Abstract
The main purpose of this study was to investigate teacher questioning behaviors in earth science classrooms. Carlsen (1991) pointed out that teachers' questions were related to context, content and reaction to responses. In literatures, studies analyzing teacher questioning behaviors paid most attention to question types that would inspire students' fruitful thinking and responses. It seems that the context and contents of questions have not been emphasized enough. In this study, questions given by experienced teachers in the earth science classrooms were analyzed with respect to the purpose and function of each question. Questions were first categorized according to the purpose and then further subdivided to indicate how the questions were used. Four categories according to the purpose of questions were identified and reflected the main components of scientific literacy. The four categories are (1) learning of science concepts (content knowledge), (2) understanding of the process of the science (procedural knowledge), (3) scientific values and attitudes (epistemic knowledge), and (4) others (which can't be classified into aforementioned three categories). The various functions of the questions in each category were defined. Bloom's Taxonomy, the structure of scientific reasoning and argumentation, and the nature of science to define functions of questions were taken into account. Results showed that experienced teachers arranged questions with different purposes in each time sequence. Though the questions related to function of memorization appeared most frequently, experienced teachers tried to arrange questions with different functions to promote students' conceptual learning. Furthermore, experienced teachers mostly helped students to construct new scientific concepts based on their prior knowledge. The findings of this study could offer novice teachers a comprehensive understanding of questioning behaviors in science classrooms.