Conceptualizing and Validating Teacher Questioning Skills.

To provide a clear idea of the specific teacher behaviors involved in questioning and how these behaviors relate to each other, this paper develops a conceptualization of the interactional components of questioning and reviews research evaluating the benefits of alternative questioning techniques. The paper first describes different methods of asking initial questions--the first question in a series--and looks at different kinds of initial questions teachers can ask, specifically examining "higher level" questions and offering suggestions for research in this area. The paper next discusses the components of teacher responses to student questions: accepting, evaluating, and commenting. The paper concludes with a discussion of question sequences, specifically the redirect sequence and the follow-up sequence, and calls for communication scholars to undertake more research in the area of teacher questioning. A 69-item reference list is included. (FL)