaging in science talk with teachers or with fellow students. One solution to this unfamiliarity with science talk is for teachers to model science talk and to engage students in classroom discussion through questioning. In this capstone, I addressed a problem of practice aimed at gaining greater understanding of the relationship between teacher talk and student talk. Specifically, I primarily explored teacher questioning, elicited student responses, student-student talk, and groupings of teacher questions and student responses during the enactment of an integrated STEM project. I employed a single-case-study design to examine teacher talk and student talk in two sections of Grade 5 science that were co-taught by the same classroom teacher and STEM specialist at one school. Data collection was archival and included the project’s teacher guide and the text transcripts of whole-class discussions during the science-focused lessons. Using deductive and inductive coding and descriptive quantitative analyses, I arrived at research findings about teacher questioning and student talk within the science-focused lessons and about patterns related to groupings of teacher questions and talk moves and elicited student responses. Based on the research findings, I discussed implications for the problem of practice of using questioning to engage students in whole-class discussions and student-student talk and provided recommendations for the context in which this study occurred.