ANTECEDENT AND CONSEQUENT CONDITIONS OF STUDENT QUESTIONING - AN ANALYSIS OF CLASSROOM DISCOURSE ACROSS THE UNIVERSITY

This study examined the relation of student questions to teacher comme nts in college classrooms across the university, with the interact as the unit of analysis. Thirty classrooms were audiotaped and transcript ions analyzed. Our analysis produced six categories of student questio ns, with an average of 3.6 student questions asked per hour of instruc tion. Eight categories of antecedent teacher comments and seven catego ries of consequent teacher comments also emerged from the analysis. We discuss these results with regard to previous research and consider e xplanations and implications of the findings.