Abstract
The study reported here involved 45 experienced primary teachers in North Rhine, Westphalia, West Germany. Of these, 29 were trained to ask higher cognitive questions using a specially adapted mini-course. Sixteen comprised a control/comparison group. Data about the frequency, nature and cognitive levels of teachers’ questions and pupils’ utterances were obtained from 14-minute segments of audiotapes of lessons conducted prior to the training period, three to four weeks after it ceased and, for 14 of the experimental teachers, a further eight weeks later. The training program resulted in significant increases in the proportion of higher cognitive questions asked by teachers and in the proportion of correspondences between the cognitive levels of these questions and pupils’ responses. Furthermore, the proportions of higher cognitive questions and of correspondences between levels of questions and responses were maintained over a three-month period. The findings augment the relatively meagre amount of information about cognitive correspondences of questions and responses and by implication direct attention to a number of matters that deserve greater attention if more is to be understood about questions and responses in classroom discourse.