TITLE A Teacher's Questions in an Adult Literacy Classroom. Possibilities for Dialogue. CRAEHD Publications

A stUdy addressed the ways in which classroom interaction is structured explicitly and implicitly through a teacher's questions. It examined how this was done through the questions one teacher asked in her adult literacy class and what insights could be gained for adult literacy staff development programs. The research was undertaken in mid-1990 in a technical and further education college in South Australia. Ethnographic methods were used to produce data on classroom interaction; the data, collected from transcripts of classroom discussions, were subjected to analysis informed by critical theory. Contextual data on teaching aims and tensions, teaching session organization, staff development experiences, and reflections on those experiences were used to relate the questions asked and the critical analysis of their consequences to staff development needs for teachers wanting to develop critica