An Investigation of Primary Mathematics Teachers’ Questioning Skills

This study aims to investigate the primary school mathematics teachers’ questioning skills in class. It also includes observation of the questioning skills of two primary school mathematics teachers. This mixed-methods research study follows an explanatory sequential design. Initially, quantitative data were collected from 265 primary school mathematics teachers through a questioning survey developed by the researchers. On the other hand, qualitative data were obtained by observing two teachers who answered this survey and were easily accessible to the researchers for six weeks. One of the researchers was in the role of participant-observer in this observation process, and both teachers were observed for six weeks. Findings from the survey show that mathematics teachers’ in-class questioning skills are at a good level. However, the observation results yielded findings that contradicted the survey results. The survey findings indicate that the item on teachers’ use of open questions had a higher mean value than the item on closed-ended questions; however, the observations showed that teachers used closed questions more than open questions. While teachers’ use of rhetorical and managerial questions in the survey data was moderate, it was quite high in the observational data