Antecedent and consequent conditions of student questioning: An analysis of classroom discourse across the university

Abstract

This study examined the relation of student questions to teacher comments in college classrooms across the university, with the interact as the unit of analysis. Thirty classrooms were audiotaped and transcriptions analyzed. Our analysis produced six categories of student questions, with an average of 3.6 student questions asked per hour of instruction. Eight categories of antecedent teacher comments and seven categories of consequent teacher comments also emerged from the analysis. We discuss these results with regard to previous research and consider explanations and implications of the findings.