Abstract

Questioning is one of the techniques of teaching English reading comprehension. Teachers’ quality of questioning impacts on students’ existing thinking and reasoning skills. This study investigated how teacher questioning is used to enhance students’critical thinking skills in English reading comprehension in selected Malawian secondary schools. Using a qualitative case study research design, data were collected using classroom observation and semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed thematically using Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. The findings of the study revealed that teachers of English have knowledge concerning lower and higher levels of teacher questions, but are unable to categorise them into six levels of educational objectives. Some reasons why some levels of teacher questions dominate in English reading comprehension are the following: testing evaluation level of educational objectives is almost neglected; inadequate lesson preparation, and inability to categorise the two levels of questions into six levels of educational objectives. The implications of these findings are that teachers of English are unlikely to use questioning to enhance development of students’ critical thinking because their question sequencing fails to follow levels of educational objectives. Neglecting testing the highest level of educational objectives may result in reduction in development of students’ critical thinking, and lesson preparation is likely to suffer and the use of different levels of teacher questions to enhance students’ critical thinking will not be realised.

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School	: School of Education
Issued Date	: 2023

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