Investigating teacher questioning in Hong Kong secondary EMI classrooms: (Mis)alignment between beliefs and practices

Teacher questioning plays a fundamental role in facilitating teaching and learning. In Hong Kong secondary English-medium instruction (EMI) classrooms, productive questioning is essential for promoting language and content learning. However, research on teacher-student interactions in such classrooms has seldom explored whether teachers’ beliefs about questioning and actual practices align, leaving a critical gap in our understanding of how these beliefs and practices interact and how pedagogical questioning can be improved. This study employed a multi-layered analytical model to examine teacher questioning through classroom observations of 14 humanities teachers. Interviews were also conducted with the teachers to map out their beliefs about questioning and factors affecting belief-practice (mis)alignment. An examination of the classroom discourse showed a predominance of lower-order and authoritative teacher questions that typically elicited brief student responses. A thematic analysis of the interviews revealed both alignment and misalignment between the teachers’ questioning-related beliefs and practices. Drawing on Ecological Systems Theory and Communication Accommodation Theory, this study identified various individual and contextual factors that led the teachers to either accommodate or underaccommodate learner needs in their questioning practices. Based on the findings, targeted professional development initiatives are recommended to develop effective teacher questioning in secondary EMI classrooms.